Synopsis
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.
Review
Decided to listen to this because I’m from The Hudson River Valley, which is this novel’s setting. I was a bit surprised by this choice, as this novel is the author’s English language debut, and the setting is pretty damn accurate. I wonder if he lives there now?
I listened to this on my way home to see my parents. Highland Mills, Central Valley, and Harriman we’re mentioned by name more than once, and all three are directly connected to my home town of 22 years, Monroe. West Point Military Academy, as well as 9W through Cornwall, Bear Mountain, and the novel’s featured hospital, St. Luke’s in Newburgh, are all places I’ve frequented as well. It was super cool and kind of eerie to read a novel like this about where I’m from.
The town of Black Spring has a problem, what kind of old town doesn’t? This town’s problem just happens to be a 17th century immortal witch named Katherine. Since they were able to sew her eyes and mouth shut she hasn’t been too much of a problem, just creepy. And luckily she never breaks from her current schedule…
So because I always listen to an audio and read a physical book at the same time, I had this really unique experience of reading these two very similar scenes in two drastically different novels within like an hour of each other. Both this novel and C.V. Hunt’s ‘Halloween Fiend’ (Check out my review of that here) feature a fall festival that isn’t really dedicated to their town’s (I’ll say) affliction, but at the same time kind of is. It was cool to see how each framed how their town responded to what they had been forced to accept as normal over time.
The climax of this novel does some really interesting things in its depiction of the degradation of humanity. Is it the witch causing it, or the town itself? Either way, they so easily are lead to depravity. Brothers, sisters, mothers, husbands…no one is safe and everyone is guilty.
Spooky, atmospheric, dark. When I first finished it, there seemed to be a sequel, but only in Dutch. Now it’s finally coming out in English, called Oracle, and I have it from NetGalley to start soon. I’m not sure how connected they really are though.
This novel, and setting, very heavily influenced my decision, and creation, of the fictional town of Cemetery…as well as setting it in my home town of the Hudson Valley. If you’d like, you can check out details of my novelette sampler BestGhost, which features my fictional town, here or download free here.
The novel is originally written and published in Dutch and set in the small town the author grew up in, in the Netherlands. For the US and translated version, the location has been adapted to accomodate US readers. Still a good read!
That’s even crazier to me the accuracy then! Thanks for the info