Sleepy Hollow: General of the Dead

Fun characters in an exciting story, lost in a book that desperately needs an editor.

I would not have read this book all the way through if it were not for my (now ended) friendship with the author and the love I had for the first (and to a lesser extent) second book in this series. But Gleaves's ambition and our friendship does not transform a bad book into a good book.

What's good here? Well, this book maintains the deeply researched tradition of the first two books. It draws heavily on the history of the region and specific locations that exist in real life Sleepy Hollow and Tarrytown. Gleaves takes special care in mapping out the various locations where the action takes place. We're also following the same characters from the previous two books and most of them are clear and interesting people that we want to know more about.

But the bad outweighs the good for me in this installment in the series. This book is full of stylistic problems and is easily twice as long as it needs to be. Plot holes and confusing action sequences abound and some of the characters behave in erratic, inexplicable ways. If Gleaves is working with an editor, I can't tell. If he isn't, he should get one.

The fact that this is the third book in the series is especially sad because the first book easily earned five stars from me. Even this book contains innumerable examples of Gleaves' talent with the written word. I have enjoyed the world he built and the characters he brought to life. I want them to breathe and thrive but this book does them no justice.

I'll probably read book 4, but I won't buy multiple copies like I did with the first three. I don't have much hope that it will get us back to the level of quality seen in Book 1, but we'll see.

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In the comment thread below with the author, you can see that I've been accused of giving a low rating to this book out of some unknown (even to me) personal motivation against the author. Until I gave this book two stars on Good Reads, I actually thought we were friends.

Therefore, I want to offer some specific examples of problems starting with this passage:

“The New Jersey Palisades had cut the throat of the sun. She bled copious color into the water-blue sky, arterial scarlet and venous purple, then fell behind the horizon, into her grave, shrouded by aquamarine clouds. The Earth turned its face away and dressed itself in black, lowering a mournful veil of night, hanging crepe over the mirror of the Hudson. The moon filled with lamentations, the wind howled its grief, and the stars lit votives for the funeral of the day.

“Tarrytowners lit their candles as well. Those who'd charged their mobile devices before the blackout had learned from the village website that, though ConEd was hard at work, power would not return for at least three days. Wires had broken all over town, as if the barren trees had cleared out the cobwebs. Tarrytowners emptied the CVS of batteries and flashlights, fearing the fall of such total darkness, nervously aware of the growing emptiness beyond their windows. No streetlights would burn tonight, no shop lights. No TVs would flicker behind neighbor curtains. Only black shapes and half-glimpsed shadows out there now. Shadows festooned for the Halloween season. A dangling plastic vampire bat to startle Ms. Martins, out walking her terriers by flashlight. The skeletal remains of Groucho Marx to leer at Dee Harlow as she jogged past. The McDonald's on Wildey Street would raise a great black ‘M' tonight. Mayor McCheese would call for calm, but the Hamburglar would be at large, sneaking through a window to steal ketchup from Grimace. The blackout of Sleepy Hollow was absolute, and all the little ones could feel that... something was out there. Something bad.”

[Gleaves, Richard. SLEEPY HOLLOW: General of the Dead (Jason Crane Book 3) (p. 476). Turtlebug Publishing. Kindle Edition.]

The first paragraph is rather florid and very gothic. It's 100% appropriate for this book and, in that context, I think this is one of the most beautiful descriptions from all three books. It's vivid. It perfectly captures the mood of the overall book. And it gives deep emotional foreshadowing for what is about to happen. BRILLIANT.

But the second paragraph is bloated. It's far too long. Readers do not need that many examples of people doing things in a blackout to understand that this is a blackout and it's extra scary because of Halloween decorations. But the worst part of that paragraph is “Mayor McCheese would call for calm, but the Hamburglar would be at large, sneaking through a window to steal ketchup from Grimace.” It's clever, yes. Too clever by half because it utterly ruins the tone that was so beautifully set by the opening paragraph.

Structurally, there's that very long digression into Agathe's journal. It provides readers with key details about her magic and how the magic works and it illuminates some of her motivations, so – if I were editing this book – I wouldn't say it has to be cut out entirely, but it's too long. While reading it, I thought that it would actually have made for a better novella or accompanying bit of material apart from the novel. Or maybe just has some background writing to help flesh out the character. But 72 pages and 11 chapters is far too much and it drags the reader out of the flow of the book.

In terms of characters, I found Hadewych's rapid vacillations between being a abusive, negligent, money-grubbing, power-hungry homocidal lunatic and doting father to be confusing and jarring. I don't understand why the other characters – knowing the worst about him – bother trying to look at whatever good is in him knowing that he will probably Jekyll and Hyde on them in a minute. (BUT! I will say, this craziness made more sense to me after he started going literally insane because of the summoning rock thing.)

Valerie does some similar rapid switches. She has this beautiful arc that starts in Book 1. She's wounded, a victim of trauma and abuse, but she slowly starts building her confidence and coming into her own. My image of her literally blossomed in my mind from being a frail, old, deeply-and-irrevocably scarred woman to being a powerful, confident woman worthy of love. But, suddenly, one revelation later and she lapses into near catatonia. Then, also suddenly, she's fighting for what's hers. These switches are important to the character, but they're underdeveloped for the reader and come off as jarring.

This book is deeply flawed and needs extensive editing. That is why I gave it a low rating.