Customer Reviews

El Dia De Los Muertos

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Please note that this book is NOT written in Spanish (the listing here is wrong). Winner of the Bram Stoker Award in 2002. Good stuff if I do say so myself. Info on the author and the book can be found at http://bahwolf.com

This book achieves to horrify and fascinating in many different ways. Whereas much of popular horror today seems devoted to novels, Hopkin's novella is an accomplishment of style, depth and tension. This is more than a book about the reawakenings of old Aztec gods (wolves perhaps best left sleeping) but also a book about despair and heartbreak, and what individuals are willing to do in light of their sorrow. In that sense, it works as a novella.

If you believe that good horror is not just about chills, thrills and the occassional gross out, but also in capturing a sense existential angst in an uncertain world, you'll enjoy this. This is what horror should strive for. It protrays a darker more complex world that man is perhaps best left being ignorant of.

It also appeals to the issus of the relationship of Man and God, turning back to a more primitive Gods and religions where the divine is less beneficient and religion less narcisstic, a harsher sense of faith. I enjoy notion of horror and the weird in dealing with man's faith and existential fear, as in Harlan Ellisons Deathbird Stories. I highly recommend this to those interested in the relationship between man and the divine.

My only major criticism- It's a bit too expensive although that's understandable with limited printing. I would have preferred to see this in a collected work of short fiction by this author. That said, collectors of good horror should not miss this one.