Overview;
After her father's gruesome murder, Jenn needed a place to
get away from it all with some friends, to take her mind off her sorrow. The
empty seaside cottage she inherited seemed perfect. Jenn didn't know that the
cottage held arcane secrets, mysteries long hidden and best left alone. She
didn't realize until it was too late that the old books and Ouija board she
found there really do hold great power. And it was only after her friend's
headless body was discovered that she knew the legend of the local bogeyman was
no mere legend at all. An evil has been unleashed, a terrifying figure
previously only spoken of in whispers. But now the whispers will become
screams. Beware...The Pumpkin Man.
Review;
John Everson’s Pumpkin man is the perfect read for the
October season. Everson succeeds in
creating an amazing supernatural horror story, and is so good he even gets some
genuine chills out of a Ouija board.
The plot revolves mainly around Jenn the inheriting an old
house that once belonged to her aunt, and investigating her family’s history of
witchcraft in a small coastal town in California. Her aunt’s house is so perfectly realized it
becomes its own character, adding a haunted house element to a supernatural slasher.
A horror staple, Everson creates some very imaginative sequences
with pumpkins and jack o’ lanterns making it a perfect October read. The main cast of Jenn and her friends while
not incredibly deep are easy to like, and thus aren’t set up merely as fodder
for the well concealed slasher.
At the end of the book, when the mystery is fully revealed, I
felt a tad cheated. Not that it didn’t
make sense; but that the reader wasn’t given enough information to put it all
together before the final reveal. There were also a few times when people began
to have sex against all sense and reason, but they were also cut away scenes so
I am unsure exactly what purpose they were meant to serve.
These minor gripes aside, Pumpkin Man is a solid horror read. Everson is clearly a fan of the horror genre
and he gives fans what they want, without ever being condescending or
uninspired.
In the End;
John Everson’s Pumpkin Man is a perfect October read for horror
fans, with all the elements that could make a perfect Halloween movie.
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