Customer Reviews

Orangefield

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The book is great! There is never a dull moment. This book will keep you the edge of your seat! You''ll never want to put it down!

This limited edition novel from Cemetery Dance publications is a great piece of fiction. Sarrantonio, who wrote the Halloween novel "October" some years back and edited perhaps the greatest collection of short stories by popular genre authors "999", returns with a powerful short novel about a force of evil that exists in the town of "Orangefield". The characters are all well rounded despite minimal characterization (less is more) and we care about what happens to each of them, even the ones we want to see lose. The author's prose has a flow to it that is hard to find in so much genre fiction, and he takes a theme that has been done time and again and puts some new and interesting spins on it. This one is worth the price, and I hope to see more new works of this quality from the author in the near future.

Orangefield, New York, the center of pumpkin farming, hosts an annual Pumpkin Days Festival. However, the fun gala is seen by Samhain the Celtic Lord of Death as a means to serve his Lord the Dark One. He has selected three damaged souls to sacrifice themselves so that a portal for the Dark One to enter the human realm on Halloween night can be opened.

Army veteran Aaron Peters still suffers from physical injuries while serving in Somalia, but his psychological wounds are much greater and more useful to the Lord of Death. Aaron combined with psychopathic incredibly medicated Jordie and innocent teen Annabeth Turner, make for a perfect triad as he quietly manipulates each one to sacrifice themselves in order to bring the Dark one over from beyond.

ORANGEFIELD is a fun Halloween thriller filled with chills as the audience anticipates that Samhain will succeed in his endeavor due to the weaknesses of the three chosen ones. The five key characters (the human trio, Samhain and the Dark One) seem genuine as they hold "internal" discussions between the Lord of Death and the others, but that also tends to decelerate the speed of the fall of the threesome. Fans who enjoy a fine horror tale will want to spend Halloween in upstate New York with Al Sarrantonio as your host (also see the sequel HALLOWS EVE).

Harriet Klausner