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22 of 25 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Needed another 20 pages!, August 8, 2008
This review is from: Ghost Walk (Leisure Fiction) (Mass Market Paperback)
Although the book is the standard Leisure length of 330 pages, "Ghost Walk" is only 275 pages with a short preview of Keene's next book at the end to bump it up to the 330. For those of you just meandering into the world of Keene, although it is not officially stated, this is a sequel to "Dark Hollow" which for full enjoyment, I suggest that you read first. Though the baddie in this one is not our half goat satyr, we do have the return to LeHorne's Hollow and the return of writer Adam Senft.
Short Summary: A hunter in the Hollow disturbs a circle of stones in the woods, opening the gateway to another world. As a big nasty starts creeping through the gate, we have the local charity ghost walk being set up right next door. Can the ex-Amish user of powwow named Levi fight back a being older than the Earth itself?
Before you begin with my review I want you to know that I truly believe that the skills of Brian Keene rival those of Stephen King. Only time will tell if he will gain the notoriety and voracious fan base of King, but the skill level is already there. That being said, this is not Keene's strongest work. It is obvious that he went into this with an agenda, which was to complete his pantheon and tie all of his books together. As such we spend a lot of time learning about pre-Earth history, the 13, the labyrinth, powwow magic, stone circles, etc. This is also the first time that Keene connects his book "The Ghoul" with the rest of his books, all of which had either intertwined or run in parallel universes with overlapping characters. Now I personally don't have any issue with the pantheon that he has developed and is playing on... however to get out the information and tie up the loose ends in the readers mind, we needed a much meatier book. The story felt like a thin vehicle for explaining the pantheon rather than an independent entry into the cannon of Keene.
Before you think I'm bashing this book, it was very good. The characters were interesting, as is standard in Keene's works, his writing is easy to read and very fluid, making for a pleasurable and relaxing reading experience. He is good at drawing the reader into his world and creating sympathy and concern for his characters. The character of Levi remained a mystery, as I assume Keene wanted, making him hard to truly latch on to as a reader even though he is the central character of the book. The story could have been huge, epic and complex to deliver Keene's concept of multiple worlds and concurrent histories, and nasties from before the dawn of time however the story told in this book suffered because of the compact method that he chose to deliver the message in. In the end the story was a bit of a downer (aren't they always?) but the ending was thin... we never find ourselves worrying, there is no foreboding sense of danger as we approach the final confrontation, I found myself more worried about our characters making it through the traffic jam in time than I was for them when they entered the Hollow. There is also no follow up (good or bad)to show the aftermath of what occurred that evening.
Do I think this was a bad book? Not at all - please notice the 4 stars, Keene is a magnificent writer. I would not advise anyone starting here if they have not read a Keene book before, this book may serve as Keene's Dark tower (not the series, simply the hub in the middle of the spokes of his reality). I hope that with his pantheon described and defined that we can now venture more fully into the horrors that can come from it. Once you have read his previous works, this book will answer many questions left behind from the other stories but it is not a good starting place, or one of the strongest works he has put out.
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10 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Keene can do better..., January 22, 2009
This review is from: Ghost Walk (Leisure Fiction) (Mass Market Paperback)
i'm a big Brian Keene fan, pre-ordering ever book he puts out, pretty much. So it is with a slightly heavy heart that i must say this is probably his weakest effort yet. What makes it more disappointing is that it is a semi-sequel to The Hollow (set in the same town...the main character returns) which was one of his BEST books to date.
it was truly as if another writer took this book on for Keene as a deadline favor.
Missing the deeper character development and unpredictable storylines (and endings) he usually delights readers with, this was straight forward, generic, and pretty boring. Particularly annoying is how he completely trashes the main character from The Hollow in his return here, by basically rewriting him as a generic "crazy guy" with god-awful dialogue and the depth of a puddle. The character has since been pronounced mentally insane -and is, as Keene makes it PAINFULLY clear by actually having the character announce in numerous diatribes "I'm crazy! I'm crazy!" (Oh...thanks. Now we know, Brian)
While i love the Pow-wow aspect he has been building on in the past 2 books, and i appreciate this books attempt to explain his "many universes" idea linking all his books....he just seemed to rush through this one. I'm hoping Castaways is a stronger effort...or I'll start to get worried.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Not bad..., March 11, 2009
This review is from: Ghost Walk (Leisure Fiction) (Mass Market Paperback)
Warning-spoilers ahead!!
I have only read a few of Brian Keene's books, but all the ones I have read overlap each other a little- they all have at least one character who is related to or knows at least one character in a different story,and knows something about the events in that other story. That said, this is not a sequal to Dark Hallow, it is a stand alone story that overlaps Dark Hallow a bit. It answers the question of what happens to Adam and Tara at the end of Dark Hallow- he kills her by throwing her out the attic window, and is confined to a mental hospital. But Adam, who was the main character in Dark Hallow, is a minor character here. Actually, he almost seems like an afterthought- he comes in halfway through the story and barely says anything other than "I'm not crazy." It seemed to me like he was put in just to give the magician Levi someone to sacrifice at the end, in order to prevent the entity Nodens from destroying our world. Which was another rather disappointing thing in my opinion, the impression I got from reading this was that Mr. Keene wanted the reader to think of Levi as the book's "good" character, and meant his sacrificing Adam to be a surprise. But Levi starts talking about "necessary evil" and how evil can serve the greater good fairly early on, which tips off the reader that the "good guy" might not be all that good. All that aside, once I quit expecting Ghost Walk to be something it's not, I liked it. I like the overlapping thing Keene does, his stories all seem to be set in small town central PA, and having lived in that area, I can tell you that it's really like that in the small towns- everyone is somehow related to everyone else, and if there are two people in town who aren't related they know each other, and probably have all their lives. So having his characters know the people and events in other stories makes his books more realistic, at least in my opinion.
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