All Hallows by Christopher Golden

(Titan Books, 2023)

Reviewed by Steven French

I started this book just before Halloween but didn’t finish it until Bonfire Night, which is a fair indication of how little it actually gripped me. Which was disappointing, as I’ve been a fan of Golden’s work for some while, not least his comics-based collaboration with Mike Mignola. The story itself has all the ingredients of an atmospheric and creepy yarn: a quiet suburban neighbourhood where the Halloween preparations mask long-kept secrets and lies which finally erupt into the open just as something much, much worse stalks out of the nearby woods. Yet somehow it just couldn’t muster enough of a chilling effect to keep me turning the pages. Partly that’s due to the ‘tell, repeatedly, rather than show’ approach which by spelling everything out leaves little to the imagination and so deflates any tension or sense of mounting horror. And partly it’s because of the structure of the book which, with its chapters cycling through the points of view of different characters, generates a narrative that is just a little too choppy to sustain the scares.

It opens with Tony Barrasco setting up his annual elaborate Halloween Trail, for the last time as it turns out. Taking participants from his backyard and through the trees of the adjacent woods, where various sound and light effects have been set up, not to mention actors and animatronics, this functions as the dark counterpart to the street itself: just as groups of kids crisscross from house to house happily trick-or-treating, so the core characters run up and down and across this trail as they try to save their friends, family members and ultimately, themselves from the evil that has stepped into their world at this liminal time.

A clue that something bad is going to happen drops quite early on as oddly dressed children appear seemingly from nowhere and tag along with the trick-or-treaters. But then there’s misdirection-squared in the form of a recently arrived local couple, regarded with suspicion by their neighbours—justifiably, as it so happens—but who then find themselves hunted by something even nastier than they are. The other adults remain blithely ignorant of the emerging dread as they are caught up in the soap-operatic revelations of infidelity and betrayal, the instigator of which gets his suitably gruesome comeuppance, as is traditional in these matters. These different forces in play eventually collide in a maelstrom of violence and mayhem during which the Big Bad is finally revealed.

What lifts the book as a whole, for me, are the kids, who, of course, generally behave much more rationally and maturely than their parents, even as they negotiate the usual well-worn emotional highs and lows of teenage life: dealing with family break-ups and making new relationships as well as losing old ones, as everything changes around them, all topped up with episodes of heart-wrenching terror and violence and, for some, brutal death. Two of the most striking characters are Julia and Vanessa who, in coming out, literally and figuratively, find love and the strength to face the horror that has materialised deep in the woods. With the help of Tony, who, coming a little late to the party, adds some necessary physical heft to proceedings, goodness triumphs once more, although, of course, none of those involved emerge unscathed, whether emotionally or physically.

I was really hoping that this would be the perfect read for the time of year, but although it contains some genuinely chilling moments, I came away appreciating even more that old adage that sometimes less really is more, especially in a horror novel.

Review from BSFA Review 23 - Download your copy here.