Saturday, November 30, 2019

Hollow Heart: A Horror Novella

I am a big fan of Crystal Lake Publishing. You can pretty much randomly pick any book out of their library and know that you are going to enjoy it. 

With that said, Hollow Heart was a bit of a misfire for me. I love small town/cosmic horror stories, but I just wasn't invested in the characters in this story (except for Mary, maybe). 

Aside from the disconnection, Ben Eads writing was on point. His style sparks the imagination, and he was able to hold my attention as my curiosity (to what was going on - snow/redwood trees in Florida, a mysterious letter, power outages, vanishing roads, etc) never diminished.

3/5 Skulls

Here is the book's synopsis:

"Welcome to Shady Hills, Florida, where death is the beginning and pain is the only true Art…

Harold Stoe was a proud Marine until an insurgent’s bullet relegated him to a wheelchair. Now the only things he’s proud of are quitting alcohol and raising his sixteen-year-old son, Dale.

But there is an infernal rhythm, beating like a diseased heart from the hollow behind his home. An aberration known as The Architect has finished his masterpiece: A god which slumbers beneath the hollow, hell-bent on changing the world into its own image.

As the body count rises and the neighborhood residents change into mindless, shambling horrors, Harold and his former lover, Mary, begin their harrowing journey into the world within the hollow. If they fail, the hollow will expand to infinity. Every living being will be stripped of flesh and muscle, their nerves wrapped tightly around ribcages, so The Architect can play his sick music through them loud enough to swallow what gives them life: The last vestiges of a dying star."

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