Reviews

If you want some fun Halloween vibes, this'll do the trick!
However, quality-wise, it's a bit lacking. There's a lot of stuff that isn't explained and not in the "ooo mysterious things are going on" way, but more in the "wait, how tf does this work?" Also, there's some funky stuff with the perspectives that I don't think landed the way the author intended.

The second-person perspective almost makes it sound like we're one of the main characters, but most of the main characters also have 3-person POV moments, so it is confusing who we're supposed to be in this story.

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2.0

While the writing for this was absolutely captivating, the story itself was a dud for me. There were so many issues I had with the whole thing, and almost every one starts with the question, "Why?"

Why is there a harvest? Why do the adults in this town allow this to happen if they are aware of the truth behind it? Why does this secret Guild not let anyone leave the town? Why also does this Guild track down town deserters and kill them but also bring back their child under a pretense that doesn’t actually make any sense? Why does this Guild need this perennial ritual? Why does any of this exist, especially if in the end it is so easily destroyed? Why why why why why…

And why, for the love of all things that make sense, was the chief antagonist of this story so persistent in saying that if this ritual was not performed in the correct way before the time was up, that the town was going to be finished, destroyed, all hell breaking loose upon them for not following the rules? This is what kept me hooked to the end, the thought that there was going to be a twist that would bring all these unbelievably loose threads together and finally bring sense to the story; that this – THIS – is the reason for all this violence and sovereignty within this small town. But that isn’t the case because nothing happens. Everything is resolved with no threat of retaliation or consequence. Which begs the question of why any of this was allowed to happen for so long if there was no real greater threat hinging on this ritual’s existence. Ergo, my complete and utter disappointment and aggravation with this story.

One last why: why the weirdly smug sounding second person segments peppered in at really odd times? What was that about? Was that a creative choice or was there something I was missing? I really couldn’t figure those out.

I chalk it up to this being an instance where a full-fledged novel would have done the story way more justice, which is wild because there were over 100 pages in which the story could have made sense.

However, I find that Norman Patridge is an amazingly talented writer, and even if I didn't particularly like the story building in this one, I'm definitely going to check out his other works. This story isn't bad, it's just not up to par with my taste on the believability scale, and I can’t recommend it for anyone who isn’t simply looking for a quick and easy Halloween read. I might read it again in the future but only because of the writing itself and the immaculate spooky vibes that Patridge did really well. I will have to absolutely shut my damn brain off though.

A note on the audio-book version: The male voice actor for this was Vikas Adam, and he totally nailed it. I don’t think I would have finished it had it been another person reading it.