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A review by thegrimtidings
Hex by Thomas Olde Heuvelt
1.0
Did not enjoy a single second of the reading experience. Was thinking it was more of a 2/3 star possibly, insofar as while I did not enjoy this AT ALL, it did nothing particularly egregious wrong. But I wouldn't even say it was average or mediocre, as I expect an average book to at least be vaguely entertaining, but with this I was just utterly unimpressed and bored. Even from the first few pages, there was just something a bit off about this, a lack of spark. Whereas with most horror novels I find it's not difficult to create an engaging opening, here it pretty much continues as it starts. My fault I guess, but I'd heard this was scary and the fundamental idea is interesting. The imagery of the witch, plus the small town's acceptance of the phenomena, felt a good starting point of an intriguing horror story. In terms of its execution, the author does well to paint the witch visually throughout the story. It's nothing other paranormal horror doesn't cover, and I felt the descriptions became repetitive by the end of the story, but it was perfunctory. The witch herself is scary enough and there are a few very brief scenes where I can see the intent (in fact, I can see this making a good film; some of the ideas here would suit a visual medium better I think), but I was never engaged enough with the writing or the wider context to be pulled in.
The writing feels stiff. Half the time it's like non-fiction writing, prescriptive and with little flash. But then at times it was almost too informal, like a story you'd read on Reddit. Take one line here, which I copied out as I think it summarises the problem: 'I hope you're fully aware that you're offering Tyler an escape from a sordid game that he was a major player in'. This is a thought from the main protagonist during a moment of tension - it's wordy but doesn't ring true to how people actually think. There's loads of internal monologue in this book as well, at least a few every pages and it's always like this. Characters will, for example, remember the EXACT paragraphs of dialogue from another character weeks or months before when they're ruminating on the importance of these conversations. Or they will make pretty obvious statements about their feelings or observations, unnecessarily. You could cut 99% the internal monologue from this book out and miss nothing. The writing style never helped the horror and I think the idea actually needed it, as while the concept is interesting, it doesn't speak for itself. It needed flair, and there was none of it here.
The only noteworthy creative decision I noticed, was the changing of tenses on a chapter-by-chapter basis. We have both present and past tense here, but I didn't understand the significance of switching between the two. I think in the present, we get more of an obvious narrator, who will say 'we see (X) character doing whatever', or 'little did the boys know it was all going to go wrong...' or makes biased comments on other characters, so I thought perhaps we'd get an explanation that the present tense was one of the characters from the book relaying the story but there's never an explanation for it. It was just another thing distancing me from the writing, which I appreciate is translated from Dutch. I didn't realise this was a translated novel until the acknowledgements at the end, and it does explain some things. Perhaps then I'm critiquing the translation rather than the author, as it does read in the awkward way of perhaps a story that works better for its native audience than an English-speaking one. As I understand, the original Dutch horror story was translated here not just in language but in setting.
This is where another problem with Hex comes from, as while the witch character has probably translated pretty easily across both Dutch and American settings (and she is even given a backstory to allow her to keep her Dutch-ness in the American setting), the second major feature of the story, Black Spring, doesn't work as well. It would seem to me that this story, but set in a little Dutch village stooped in folklore, works. Whereas the American setting doesn't feel quite right. I'm not American myself so can't explain it, and couldn't do a better job of putting the story in a small American town, but it's just like one of those Netflix adaptations of a non-American story where the small cultural things that contextualise the plot are gone, and the result feels hollow. And *SO* much of the story is about the 'small town' mentality, essentially the ending is Hex gives a sci-fi vibe in its dealing with an imaginary, high-tech society, but this society is not convincing, therefore any attempt at commentary falls on deaf ears. I also found some of the 'rules' around the curse arbitrary, for example:
- Changes to her physical appearance (tears to her clothing) disappear when the witch transports, but not the stitches in her skin? Also how in the name of God did they put the stitches in to begin with?
- The function of the suicidal thoughts when a person leaves Black Spring didn't seem consistent, a character says up to a week away is safe but then other characters lament that they can't ever travel or go to College?
- It is explained that only people who move to Black Spring catch the curse and outsiders do not, so the witch is able to determine who is planning to stay long-term? What if you stop over on someone's sofa for a week ?
- The witch has her eyes sewn closed, so she can't see. But sometimes she can.
There's a lot more to critique about this book, a lot more, but I simply can't be bothered to think about it anymore. Just don't read this, there's absolutely nothing to gain. A thoroughly boring and pointless venture.
The writing feels stiff. Half the time it's like non-fiction writing, prescriptive and with little flash. But then at times it was almost too informal, like a story you'd read on Reddit. Take one line here, which I copied out as I think it summarises the problem: 'I hope you're fully aware that you're offering Tyler an escape from a sordid game that he was a major player in'. This is a thought from the main protagonist during a moment of tension - it's wordy but doesn't ring true to how people actually think. There's loads of internal monologue in this book as well, at least a few every pages and it's always like this. Characters will, for example, remember the EXACT paragraphs of dialogue from another character weeks or months before when they're ruminating on the importance of these conversations. Or they will make pretty obvious statements about their feelings or observations, unnecessarily. You could cut 99% the internal monologue from this book out and miss nothing. The writing style never helped the horror and I think the idea actually needed it, as while the concept is interesting, it doesn't speak for itself. It needed flair, and there was none of it here.
The only noteworthy creative decision I noticed, was the changing of tenses on a chapter-by-chapter basis. We have both present and past tense here, but I didn't understand the significance of switching between the two. I think in the present, we get more of an obvious narrator, who will say 'we see (X) character doing whatever', or 'little did the boys know it was all going to go wrong...' or makes biased comments on other characters, so I thought perhaps we'd get an explanation that the present tense was one of the characters from the book relaying the story but there's never an explanation for it. It was just another thing distancing me from the writing, which I appreciate is translated from Dutch. I didn't realise this was a translated novel until the acknowledgements at the end, and it does explain some things. Perhaps then I'm critiquing the translation rather than the author, as it does read in the awkward way of perhaps a story that works better for its native audience than an English-speaking one. As I understand, the original Dutch horror story was translated here not just in language but in setting.
This is where another problem with Hex comes from, as while the witch character has probably translated pretty easily across both Dutch and American settings (and she is even given a backstory to allow her to keep her Dutch-ness in the American setting), the second major feature of the story, Black Spring, doesn't work as well. It would seem to me that this story, but set in a little Dutch village stooped in folklore, works. Whereas the American setting doesn't feel quite right. I'm not American myself so can't explain it, and couldn't do a better job of putting the story in a small American town, but it's just like one of those Netflix adaptations of a non-American story where the small cultural things that contextualise the plot are gone, and the result feels hollow. And *SO* much of the story is about the 'small town' mentality, essentially the ending is
Spoiler
one of those 'it wasn't the villain that was evil all along... it was us' which I'm not sure would be convincing to begin with, but in this setting it just didn't work at all.- Changes to her physical appearance (tears to her clothing) disappear when the witch transports, but not the stitches in her skin? Also how in the name of God did they put the stitches in to begin with?
- The function of the suicidal thoughts when a person leaves Black Spring didn't seem consistent, a character says up to a week away is safe but then other characters lament that they can't ever travel or go to College?
- It is explained that only people who move to Black Spring catch the curse and outsiders do not, so the witch is able to determine who is planning to stay long-term? What if you stop over on someone's sofa for a week ?
- The witch has her eyes sewn closed, so she can't see. But sometimes she can.
There's a lot more to critique about this book, a lot more, but I simply can't be bothered to think about it anymore. Just don't read this, there's absolutely nothing to gain. A thoroughly boring and pointless venture.