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.

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Review from BSFA Review 23 - Download your copy here.