Ware divides the novel into alternating “before” and “after” chapters, with the narrative of Hannah’s college experience unfolding parallel to the events of her life nearly a decade later, when she’s married to Will and pregnant with their first child.

When Hannah finds April dead one night just after she’s seen Neville coming down the stairs from their rooms, it’s her testimony that puts him in jail. It’s a good life except for the increasingly creepy interactions she has with John Neville, one of the porters. Sharing a picturesque set of rooms with the flamboyant and beautiful April Clarke-Cliveden, she divides her time between rigorous studying and energetic socializing with Emily Lippmana, Ryan Coates, Hugh Bland, and Will de Chastaigne, with whom she shares an attraction even though he's April’s boyfriend.

Hannah Jones arrives at Oxford hardly believing that she’s been accepted into this haven of learning and wealth. Ten years after having discovered her Oxford roommate’s dead body in front of the fireplace in their room, a young woman struggles with the realization that she may have helped send the wrong man to prison. The Cunning Man, a 7-foot creature with flaming eyes who is mostly seen from a distance, needs to have more of an impact than a little girl in a Raggedy Ann outfit.Īn enjoyable but not terribly bone-rattling addition to Halloween horror. But even though Golden skillfully orchestrates a full cast of characters, including a group of plucky teenagers, the book lacks serious chills in the end-it's better at clever phenomena (including small fires inside of which shapes and images tell stories) than bumps in the night. Characters you may not expect to get it do. In his attempt to liven up familiar tropes, Golden's new book is less daring than its blood-freezing, Siberian-set predecessor, Road of Bones (2022). 'Nothing in these woods could be more dreadful, more terrifying, than the selfish cruelty of ordinary people,' thinks Tony, but a series of bizarre killings, dismemberments, and gruesome possessions change that tune. Terrible things start happening, with especially sorry results for Donnie Sweeney, an adulterous charmer who counts Tony's wife among his conquests, and a pedophiliac couple who abuse children in their house. But hours before its opening, a bunch of creepy, oddly aggressive children in costumes and melting makeup show up demanding protection from a punishing force they call the Cunning Man. Tony, who takes his fog effects, banshee screams, and apparitions very seriously, is going all out to make this year's fright-athon-the last one he and Chloe will present-the best ever. For 11 years, Tony Barbosa and his 17-year-old daughter, Chloe, have turned the woods behind their house into a scary theme park. Evil Halloween spirits are on the loose in a Massachusetts town, upstaging a popular neighborhood attraction dubbed the Haunted Woods.

Road of Bones by Christopher Golden