LoveReading Says
Sitting on the razor-sharp edge of folklore and horror while straddling crime and suspense fiction, The Hollows successfully creates a read-through-your-fingers compellingly dark tale. As a storm begins to cut off a Peak District village a dead man is found in strange circumstances. While the blizzard rages the body count grows and villagers begin to fear for all of their lives. Author Daniel Church sets the tension thrumming from the get-go, and while the village setting, local police officer and problem family feel so very commonplace, a whisper of otherworldly enters to heighten unease. It has the feel of a locked-room mystery with an entire remote community sealed off from the rest of the world, and yet, this has an action-packed and vividly intense plot. The characters are stamped on the page, whether long-term or momentary, and it is easy to like PC Ellie Cheetham as she battles to save the village. The descriptions of the rural location created a surge of awareness and set me down within the arms of the drystone walls. No matter what the time of year you read this, winter will surround and plunge you into its midst. This all feels possible, real even, which creates an even darker tone, and the ending left a shiver of goosebumps scattering down my arms. The Hollows is an entirely convincing and entertaining novel I can highly recommend if you enjoy a thrilling serving of folk-horror.
Liz Robinson
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The Hollows Synopsis
Folk horror meets ancient gods in a remote snowbound Peak District town where several murders take place…
In a lonely village in the Peak District, during the onset of a once-in-a-lifetime snow storm, Constable Ellie Cheetham finds a body. The man, a local ne'er-do-well, appears to have died in a tragic accident: he drank too much and froze to death.
But the facts don't add up: the dead man is clutching a knife in one hand, and there's evidence he was hiding from someone. Someone who watched him die. Stranger still, an odd mark has been drawn onto a stone beside his body.
The next victims are two families on the outskirts of town. As the storm rises and the body count grows, Ellie realises she has a terrifying problem on her hands: someone – or some thing – is killing indiscriminately, attacking in the darkness and using the storm for cover.
The killer is circling ever closer to the village. The storm's getting worse... and the power's just gone out.
About This Edition
Daniel Church Press Reviews
The Hollows grabs you by the throat from the first page and doesn't let up. Church has crafted a masterful action-horror in which small town evil meets aeons-buried horror and the personal stakes are just as powerfully rendered as the cosmic ones.
- James Brogden, author of Hekla's Children
Ellie proves a heroine worth rooting for and the Harper clan make for ruthless and formidable antagonists. This claustrophobic outing is sure to resonate with horror readers.
- Publishers Weekly
Daniel Church's tale of a small community ravaged by unnatural forces - and the way its inhabitants fight back - is beautifully told, right from the first finely honed paragraph. It has a wonderfully atmospheric setting, fizzing dialogue and sharply drawn characters you won't forget in a hurry.
- A.J. Elwood, author of The Cottingley Cuckoo
The Hollows combines human monstrousness and uncanny dread in a breathlessly suspenseful narrative. Startlingly violent, compellingly weird, it carries us through levels of fear to a climax of cosmic terror worthy of the classics.
- Ramsey Campbell, multiple World Fantasy Award-winner
The Hollows is an epically ambitious novel given a quality of intimacy by its depth of characterisation and secure rooting in location and season. Proof that folk horror can be not just sinister, but a white-knuckle ride of thrills.
- F.G. Cottam, author of The House of Lost Souls
It should please fans of folk horror such as The Lamb Will Slaughter the Lion by Margaret Killjoy or the folklore-inspired crime fiction of Sharon Bolton's stand-alone novels.
- Booklist
Stormbound and suspenseful, The Hollows is a barnstorming rollercoaster of action and tension, set on home turf as if John Carpenter directed an episode of Happy Valley.
- Stephen Volk, author of The Awakening
