Customer Reviews

Halloweenland

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

 

 

If you're looking for a fun paperback to read while handing out candy to the neighborhood kids on Halloween night, get this book. Al Sarrantonio cut his teeth on short stories that progress quickly and this novel is no different. It is fast-moving and entertaining.

The characters are well developed and the action bounces from place to place following a disgraced ex-cop tracking "Samhain", the death spirit of Halloween. I found the washed out cop a symathetic character. Oddly enough, I even began to empathize with Samhain by the end of the story.

There is no gore or sex. The language is adult, but mild. I recommend this as a good book for teenage fans of horror, as well as adults looking for a good, scary Halloween story to put you in the holiday mood.

Detective Bill Grant has seen a lot of strange events (weird s**t as he calls it) over the years as a police officer in Orangefield N.Y. , the Halloween capital of America. It's enough to drive a sane man crazy or at least drive one to drink. Detective Grant hopes that Halloween this year will be relatively peaceful and free from any supernatural events. But this is Orangefield. Nothing is ever normal around Halloween. A few weeks before Halloween Jack Carlin is killed in a hit and run accident. After being notified of the time of his death, his wife, Marianne, claims that is impossible because Jack came home and made love to her an hour after he was supposed to have been dead. Samhain sightings, a mysterious pregnancy, harassing phone calls, and the bizarre death of one of Jack Carlin's best friends keep Detective Grant busy as he tries to figure out what Samhain, the Lord of Death, is doing this time around in Orangefield.

HALLOWEENLAND is not the first story set in Orangefield that features Det. Bill Grant. I was unaware of the previous stories while reading the book. That lack of knowledge did not take anything away from my enjoyment of the book nor did it hinder my understanding of the story. However, I think if someone has already read the previous stories with Det. Grant, they will probably have a deeper appreciation of the novel (for instance, characters from previous stories make appearances). The book moves at a fast pace and is very easy to read. I could have read the novel in one day, but because of a busy schedule took about three days to read it through. I did have a few minor qualms about some of the spiritual elements of the book, yet I found HALLOWEENLAND to be a fairly entertaining novel anyway. Overall, it is an average Halloween suspense yarn.

The collection also includes the novella, "The Baby". "The Baby" is basically the first part of HALLOWEENLAND, but with a completely different ending.

This guy is probably the closest thing to a new age Ray Bradbury, especially when it comes to describing the Halloween season. You can basically smell and taste the scenery he describes. A great and quick fun read.

Interesting tale! The chapters are quick, short, and to the point in moving along the story. The only thing that I felt was lacking was that this was the third in a series of novels. The characters are interesting, but I felt I didn't really get to know them that well. I wish I had come in to it after reading the first two novels; I think I would have had a better grasp on the story. As a stand-alone novel, it moves very quickly. There is an air of Something Wicked This Way Comes, but you don't have to look too deep to find it.

For years, Ray Bradbury was the undisputed master of everything that was fine and good about that darkly magical month October and its climax, Halloween. His novel "Something Wicked This Way Comes" and his short story collection "The October County" were autumnal portraits of the mystery and magic of those smoky weeks before a traditional night of tricks, treats, and the celebration of all things fantastic, phantasmic, and otherworldly.

Recently, however, prolific author Al Sarrantonio has taken up the "pumpkin mantle", so to speak, with his wonderfully atmospheric and imagery-filled Orangefield novels, "Horrorween", "Hallow's Eve", and "Halloweenland". In Orangefield, Sarrantonio created a world where it was always October, always just before Halloween, where the tang of apple cider spiced the air, the leaves wove a tapestry of brilliant reds, oranges, and yellows, where the Jack O'Lanterns always grinned with manic glee...and ominous, dark and terrible things were always afoot.

Cemetery Dance's signed, limited hardcover edition of the final chapter in Sarrantonio's Orangefield odyssey, "Halloweenland", is a worthy addition to any collector's stash. Hardcover, artistic interior design, the stirring art of Alan M. Clark gracing the cover, it's an attractive piece, indeed.

As a tale, "Halloweenland" isn't quite as powerful as its predecessors, (however, novels in the falling action of a trilogy often aren't, by nature), but for the most part, he delivers the goods again. He pulls a neat trick with the reappearance of two protagonists from former tales, and - as always - his prose is a treat to read. Sarrantonio paints portraits with words and imagery as well as anyone writing today. "Halloweenland" pays a worthy homage to a season loved by many.

This edition is limited to 1250 signed copies. Visit Cemetery Dance's website and purchase one before supplies run out.

I found this book to be a fun read as long as you don't mind a little bit of a lack of depth of the characters. The story moves really fast but it is like a candy bar. It is delicious but over quick and does not make a meal.

I found this sequel to his previous work to be wanting and undeveloped. It seemed an after thought. As a matter of fact, 1/4 of the book (a slim offering already) was a reprint of the novella Sarrantino had used as the impetus to this book. I would have preferred the story line around the Carnival - Halloweenland - to have been fleshed out and better developed.

This is not the first book in this setting although the outside of the book does not indicate this clearly. I highly suggest you do not start with this book and go read the rest of the "Orangefield Cycle" first. If you read those first I think you will enjoy this novel much, much more.

Halloweenland is well written and I enjoyed it thoroughly up the point where the entire novel (and the continued survival of the plot) depends upon written material not found within the pages of this book. There was an entire cast of characters of which I had no knowledge at all and Sarrantonio made them essential to the plot of this book. Normally, I am okay with that if the author does the work to introduce them but when Grant pulled up to the "Bright house" in this novel I had no idea why he was there and why it was so important. Prior to this we had been chasing down Anna, not someone named Regina Bright, and as a reader I had no idea why finding Regina Bright had become so important when I didn't even know who she was, why we were looking for her or where Grant had even heard her name before now. The character had NEVER been mentioned, not in this novel anyway. Al Sarrantonio assumed we knew who she was so he did none of the work to let the reader know what was going on.

Needless to say, there was a major disconnect and after that I had trouble enjoying the story as much as I would have otherwise. I think if you read the rest of the Orangefield stories first you will probably enjoy this one a lot more than I did.

This third, and probably final, volume of Orangefield is a single story told in two different ways. The author had a concept for a contract. He realized he could do it as a long short story (included as "The Baby"). He could also change the ending and continue it into a novel.

A woman is visited by her husband one night in bed. She falls asleep afterwards and is told he never cam home because he was killed slightly before she claimed to have seen him. Detective Grant gets involved and the weirdness is uncovered. Samhain is back and up to new tricks as Halloween approaches. Then it looks like the woman is pregnant. Now the weirdness really begins to grow. When the baby is born in the short story the story ends. In the opening novel the birth of the child leads to further weirdness for Detective Grant and Orangefield.

I have to say that I liked both versions of the tale but it was a little strange to read. As I began the short story after reading the novel, I felt that I was just rereading the novel (it is only the last few pages that are different). I was almost tempted to put the book down but, upon finishing, was glad I didn't. For two eerie tales this volume fits the bill. Check it out.