The Carnival of the Night

by Nicholas Carey

Some call it purgatory, others know it as the in-between, but for those poor souls who are trapped there eternally, it is simply The Carnival — a macabre mockery where night is never-ending, and a sadistic creature known as The Fool reigns unchallenged. And The Fool has one No one leaves The Carnival. Ever. Christopher, the latest arrival thrust reluctantly through the gates, is certain that he doesn't belong there, and he's damn sure he's not staying. But if he's to stand any chance of getting out, he's going to have to trust a girl who can't possibly be what she claims. With her help, he must confront not only The Fool, but his own dark past. --- WHAT READERS ARE "A wild ride that urges you to consume the words as quickly as your brain can process." "I didn't know a book so macabre could be such a fun read." "The Carnival of Night is an excellent piece of modern fiction that is reminiscent of Ray Bradbury's Something Wicked this way comes."

138 pages, Paperback

Published March 6, 2018

About the author

Nicholas Carey is an English author who writes fantasy and sci-fi stories, in which he is able to imagine the impossible or unlikely - such as the sun coming out in the village where he lives.

Sign up for his mailing list to know when he releases new books or runs promotions: https://bit.ly/2rIhmFo

You can visit his reddit page for more information on current stories: http://reddit.com/r/nickofnight or you can email him directly: nickofnite@gmail.com

Reviews

[Kristen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Full review is on my blog here, and The Weatherwax Report here!~

This book was really very short, and this review of the book is going to be maybe a little bit shorter than my normal billion words. :)

This is the story of Christopher, who wakes up one day on a bus with only one other person on it, who tells him that he’s died and is on his way to purgatory. Purgatory in this case being the Carnival of the Night, a creepy carnival that never ends that is run by The Fool – not the devil, but certainly devlilish.

Cassandra, the girl on the bus, is actually pretty surprised that Christopher can see her, because normally nobody can. She’s just there to escort the dead to the Carnival, because, you see, she is Death’s daughter. But, since Christopher can see her, and that’s never ever happened before, she’s inclined to try and help him get out of staying in purgatory, as he is probably special in some way. On top of that, the Fool has managed some extra-dastardly deeds, and now death is… not really death anymore. And the hunt is on to find someone or something that can stop him.

Shenanigans ensue!

This story brings a lot of interesting ideas to the table, however I didn’t end up loving it like I had hoped to after reading the blurb. But, it did have good things about it, along with things that I didn’t like.

First off, I did not like the main character, and this is almost entirely because of the way in which this story opens. Page one, chapter one – Christopher wakes up on a bus. There is only one other person on that bus. That person happens to be female. What is the first thing that our hero does to the random solitary female bus passenger? He makes the most eye-rollingly skeevy attempt to hit on her. Because of course he does. When that fails miserably, he tries again. This is literally chapter one of this book, and I was already absolutely over it before it even started in earnest.

But, as I said, it is quite short, so we’ll run with it and just not like or care what happens to the main character whatsoever. Which is… more difficult than it sounds, even for a short book. >.>

This book uses language really well sometimes, especially homophones in one part, but it could use further editing in order to make the idea that the author was going for there really shine. Don’t get me wrong, the book isn’t chock full of typos or anything, and the formatting was just fine, but there were a few grammatical errors here and there, but the ones that really caught my eye happened to be in a place where language and its usage was quite important.

I liked the idea of purgatory as a carnival, because my purgatory would totally be a never ending carnival, lol. It’s certainly a more modern interpretation of what purgatory would look like. As time passes, the Carnival changes with technology and what have you. Some lesser deities, and some mythological creatures from the Greek mythos even make an appearance, and my myth nerd side appreciated it. Having Cerberus make an appearance near the entrance to what is more-or-less the Underworld was kind of a cool idea. More and more mythological personages appear as the book continued, and I liked that a lot.

Christopher meets a new friend or two on his journey through the in-between, and we occasionally see the story from the POV of two of them. First is Derek, who runs a shooting gallery at the carnival, and maintains a sort of cowboy persona, and Paddy, who is… uh… an unfortunate man in the wrong place at the wrong time, really. For such a short novel though, it does switch POVs a lot. Some chapters are flashbacks on some characters, some are from the POV of characters we never meet again. Others are catching us up on what is happening in the real world as the plot rolls on. There were bits of this that felt rather unnecessary, to be honest.

I’d personally consider this more on the horror side of things than fantasy side, but its definitely got some fantasy elements in it. It gave me a real gory horror for shock value vibe at times, but it did legitimately creep me out at times as well. All the severed heads and talking skulls and what have you.

All told, it wasn’t my favorite story from this year’s SPFBO, but it also wasn’t a bad read. I’d have appreciated a main character that I didn’t find annoying by page two, and I think there’s far better ways to make a young male character relatable than making him a creeper right out the gate, but the idea of the story and much of its execution certainly had merit, especially for people that like a horror story with an interesting idea. It had a twist that I didn’t guess, and resolved in a way that wrapped up the plot but left room for further ideas with these characters.

So, I didn’t love it but didn’t hate it. To be honest, that ratio was about 1:1, so this one gets 5/10 stars from me. (2.5/5).

[Sandy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Purgatory is a carnival filled with evil? I imagine for some, a carnival could be thought of as a place between heaven and hell. The funhouse has never been much fun - it’s almost like touring a haunted house any day of the year. Games at this carnival are taken to extremes. We know all the games at fairs, carnivals, arcades, etc. are rigged - it’s become part of the challenge. However, ensure you follow ALL of the rules if you don’t want to become part of said game.

I want to comment from so many different angles, but I’m afraid of giving something away. This story is written in such a way that specific puzzle pieces are carefully handed over at precise moments. Family feuds are involved. Mythology plays a large role. Then there’s self-discovery, friendship and atrociously sung sea shanties.

Between life and death, I need to know - what is coming next? Will Christopher be able to practice beforehand? Will Edward survive? And what happened to Bacchus?

[Russell · Rating 5 out of 5]

This review is going to be a mini-essay thing
My story to finding this book is pretty unique compared to the other books that I've read. Instead of getting a friend recommendation or finding it on Goodreads' lists, I was on Reddit. On my front page, I saw that there was an announcement from this person saying that their novella was finished. Being a pretty avid reader, I was interested. After reading the first chapter, I was very intrigued. I was very happy to find out that it's free on Kindle Unlimited, and I started reading it. I'm very happy that I did.

Important note: There will be spoilers for the first few chapters of the book. Because of how short the book is, I would recommend looking into it here if you like fantasy.


The Carnival of the Night is about Christopher, a poor soul (literally) who got hit by a car while biking and died. Now he's in purgatory, led to it by the daughter of death. Chris hopes that he can move on to heaven, and Cassandra (the daughter) wants to help him. This is the very beginning of the book, and Chris's goal changes as you get into the book. The Carnival (which is purgatory) is an awful place to be. Run by The Fool, there are normal carnival games made gruesome. For example, there's the classic game of throwing balls at clown heads or pins to try to knock them down. But this time instead of normal balls, they have spikes. And instead of pins, they have live human heads. Because nobody can die in purgatory, these heads have full consciousness. Chris gets saved from whatever "the pit" is (probably worse than that ball game) by a Cowboy named Derek, who wants Chris to help him around his stall. His stall is the "shooting at ducks" game, with a caveat. You might've guessed it, but the ducks are people and the guns are real. This game is actually one of the more humane ones, we've been told.

If you're not scared off by those wonderful carnival games, you should know that I really enjoyed this book. As somebody who only reads fantasy, this was a really enjoyable read. I loved how dark and gruesome the book was, and the story itself was pretty good and very original(as far as I know). For example, it's really funny to think of Death as this reaper who lost his love of his job and is now basically a desk worker. There's a pretty good revelation a good way into the book, albeit a bit stereotypical. I really liked all of the characters, each with their own mini backstory. Every person is in purgatory because their death was not normal. The book follows Greek Mythology to an extent, with the Titans and Zeus etc. Reading how powerful the demigods (children of the gods) are is really fun. One final aspect that I liked was the writing. The characters were full of personality, and the book openly swore when appropriate, which isn't something you see often. This writing is one of the main reasons that I really enjoyed the book, along with the amazing setting and characters.

I have one main problem with this book: It's not fu- . . . It's not damn long enough. I really enjoyed this book, and while reading it I was constantly like "this is not going to last. :(". The story felt a little rushed as well. There was never a break from important event to important event. Also, I remember there were a few times when the grammar didn't seem great. Lastly, this might just be because of who I am, but there were a lot of times where the fact didn't add up/ logically something wouldn't happen. For example, this book falls victim to the "I'm so exhausted I can barely move. Oh wait, now I'm motivated! Horray, now I'm fine." trope. Another thing is there were monsters in a chapter at the very beginning, but they're never mentioned once after. These were not that common, but it's something that I pay attention to and it gets under my skin.


TL;DR - Short and Sweet book with an original story. Enjoyable characters, very violent, good writing, not perfect. Definitely worth the read if you don't mind gore and enjoy fantasy. It's also free if you have Kindle Unlimited/ Don't mind reading it on Reddit. (Look for the link earlier to see the first chapter.)

[Brian's Book Blog · Rating 5 out of 5]

Carey Writes A Story That Begs To Be Read In One Sitting

5 out of 5 stars
At the time of writing this review, there were 58 5-star reviews (out of 58). I’ll add at least number 59. I won’t say that I went into this skeptical, but that’s a hell of a lot of 5-star reviews for a book.

Carnival of the Night was one of those stories that just builds and builds and builds. It starts off almost unassuming but by the end you find yourself wanting to flip forward (or skip forward in my case) to the end just to see what happens.

This was my first book by author Nicholas Carey and it will not be my last. He wrote one heck of a story that I had a hard time putting down. Thankfully it’s a short story/novella so I didn’t have to wait too long to get to the end.

Apparently, this story started on reddit (upon checking out some of the other reviews) and I’m glad that I waited until the entire thing was finished and produced into an audiobook because I wouldn’t have been able to just read it piece by piece. Carey tells a story that begs to be finished in one sitting.

Overall, a great story that was both well written and well performed. I thought that Christopher Graybill did a wonderful job helping Chris’s words jump off of the page an into my ears. He was able to give the story that little bit of an edge that had me on the edge of my seat.

[GracieKat · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Carnival of the Night could more be classified as a novella or novelette rather than a novel because it was a pretty short listen. I liked the story. It was a bit different than I expected it to be. It had a lot going on for it that was original.

The plot flowed well and had a lot of mythology to it (and used correctly). I also really liked the characters. Christopher was a relatable and interesting character. His emotions and actions were very understandable. The character of Cassandra could have been drawn a little better, however. She seemed kind of "generic magic girl". The character of Derek was great and the narrator did his accent fades and changes very well. I'll even give a rare compliment to the narrator in that he did Cassandra's voice very well.

The narrator also did the other voices very well. It would have been easy to make The Fool sound really annoying but he wasn't. I liked it. I also liked the ways he voiced The Chef and Death.

All in all it was a very fun, interesting read/listen and I liked the characters. I would like to hear more about them.

For this and other reviews of books, movies and games check us out at https://www.scifiandscary.com/

[Lora Milton · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love carnival stories and especially creepy carnival stories, so this was a fun read for me. In some ways it read like a YA, but was mostly well done. Christopher had a bicycle accident and is thrust into an afterlife situation created with a lot of imagination. After he tries to hit on Death's daughter, he discovers purgatory set up like one big carnival, but with some pretty unpleasant things that go on.

Christopher and Cassandra were easy characters to like, each for their own reasons. The plot had original elements that kept my interest and the whole nasty carnival atmosphere was creepy in all the right ways, except that there was rather a lot of gore considering everyone there was supposed to be dead already. Some of it started getting gratuitous.

Still, I did feel I needed to find out what would happen in the end and though the plotting wasn't brilliant, the characters carried it well enough.

[Brooks · Rating 3 out of 5]

A short, but interesting book. The writing is mostly well-done with some typos and formatting issues that are hopefully fixed in a future update. Fair warning to anyone planning to read this book it is surprisingly dark and violent with frequent swearing.
The story is quite unique. I've never come across a depiction of Purgatory like this before, and that alone made it worth reading for me. The author, Nicholas Carey, manages to fit quite a few noteworthy characters from varying mythologies into the story. It all builds up to a satisfying ending while leaving the story open for sequels later.

[Laura · Rating 4 out of 5]

I received this book for free. I am voluntarily posting this review and all opinions expressed herein are my own.

This is a quick tale of a soul going to purgatory - but it's actually a carnival - and his fight to get out. I was quite intrigued by the story and enjoyed the use of mythology. It's well-written and very entertaining. It pulls you in immediately, moves along at a good pace as you meet the various characters who work the carnival until it works its way to the final showdown.

The narrator, Christopher Graybill, is great. He does a wonderful job with the various character voices - especially the Fool, who runs the carnival.

[Violet Laflamme · Rating 5 out of 5]

Christopher ends up in purgatory, also known as The Carnival. Once he discovers what it's like in there, and the stakes are raised far beyond his own existence, he knows he has to escape. There are some familiar characters in this tale, Death being one of them, but also some new takes on old ideas. Death's daughter, for example.

This is a great story. Definitely worth checking out and in my opinion the descriptions of the dark carnival games are worth the cost of admission alone.

[Jaime · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was given this free review copy audiobook at my request and have voluntarily left this review.
This was different than I expected and really left me thinking for days. It left me with a hypothetical question that really had me playing different scenarios in my head. What happens if death died? I enjoyed it quite a bit.
Story was interesting and fun. Narration was well done! 4 stars overall. 

[Deedra · Rating 5 out of 5]

audible:This was an excellent book.It seemed like an old 80's horror novel. Christopher finds a girl on the bus staring at him.She is shocked that he can see her.This leads to a trip to and through a horror carnival and a revealtion no one is ready for.Christopher Graybill was a fine narrator.I was given this free review copy audiobook at my request and have voluntarily left this review.'

[Lindsey Malick · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 Stars
A much different take on purgatory; the in-between becomes a horror show.
The book has a great story but the last 30 pages seemed like the fast forward button had been skipped. If the ending had been drawn out, it would have been much more satisfying.

[Danielle · Rating 5 out of 5]

A short but good book. I've never read purgatory described this way. It was an interesting twist. I loved the ending. This book is actually quiet dark and violent. I definitely enjoyed this and read it in a day.

[Matt · Rating 5 out of 5]

Crazy creative and fun


I didn't know a book so macabre could be such a fun read. It had both great characters and story lines

[Kimberly L. · Rating 5 out of 5]

So glad I purchased this book!!!

This is the first book that I've read by this Author and it will definitely NOT be the last! This story kept me entertained and invested from the first chapter. I only hope that these characters have a chance to appear in a future book.

[Brian Gay · Rating 1 out of 5]

This seemed like an incomplete, unedited, self-published book that never went across a publishers desk. There were too many holes and too many unanswered questions in the plot.

[C Wolfe · Rating 5 out of 5]

I enjoyed this book and found it novel. Death did remind me a little of Terry Prachett's death. I wish this book had been a little longer.