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| Image from Amazon.com |
At a glance: horror, paranormal
For Goodreads users: the book's page is here
From the publisher:
Something strange is happening at the Orsk furniture superstore in Columbus, Ohio. Every morning, employees arrive to find broken Kjerring wardrobes, shattered Brooka glassware, and vandalized Liripip sofa beds—clearly, someone or something is up to no good. To unravel the mystery, five young employees volunteer for a long dusk-till-dawn shift—and they encounter horrors that defy imagination. Along the way, author Grady Hendrix infuses sly social commentary on the nature of work in the new twenty-first century economy.
A traditional haunted house story in a contemporary setting (and full of current fears), Horrorstör comes conveniently packaged in the form of a retail catalog, complete with illustrations of ready-to-assemble furniture and other, more sinister accessories. We promise you’ve never seen anything quite like it!
Minor edits made e.g. spacing between words.
Luna comments:
This story started off really well. Four paragraphs in, I felt the need to text my friend (who had recommended it) & tell her how much I was already enjoying it. The writing was funny & satirical, & it imitates the Ikea catalogue as well as a book can. I really liked the satire in the book, which was kept up even after the bulk of the funny part was over.
So it was a bit sad that the author couldn't keep up that tone once the plot gets started - which is perfectly understandable, mind you, because I don't think a horror story that makes you chuckle every two lines is going to work too well. & the tone didn't really come back in the resolution, probably because it'd be wrong for the atmosphere. So I wish Hendrix kept it up, but I can understand why he didn't.
I didn't actually care for the plot very much. It's basically about the creepy history of the site upon which Orsk (the Ikea rip-off furniture store) is situated, & I felt that there wasn't very much going for it except the author trying to squeeze out all these terrifying situations. (Hendrix doesn't mind jabbing a few barbs about the endless culture of work, though. I didn't mind, but I would if it had been a different topic he was jabbing at, so there's a warning.) I did like the parallels he drew between the current furniture store &...whatever there was beforehand. I don't want to spoil it.
Having said all that, though, I was most disappointed (not in a bad way, though, because I don't like horror) by the fact that no part of the book scared me, & I've been freaked out by books that aren't labelled as horror (most notably: Jonathan Stroud's Lockwood & Co series). Maybe it's because the expectation was there for this book. So I don't like horror as a genre, but I was disappointed I didn't feel the horror. Hmm. There were some graphic moments though.
I think the thing I most enjoyed about it was the way it's set out like an Ikea catalogue (as mentioned above). It has a store map & introductions to various furniture items. Even in the story, there were constant references to locations in the store. The setting and worldbuilding was done really well for this story. I think it works so well partially because of Ikea's uniqueness & the strong impression it leaves in my mind, so that reading the setting of Horrorstor felt like a familiar experience.
Closing
I began this with too many expectations, I think. If I hadn't, I think I would have enjoyed it a lot more. But it was good, as it was =]
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