Welcome back to LeHorn's Hollow, everybody. There are stories that a satyr killed some people there before it burnt down and that a local writer killed his wife because she was impregnated with its offspring. But isn't that kinda stuff just ghost stories to add atmosphere to an already spooky location, especially since the first annual Ghost Walk fundraiser is occurring in the nearby woods? Probably, but when the volunteers from the Ghost Walk start disappearing, there may be a lot of credulity to those stories.
Maria Nasr is a freelance reporter covering the Ghost Walk for the local paper. She ends up recruited by Levi Stoltzfus, a Amish man who has given up his religion and now practices powwow, a old form of magick that was practiced by LeHorn himself. Maria finds herself thrust into the middle of a race against time to repel Nodens, a nebulous entity from outside this world who seeks to devour all life upon the planet. But as Nodens power grows and more of it enters this world, anything they do may fall far short of being enough to stop it.
Ghost Walk is a companion novel to Dark Hollow, and let me take a minute to quote directly from it:
"Nodens had corrupted other Earths before. Alternate Earths. Ones whose dominion wasn't given to Ob or Leviathan or Behemoth or Kandara or any of the others of the Thirteen."
Now, that might not mean a hell of a lot to you, but in three sentences Keene has given absolute continuity to his Rising series, The Conqueror Worms, The Evil Dead movies and even tipped his hat to Lovecraft and ancient Celtic mythology. I read those sentences and it blew my mind. If you're a Keene fan you understand exactly what I'm talking about. If you're not a Keene fan, get reading. There's an underlying Labyrinth Mythos that runs threads through a massive portion of his body of work, and in addition to the above, there's also references to Ghoul, Terminal and of course Dark Hollow. This man is brilliant in his ability to weave so many varied threads into a singly tapestry and still maintain a coherence in his narrative.
However, it's the same reason I can't give Ghost Walk 6 stars on a 5 star scale: the new reader is going to be lost with all the references, name dropping and Mythos sidetracking. It can be off-putting to the uninitiated and although I love what this guy can do with his back catalog and mythology, I need to take a step back and review what I read for the site objectively. So let me sum it up like this: old readers will find another grand slam, new readers should read about a half-dozen other books before this one.
And now I'm going to spend every night until September 6th praying that Brian doesn't punch me in the face when I meet him in York.
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Mass Market Paperback: 384 pages
Publisher: Leisure (July 29, 2008)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0843956453
ISBN-13: 978-0843956450