Hex

“This is totally, brilliantly original.”—Stephen King

“HEX is creepy and gripping and original, sure to be one of the top horror novels of 2016.”—George R.R. Martin

The English language debut of the bestselling Dutch novel, Hex, from Thomas Olde Heuvelt—a Hugo and World Fantasy award nominated talent to watch 

Whoever is born here, is doomed to stay 'til death. Whoever settles, never leaves.

Welcome to Black Spring, the seemingly picturesque Hudson Valley town haunted by the Black Rock Witch, a seventeenth century woman whose eyes and mouth are sewn shut. Muzzled, she walks the streets and enters homes at will. She stands next to children's bed for nights on end. Everybody knows that her eyes may never be opened or the consequences will be too terrible to bear.

The elders of Black Spring have virtually quarantined the town by using high-tech surveillance to prevent their curse from spreading. Frustrated with being kept in lockdown, the town's teenagers decide to break their strict regulations and go viral with the haunting. But, in so doing, they send the town spiraling into dark, medieval practices of the distant past.

This chilling audiobook heralds the arrival of an exciting new voice in mainstream horror and dark fantasy.

(P)2016 Macmillan Audio

Excellent impulse purchase!

Bought this on a whim and loved it. Only thing stopping it from getting 5 stars was that the narration wasn't excellent. Not bad, but not excellent. Very absorbing listen...i listened in 2 sittings while clearing out my closet!

Great story, terrible directing of the audiobook

This is the first audiobook I have ever wanted to delete and go by the print book of. The narrator is competent but the director and his choices shock me. This book is horrifying and well written with interesting characters yet the director chose to have them read in cartoonish nasal mocking voices (especially the women). This Intensely detracts from the humanity of the characters and situations they are in enduring. If I had been reading this in my own voice, I think I would've appreciated the book much mor because I would have respected the characters. The way they are presented here is deeply disrespectful. That said, the book is great and if you can get past The voice used on the characters, the narrator does a perfectly competent job. I'm disappointed that such an interesting and unique horror novel would come close to being ruined because of the director's seemingly adolescent choices.

Left me wondering about the original novel

My impression is somewhat colored by the narration. I felt slightly irritated by the narrator's voice, especially his impression of female voices which were often whiny. I couldn't tell if I thought the dialog was sometimes bad or if it was his delivery of it.

As for the story itself, there is a lot I did enjoy. The ghost of the witch is sufficiently creepy, both in description and action. There are fun details, like the app that the townspeople use to track her appearances. I think the most disturbing idea is that the townsfolk are cursed never to leave this tiny town - as someone who feels she escaped a small town, I can easily imagine how stifling and frustrating that would be.

The plot itself is fine for the most part. I suspected where the story might go though this by itself didn't bother me. But I felt the writing was lacking. There is a long exposition, disguised as a story told by a character, that felt particularly clunky. The dialog of the teenagers in the book felt really off - I kept thinking "no teenager talks like that" - although the actions and characterizations of the kids felt right. Some of the descriptions sounded strange too. Maybe some of the wording was lost in translation.

Speaking of translation, I am very curious about the original story. The author is Dutch and rather than just translate his original work into English, he rewrote the story to take place in the U.S. I think even the story itself changed. I think it's a shame he did this and I hope the original story is translated at some point.

Great story, horrible narrator

Great story. Didn't see it ending the way it did. Dark, scary, uncomfortable. The narrator was really bad. I thought it was a light hearted book based what sounded like "impressions" or "caricatures" of teenagers and women. His nasally impersonation made the book seem comical and when things took a turn in the end, I almost couldn't take it seriously. The writing was great so I could hold on to that, but man, it was distracting.

The story was great, the narrations was not

I love this story and I feel as though if I had read the book, it would be a 4.5/5 star book. However, the narrator was god awful. The voices he puts on for the teens and women in the story were so cartoony that it completely took me out of the story. If you're debating on whether to listen to this, don't. Read the book instead.