Highly Recommended.
This is a cunning and genuinely creepy horror novel. That it is a debut makes its imagination and control all the more impressive. Heuvelt is a name to watch. Fans of Stephen King, Joe Hill and Adam Nevill have a new author to look out for. Hex is set in Black Spring, a small and isolated American town.
Its isolation is readily explained by the fact that it is haunted by the Black Rock Witch, the spectre of a seventeenth century woman with eyes and mouth sewn shut. What’s clever about the way Heuvelt treats this horrifying idea is that he recognises that the bizarre and the terrifying can be incorporated into our lives if it becomes familiar enough.
Black Spring knows it’s ghost. Family dinners and family wrangles continue around her presence (however unsettling that might be for the reader). What is more scary is the paranoia and the control that the older townspeople exert of themselves and any bewildered visitors to ensure their secret is kept.
This is a very modern horror novel in that CCTV and social media are as instrumental to the plot as ghosts. And it is social media that spins the horror out of its tight orbit in this novel when Black Spring’s teenagers ensure the secret gets out into the wider world. Early scenes in this novel sometimes leave you wondering what is happening but the plot and Heuvelt’s darkly witty writing soon sweep you up.
Supernatural terror and the gulf between the young and the old make for a very entertaining read.
"This is totally, brilliantly original." --Stephen King "HEX is creepy and gripping and original, sure to be one of the top horror novels of 2016." --George R.R. Martin The English language debut of the bestselling Dutch novel, Hex, from Thomas Olde Heuvelt--a Hugo and World Fantasy award nominated talent to watch Whoever is born here, is doomed to stay 'til death. Whoever settles, never leaves. Welcome to Black Spring, the seemingly picturesque Hudson Valley town haunted by the Black Rock Witch, a seventeenth century woman whose eyes and mouth are sewn shut. Muzzled, she walks the streets and enters homes at will. She stands next to children's bed for nights on end. Everybody knows that her eyes may never be opened or the consequences will be too terrible to bear. The elders of Black Spring have virtually quarantined the town by using high-tech surveillance to prevent their curse from spreading. Frustrated with being kept in lockdown, the town's teenagers decide to break their strict regulations and go viral with the haunting. But, in so doing, they send the town spiraling into dark, medieval practices of the distant past. This chilling novel heralds the arrival of an exciting new voice in mainstream horror and dark fantasy.
| Primary Genre | Fiction in translation |
| Recommendations: |
Martin The English language debut of the bestselling Dutch novel, Hex, from Thomas Olde Heuvelt--a Hugo and World Fantasy award nominated talent to watch Whoever is born here, is doomed to stay 'til death. Whoever settles, never leaves.
Hex features in the following genres: eBooks of the Month, Fiction in translation, Recommendations, Fiction: special features, Fiction
Paperback, Hardback. Not Available.
Hex was written by Thomas Olde Heuvelt and published by Tor Nightfire an imprint of Tor Publishing Group
Hex has 384 pages
