Ebenezer, Micah, and Minerva, three guns-for-hire, find themselves involved in the search for the nephew of a woman named Ellen. He's been taken to a secluded forest compound called Little Heaven, a community of religious fanatics alienating themselves from society. Ellen is worried that he's been taken against his will and the boy's mother has asked Ellen to look into the matter. But they all get much more than they bargained for. There's something wrong with the wildlife in the woods, and a mysterious giant black rock looms over Little Heaven. 
 Nick Cutter's Little Heaven is a full-course meal of vile, disgusting, disturbing, wretched, wrong, filthy, uncomfortable waste. There's blood, guts, murder, drugs, sexually explicit content involving children, bodily fluids galore (blood, urine, semen, bile, feces), human and animal torture; very detailed descriptions of animals being tortured and killed, children being poisoned and killed, and people being dismembered, eaten, and skinned alive. If Clive Barker went to Hell and wrote a book, and Satan published it, it would be Little Heaven. If you like this kind of stuff, which I will say goes far beyond the literary horror of Barker and more into shock and slop stuff like The Human Centipede, you'll be drooling out of the side of your mouth over this one. If you like to be grossed out, Nick Cutter does it better than anyone writing books today. If you are offended by things that normal people should be offended by, or are sensitive about religion being literally demonized, than this book will probably be too much to handle, or simply disgust you. I found it to be an interesting test of how much I could put up with. It throws everything at you, and I mean everything. You simply MUST go into a Cutter book expecting to have your feathers ruffled. Nick Cutter is a GOOD writer. His writing skill is noteworthy, he has interesting and very fleshed out characters, and I found them likable despite how wretched they could be. However, the bad guys are just so over-the-top evil that I found it a little unbelievable, and the "good" guys aren't really that good, but you're expected to sympathize with them which could be off-putting for some. I think Nick Cutter set out to push as many buttons as he could, and I think he's been very successful. I enjoyed his other books and I enjoyed parts of this one too, but I found all the gross-out stuff a little tiring after the initial shock wore off. After the half-way mark I was just wading through the muck without a second thought, there was just so much of it. I think of Cutter as a shock writer and much less a literary horror writer like Barker, both of whom share similarities. Cutter also borrows a lot from horror movies and other horror writers and as a result isn't very original under the skin. There is nothing inherently wrong with that if it's done well, which it is for the most part. His monsters are cool but re-imagined creations of John Carpenter's, as seen in his movie The Thing. But the things he takes, he twists around with admirable complexity. Are these bad things? No. Cutter is an exceptionally skilled writer who is getting better with each release. His stories aren't necessarily getting better, but his writing and characters are. The relationship between Ebenezer, Micah, and Minerva is wonderfully twisted. And as with every author there will be hits and misses. I would say that Little Heaven is better than The Deep, but pales in comparison to The Troop, his best book in my opinion, and one of the best horror books I've read. I look forward to Nick Cutter's writing career, and I'm glad that he's fairly young, and just getting started. There will be much more to come, and I'll be supporting him the whole way.