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A review by spookshow
Carnival Of Fear by J.G. Faherty
4.0
I received a copy from the publisher via netgalley in exchange for an honest review.
Carnival of Fear happens in one night, it follows a bunch of teenage school kids through their worst fears after they all attend the same mysterious Halloween carnival, and if they don't succeed and overcome what they fear the most, the carnival could very well destroy the town, maybe even the world. Once in the carnival they all end up heading for the haunted castle attraction, gaining admittance just as the midnight bell tolls. The students find themselves in a castle with various doors, all with their own theme, from the Salem witch trials, to a zombie apocalypse, and even an alien invasion among others. To exit, they must go through every room and make it out. Can they do it?
So, when I first started reading this I was ready to straight up give it a 2 out of 5, the last quarter of the book has me bumping that up to a 3.5. The beginning moved kinda slow, but once the story hit roughly the 35% mark, the pace picked up a bit. Though I still feel like it took a stupid amount of time to get through the book, even when the pacing picked up. I'm not sure why that is...
In the beginning, we're introduced to a few different groups of kids, the stereotypical ones, you have the jocks and cheerleaders, the nerds, the stoners, and the perfect couple. When we're meeting all of these characters, I couldn't help but wonder why there was so many, even after finishing it, I'm still not too sure why there was so many, but I guess it kinda worked. Along with the stereotypical cliques, we had some stereotypical characters that grated on me pretty bad. We had the 'gangsta' African American jock, who seemed to take please in sexual harassment and rape, and who's dialogue was written in the stereotypical way, using words along the lines of "a'aight" and so on, which really annoyed me, I'm not really the biggest fan of writing accents like that in, that said, I believe that Hagrad's works perfectly and shouldn't be written any other way, so I'm not entirely sure why it pissed me off. We also had the Latino girl who's dialogue was peppered with "papi", "chica" etc, this also irritated me, see above. I just felt that this was pigeon holing these characters SO much, that they were pretty one dimensional, I understand that the author wanted to get his visions of these characters across, but it just didn't work for me.
At the start, the story has SO many paths in it that I had a little trouble keeping up, once the pace picked up around 35%, I found the stories easier to follow and they seemed to have become more linear, which made it easier to read. There was so much happening in this book, and I did enjoy it, but feel like the author could have gone over the story again and maybe done it differently? I'm not sure how it would've worked though because if each of the rooms in the haunted castle were divided up into individual novellas, I would've been so annoyed at not being able to follow straight on, yet it felt like there was sometimes too much going on in the novel. Once the characters all end up together it worked even better, and it was a great display of people being able to show their true colours in a life threatening situation, and realising that there is more to life than what happens at school.
I actually first thought that this might've been written for a younger audience, or perhaps been a creative writing assignment for school, then I realised that this was first published in 2010, and it began to make a bit more sense, I'm sure that the author has developed their voice a lot since this story's original release. The realisation that this wasn't written for a younger audience hit me in the face when the swearing made an appearance, and then shortly after, the various instances of rape. I had an "oh my" moment, then realised "yep, this is definitely geared towards an older audience."
I found myself becoming attached to a few of the characters and was rooting for them through the last two thirds of the book. The creatures were well written, and the individual room themes themselves were very well thought out and diverse which was great.
I'd be interested to read something more recent by this author as I feel they have a brilliant imagination and are not afraid to 'go there' with their horror themes.
Carnival of Fear happens in one night, it follows a bunch of teenage school kids through their worst fears after they all attend the same mysterious Halloween carnival, and if they don't succeed and overcome what they fear the most, the carnival could very well destroy the town, maybe even the world. Once in the carnival they all end up heading for the haunted castle attraction, gaining admittance just as the midnight bell tolls. The students find themselves in a castle with various doors, all with their own theme, from the Salem witch trials, to a zombie apocalypse, and even an alien invasion among others. To exit, they must go through every room and make it out. Can they do it?
So, when I first started reading this I was ready to straight up give it a 2 out of 5, the last quarter of the book has me bumping that up to a 3.5. The beginning moved kinda slow, but once the story hit roughly the 35% mark, the pace picked up a bit. Though I still feel like it took a stupid amount of time to get through the book, even when the pacing picked up. I'm not sure why that is...
In the beginning, we're introduced to a few different groups of kids, the stereotypical ones, you have the jocks and cheerleaders, the nerds, the stoners, and the perfect couple. When we're meeting all of these characters, I couldn't help but wonder why there was so many, even after finishing it, I'm still not too sure why there was so many, but I guess it kinda worked. Along with the stereotypical cliques, we had some stereotypical characters that grated on me pretty bad. We had the 'gangsta' African American jock, who seemed to take please in sexual harassment and rape, and who's dialogue was written in the stereotypical way, using words along the lines of "a'aight" and so on, which really annoyed me, I'm not really the biggest fan of writing accents like that in, that said, I believe that Hagrad's works perfectly and shouldn't be written any other way, so I'm not entirely sure why it pissed me off. We also had the Latino girl who's dialogue was peppered with "papi", "chica" etc, this also irritated me, see above. I just felt that this was pigeon holing these characters SO much, that they were pretty one dimensional, I understand that the author wanted to get his visions of these characters across, but it just didn't work for me.
At the start, the story has SO many paths in it that I had a little trouble keeping up, once the pace picked up around 35%, I found the stories easier to follow and they seemed to have become more linear, which made it easier to read. There was so much happening in this book, and I did enjoy it, but feel like the author could have gone over the story again and maybe done it differently? I'm not sure how it would've worked though because if each of the rooms in the haunted castle were divided up into individual novellas, I would've been so annoyed at not being able to follow straight on, yet it felt like there was sometimes too much going on in the novel. Once the characters all end up together it worked even better, and it was a great display of people being able to show their true colours in a life threatening situation, and realising that there is more to life than what happens at school.
I actually first thought that this might've been written for a younger audience, or perhaps been a creative writing assignment for school, then I realised that this was first published in 2010, and it began to make a bit more sense, I'm sure that the author has developed their voice a lot since this story's original release. The realisation that this wasn't written for a younger audience hit me in the face when the swearing made an appearance, and then shortly after, the various instances of rape. I had an "oh my" moment, then realised "yep, this is definitely geared towards an older audience."
I found myself becoming attached to a few of the characters and was rooting for them through the last two thirds of the book. The creatures were well written, and the individual room themes themselves were very well thought out and diverse which was great.
I'd be interested to read something more recent by this author as I feel they have a brilliant imagination and are not afraid to 'go there' with their horror themes.