Occultober Day 26 The Haunted Forest Tour by Jeff Strand and James A. Moore
Occultober Day 26 The Haunted Forest Tour by Jeff Strand and James A. Moore
Jeff Strand’s Wolf Hunt series comprise my favorite werewolf novels of all time, so I was quite excited when I came across The Haunted Forest Tour and was really curious to see where Strand’s crazy mind would lead us. I’m happy to say that not only was I not disappointed, Strand and his co-author, James A. Moore, blew me away.
The premise of the novel is lovingly established in the opening chapter when a homeowner and the local sheriff try to figure out how someone managed to plant a decades old tree in the middle of the homeowner’s porch. It’s a perplexing problem without an apparent solution—at least until more trees start to spontaneously sprout all around them. The image is quite gripping. In seconds, trees are reaching full growth and causing destruction all around them.
The story then picks up several years later when an enterprising American has started a tour service into the haunted forest. All kinds of fantasy creatures from ogres to demons to things that defy categorization exist within the trees. Up to now, the tours have only penetrated the perimeter of the forest, but now, to celebrate Halloween, sixty lucky individuals are going to ride straight through the center of this marvel. Unfortunately, their “luck” is not of the “good” variety.
As all great horror writers do, Strand and Moore take the time to make you like a large cast of characters ranging from a young child to a grandmother, and from tourists, to employees, to scientists. It’s fun to try and guess which ones will die and which will survive, but shortly after the disaster in the middle of the forest begins to unfold, you will start to wonder how anyone can escape this situation.
And this is a huge part of why this book is so brilliant. The tourists and employees treat the Haunted Forest as a bizarre natural wonder, but it is so much more insidious than that. There’s an intriguing mystery to be solved at the heart of the forest and the stakes are much greater than the survival of the few people trapped within it. Strand and Moore play totally fair here—doling out clues and false leads between shocking revelations fast enough to make you resent anything that interrupts your reading.
Finally, the authors pass the most important test of the horror novel—the cause of all the problems is equal to the great buildup they give it. And the solution is simply genius…
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B06...
