HuckleBuck411

This is not a fun science fiction read. It's a story told and then retold by Cormac Easton, a reporter sent as part of the crew of the Ishiguro on a doomed deep space mission. On the surface the reason for the DARPA mission is to try and reignite interest in manned space missions by sending the ship and its crew farther into space than anyone had gone before. It was to be a go out there and turn around and come back mission. The reader learns from the beginning that Easton is the only member of the seven-person crew to survive. The first telling of the story goes through the tragic mission and the unfortunate deaths of each of the other crew members one by one, but something strange occurs that allows Easton to relive the mission and secrets about what happened to the crew and the real goal of the mission are slowly revealed. This is a grim and depressing read in which the reader follows Easton as he goes through every step of the doomed mission twice but also follows the details around the destruction of his marriage.

Dark mystery surrounds London's Barrington House, an exclusive residential building where tenants pay up to a million dollars to reside in one of the building's apartments. American Apryl has arrived in London to take possession of and liquidate the contents of one of the apartments left to her family as part of her deceased great aunt Lillian's estate. Lillian and her sister had separated when they were young and there had been no communication with Lillian for almost 50 years. For the same amount of time Apartment 16 has been unoccupied and barred from anyone entering. Night porter Seth on his rounds hears strange noises coming from the apartment and unfortunately is exposed to something malevolent when opening the mail flap to peer into the dark apartment. Soon reality will begin to bend into a macabre nightmare world for Seth both asleep and awake and he is soon stalked by a sinister young boy in a hooded coat; a boy no one else sees. And the boy begins making dark demands of Seth in connection with apartment 16. Apryl will find Lillian's apartment in a rundown condition, learning that Lillian had never gone farther from the building by more than a few blocks since her husband died many years before. She finds it curious that no artwork or mirrors are found anywhere in the apartment, although there are signs on the walls that these items had been there at one time. When Apryl finds and reads Lillian's journals telling a story of fear and entrapment her curiosity is piqued and she begins to investigate. Her investigations soon connect to an artist, Felix Hessen, who after WWII had moved into apartment 16. A loner who had been ostracized for his pro fascist beliefs before the war and his following of the dark arts of Aleister Crowley, the subject matter of his paintings of tortured grotesque figures trapped within a dark limitless void called the Vortex were lost and never found; only some of his grotesque preliminary sketches remain. Danger escalates for Apryl as she becomes obsessed to learn the fate of Felix Hessen and his connection to macabre events that occurred long ago and still may be manifesting within Barrington House and apartment 16.

Nevill has for the most part portrayed a grim London where often buildings or rooms are dark, dirty and garbage filled. Most of the characters are grotesque in some way, grimy and smelly. As Seth spirals into insanity, everything and everyone he sees is rotting, deformed and monstrous. Apryl is the exception as she is always described as beautiful and sexually desirable. An appropriate canvas on which this story of horror is painted.

This book is another angle on the "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" theme. Greg Garrett is the newly promoted regional director of a Midwest hotel chain. A job that has caused friction with his wife Janie, since it involves major travel and takes him away from his wife, his eight-year-old daughter Becky and six-month-old son Matthew for long periods of time. The story kicks off as Greg returns from his latest business trip to find his house empty. What is strange is that the family car is still in the garage and his wife's purse is still in the house. The local sheriff is not much help when Greg attempts to obtain help finding his missing family, passing it off as a domestic dispute issue. Soon more people in the town of Engles, IN start to go missing and Greg seems to be the only one noticing strange events around the disappearances until he joins up with Susan whose brother has also gone missing and eventually Zeke an overweight independent investigator who makes a hobby out of looking into fringe events for his blog. Their investigations turn up strange environmental phenomenon associated with the disappearances and soon the three will be in more danger than they ever could have imagined when the missing begin to return. The story is a well-written fast paced read, comparable to something written by Dean Koontz and with an ending the reader might not expect.

The story revolves around a thirteen-story residential building, Banyan Court, built in one of the poorest areas of central London, Tower Hamlets, and thirteen people either residents of the building or in some way connected to it. The building itself, built upon the remains of a dark past, is a central character in the tale having been commissioned by Tobias Fell, a shady, reclusive billionaire found horribly murdered in his penthouse on the top floor of the building. Even though twelve specific characters to the story, along with some other miscellaneous characters were present in the penthouse when Tobias was murdered, five years later no evidence has ever been found to connect any of them with the murder and likewise evidence of who actually committed the murder was never found, leading to much speculation about the unsolved mystery. The reader will learn the answer to this mystery as one by one the "Twilight Zone-like" horror experiences within Banyan Court for each of the other twelve characters is revealed in a specific chapter of the book. Each tale is creepy and unique and yet the author subtly weaves them together as the story reaches its horrific inevitable conclusion.

This book is for those who enjoy location-based horror centered around a strange, isolated village. Withered Hill is such an English village, encircled by a dense forest in which ancient supernatural forces reside. The residents within Withered Hill follow pagan practices and commune with what resides in the forest forming a bond that provides them with natural bounty as long as they follow certain practices. The chapters in the book weave back and forth as we follow the main character Sophie Wickham's life before and after she enters Withered Hill. Thirty-two-year-old Sophie prior to Withered Hill leads a feckless life, her parents dead from a car accident and having lost her partying girlfriends to marriage, jobs and location changes. She could be considered an alcoholic, consuming two bottles of wine a night, low on money and having just broken up with an abusive boyfriend. Unsettling occurrences at different points throughout Sophie's life are related as the book progresses and increase after Sophie is offered a job as a data entry worker for an odd company. Eventually Sophie finds herself waking up within Withered Hill's forest naked, covered in mud and scratches and with no memory of how she got there and of her life before entering Withered Hill. The villagers are friendly and help her but let her know that while she is not a prisoner, she cannot leave the village until she realizes how she can leave. Often trying to escape, Sophie soon learns that she cannot pass the village's boundaries and so begins her life among the pagan residents of Withered Hill.

Do not think this synopsis gives away much of the story that is filled with sexual overtones, many strange and horrific events and with twists and turns leaving the reader guessing until the end what is truly going on.