Chaos beckons.
A newlywed couple, Jacob and Alexa, arrive at a small mining town to visit a fabled ancient castle standing on its outskirts.
Soon after, the same town is visited by Keri – a policewoman who recently received a mysterious letter from her childhood friend.
Captured by the rural serenity, they are unaware of the malign curse festering in the soil, decaying the buildings and minds of the people living inside them.
However, a series of seemingly unrelated ghastly events quickly spiral out of control, bringing corruption into the open.
Now they must struggle to keep their lives and sanity intact or be transformed and join the ravenous ranks of the Eldritch Beasts.
This chilling tale blends Lovecraftian terror, psychological suspense, and visceral body horror.
I was really hoping I’d like this book, because there’s at least four more that follow it, and I’m always up for cosmic horror.
Unfortunately, I found this not very horrifying, and not cosmic at all.
Here’s the thing…Primary Hollow (and damn, that’s a quality author handle, isn’t it? I love it!) has obviously read Lovecraft, and they’ve dug deep into the language and syntax. They have embraced words like “macabre” and “abomination” and “uncanny” and “eldritch” and “shamble” and “corruption” etc.
But, they seem to have downplayed some other factors that really shouldn’t be downplayed. There’s a lot of characters, very quickly sketched in, who show up, encounter a suitably grotesque monster and they either fall to it, or get infected by it or, more often, live to fight another one down the road.
Which is fine, but all these monsters seem to have very little consequence, other than to be grotesque and somewhat horrible monsters. Unfortunately, that carries little horror. There’s enough to terrify there, but the characters aren’t sympathetic enough for the reader to really get upset if they live or die. I have to say, by the second or third monster sighting, this felt more like a basic, early 90s video game than a novel with a plot building to something.
Also, while the monsters are quite Lovecraftian, they’re also mostly silent. And yes, so are Lovecraft’s, but in his world, the monsters are so terrifying, the humans’ reaction to them is enough to know how terrible they are. The humans literally go mad. Not in this book. So, once again, the stakes are lowered. Not cosmic at all.
To me, this was less Lovecraft than it was Lite-craft.
Honestly, the one interesting character was the herald, Sila. She had the most personality and the right amount of mystery about her. I really was interested in her, unfortunately, she didn’t have a big role to play, and kind of turned into a stereotypical sneering shallow comic book villain by the end. Kind of a “Ha ha! You think you can kill me? Nay!” type.
Overall, it almost felt like there was too much going on for one slim novel. I’d have been happier with more fleshed out characters and one major storyline.
As I said, I really wanted to like this. But, while the writing was good, there was simply not enough to grab me. I won’t be carrying on with the series.
