“People thought life was a miracle, but it wasn’t. Life was everywhere. The miracle was knowing you were alive. Sentience. Mind. That was the rare, precious gift.”

Plot Summary

Children around the world are suddenly dropping dead, struck down by a mysterious illness aptly named Herod’s Syndrome. It spreads rapidly, killing every single child under the age of 15 in a matter of days. Parents can do nothing but watch in horror as their children are violently ripped from them, with no explanation as to why. Three days after the mass casualty of the planet’s youth, parents across the globe are in the process of burying their children…and then the children start to come back. And they’re hungry. For blood. The blood only temporarily satiates them; they essentially die again within an hour of waking up if they aren’t able to feed. Naturally, parents will do anything for their kids…but how much can they give of themselves to keep their kids alive?

My Thoughts

Prior to picking this book up, I had seen many reviews online that mentioned how somber and moving this book is. It definitely is a very morbid concept, the idea of not only losing your child, but also having to essentially kill yourself in order to keep your child alive. I am not a parent yet, so I feel as though my experience with this story was different from those of readers who have children. While I found this book to definitely be upsetting and sad at points, I actually was much more enraptured with the ethical and moral hypotheticals it posed.

Obviously, this book explores the testament of a parent’s love for their child, showcasing just how far these characters will go to keep their children alive. (I use the word “alive” very loosely, because while they are technically moving and speaking again, they are essentially reanimated corpses). Some parents immediately begin to offer up their own blood for their kids to feast on, while others resort to obtaining blood through acts of violence or theft. Some families only have one child, some families have multiple; there are single parents and two-parent homes featured in this story. It’s very fascinating seeing the way this communal need impacts families differently based on their different dynamics. Naturally, capitalism and classism still exist, even in the apocalypse! The poor are left to scrounge for the wellness of their children, while the rich and elite have no problem simply paying to keep their children fed; obviously, the author took inspiration for this dynamic from our own society that operates in a fundamentally similar fashion.

The big moral dilemma I found myself pondering about was the actual act of keeping the kids alive. Every time that the children “wake up”, they lose a little bit more of themselves; their physical body is there, but the personalities they had before they died slowly get chipped away with every reanimation. The act of dying over and over again is traumatic for the children, who are constantly reminded that they are living on borrowed time. We see some parents refuse to let their children leave the house to play with friends, because waking time is precious family time provided by the ultimate sacrifice. The parents are giving so much of themselves (either giving their own blood or working so hard to obtain blood) for so little time with their children, that they want to squeeze as much time in with them as possible. Realistically, the characters must know that the blood supply will one day be completely depleted, resulting in their children going back to sleep forever; they know they only have limited opportunities to see their kids again, and they’re going to ensure they make the most of it. However, I found myself beginning to wonder…were the kids really benefitting from this? Sure, they were no longer dead. But they were reanimated corpses, essentially shells of the people they used to be, and they know their time alive is numbered. They couldn’t spend their precious waking moments doing the fun things they used to indulge in, because they needed to have special family time. I began to believe that the parents were reanimating their children more for themselves rather than for the wellbeing of their kids, a sentiment that some of the characters even begin to believe. I know, it probably sounds incredibly cold and morbid to say, “let the kids stay dead”. But think about how traumatic it had to be for these characters to watch their children die over and over again, knowing that soon they would have to say goodbye for good. The parents are either so exhausted and anemic from bloodletting or are so stressed about feeding their kids that they can’t even enjoy and have fun with them while they’re awake. Interestingly, the parents begin to become corpses in the process of keeping their children alive. The kids obviously aren’t really benefiting from the constant reanimation either; they fear going back to sleep, and they begin to become more violent and voracious every time they wake up. I know these characters loved their children, but it started to feel like they were only keeping the children alive for their own good, not the good of the children. It’s such a difficult and complicated scenario to even begin to consider, so I would love to hear other people’s inputs on this dilemma (especially if you’re a parent, since my perspective and reading might be skewed since I don’t have children).

Aside from the interesting ethical conversations this book inspired me to have with myself, I have to say it was downright chilling at times. The scenes where the children all over the world are waking up for the first time was kind of horrifying. The descriptions of their demeanors and appearances was bone-chilling, especially reading those passages at night. The initial scenes of the children dying was also very effective; they’re not graphic or grotesque in any way but imagining the painful wails of the parents as they realize what is happening to their kids both terrified and depressed me. I’ve read a couple of DiLouie novels now, and one thing this man knows how to do is get under your skin with his descriptions. He manages to create some absolutely nightmare scenarios that I would never want to find myself in. Suffer the Children is a bleak book that heavily explores the difficulties and complexities of parenthood amidst the most horrifying form of the apocalypse.

This one might be a difficult read for those with children (or those who have experienced child loss), so I would suggest proceeding with caution if you are sensitive to this subject.