I am a huge fan of the TV series, Supernatural, and have also enjoyed the handful of books based on the series. The Unholy Cause is one of those novels, and it makes quite a fun addition to the Supernatural canon. What’s great about it is that novels allow writers to do much more than what can be done in a one-hour TV show, either because of budget or time constraints.

This story opens up with a bunch of people at a civil war battle reenactment in Georgia, and one of the guys starts taking things a little too seriously and kills some others, then himself. Sam and Dean Winchester, the two brothers who are stars of the show and who travel around investigating weird supernatural disturbances, decide to check things out. It doesn’t take long before some more people get killed, and then it gets even worse when the local sheriff (an attractive woman, of course) starts going after them.

In nearly every episode, Sam and Dean pose as federal agents of some kind, and they usually get their names from famous musicians. What’s funny in this story is that they go to the south and try to use the last names from some guys from Lynyrd Skynyrd, and their bluff is immediately called out by the local sheriff. I thought this was a great twist since I always figured it would happen sooner or later on the show.

You can expect quite a bit of action in this story, and that’s where the novel form is superior to the TV show because this would be too hard to film on a budget. Once the demons start getting serious about their plan, which I won’t spoil here, the whole city turns into a war zone using Civil War implements like cannons. The possessions are aplenty, and you will have lots of explosions and gunfights, plus some knife fights and the other usual stuff you’d see on the show.

I am not sure where exactly this story takes place in regard to the TV series, but I am guessing that it is somewhere around season six. Sam apparently has his soul back and the angel, Castiel, makes a couple of appearances, but there wasn’t anything specific to label exactly where this episode fits. Not that it really matters, anyway, because this is a standalone story that doesn’t advance any of the plotlines from the TV series.

Joe Schreiber previously wrote the Star Wars novel called Death Troopers, which has the distinction of being the first Star Wars book with zombies. I liked it well enough, even if it was a bit weird. The writing in this book was good, though he did throw in a few too many big ‘college’ words that I thought didn’t fit in so well. Sam says one of them to Dean, and I forget what the word was, but it’s something Dean would normally have made fun of him for saying. I did notice that it first describes the sheriff as having brown eyes, then two pages later it says she has green eyes. Minor stuff, I know.

In the end, I really enjoyed The Unholy Cause and think that any fan of Supernatural would like reading it. The book runs about 300 pages and is a very quick read.

Recommended: Yes