‘Hole in the World’ – Brian Keene (Apex Book Company)


Nope, this isn’t a ‘Reader Recession Relief Readalong’ book, although the latest deal is yet to appear so it could well end up being just that this by this afternoon. Lets wait and see 😉

The other day, it struck me that while I’m pretty well acquainted with Brian Keene’s horror work, there’s a whole load of other stuff that he’s written and I haven’t read it. So many books and not enough time to read them all… It’s a fair enough reason but I thought I’d take a little step outside my comfort zone and read something of his that was a little different. It came down to a choice between ‘Hole in the World’ or ‘King of the Bastards’ and there’s nothing like a cover with a dinosaur mauling a bus to really make your mind up for you 😉 ‘Hole in the World’ it was then…

 An hour ago, they were nineteen strangers on an airport shuttle, braving travel delays and a freak blizzard. Then they fell through a hole in the world. Now, they are nineteen strangers trapped in a dangerous dimension filled with prehistoric monsters, futuristic technology, and otherworldly mysteries. They'll have to learn to work together if they want to survive and return home... but will any of them be left alive by then?

Turns out that I didn’t take that much of a step outside my comfort zone after all… ‘The Lost World’ is primarily a number of other things (I got a lot of ‘The Land that Time Forgot’ vibes, a little bit of ‘At the Earth’s Core’ as well, showing my age and I don’t care 😊 ) but there is still a vein of horror that runs through ‘Hole in the World’, both from its links to Keene’s ‘Labyrinth’ mythos and the fact that there is plenty of horror to be found in a lush world where death is constantly round the corner and in one memorable moment, underfoot.

There are plenty of ways to die in this Level and Keene has a great time whittling down the group of survivors in a number of ways (arising from ongoing questions around the survival of the group) that are pretty grim but inventive enough that you don’t want to look away. It’s no spoiler to say that my favourites were the ‘dinosaur deaths’ (I mean come on, look at the front cover) but there’s something here for everyone, whether it’s the inventiveness in the ways the Lost Level can kill you or the deaths that arise from a disparate groups inability to work together to survive. The book does tend to follow a ‘danger, death, regroup and repeat’ cycle, that can mean you see the deaths coming, but if you read the afterword you’ll see the reasoning behind it. I think what’s key here is that the plot is driving people to some kind of demise, it’s not just there to line people up on some kind of ‘conveyor belt of death’. If things happen here, it’s for a very good reason and that’s what keeps the book moving; people trying to make the best of a bad situation and reacting to the inevitable shitstorm that follows.

Overall, I had a lot fun reading ‘Hole in the World’ and I’ve gone and ordered myself a copy of ‘The Land that Time Forgot’ to try and keep the buzz going while I charge up my Kindle and read ‘The Lost Level’. The universe that Keene has created just got a little larger, for me anyway, and I’m looking forward to exploring further.

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