What is going on at Orsk? When the employees leave each evening, the store is in perfect order. They walk in the next morning to find broken bookshelves, smashed wardrobes, and shattered goblets. This chilling tale will make you think twice before you visit your next furniture store.
I wanted to start reading this book the moment I got it, but I was already in the middle of another book, so I had to wait a few days. During those few days though, I picked this book up several times and just flipped through it, reading random sentences, and looking at the illustrations.
The book has the appearance of a furniture catalogue, but so much more than furniture illustrations are waiting for you between its covers.
Strange things have been happening at Orsk. The boss has two of the store employees stay in the store overnight to see if they can discover who has been wrecking parts of the store during the time it is closed.
Two more employees are discovered hiding in the store. Could they be responsible for the vandalism? Or is it the homeless man they find? If none of them are responsible, who could it be?
Everything is calm and going fine until Amy finds some strange scribblings on the wall in the bathroom. When she goes back in not long after, there are yet more scribblings. Of course, this makes her a bit uneasy. No one else has been in there.
Humor is thrown into the story, but about halfway through, the humor disappears and the terror begins. An innocent séance (is there such a thing?) turns into one straight from hell and brings so much more than any of them bargained for.
Did it scare me? No, but it takes a lot to scare me. I love horror books, and the scarier they are the better. I read this 243-page book in two days. I had to stop reading to cook, and a bit of sleep was also required, or I would have easily finished it in one day. Unfortunately, life tends to get in the way of my reading.
The ending was great, but the supernatural events at this unique store are not over. I am really hoping is a sequel is being written right now. It would be better if it were already finished, so I could start reading it tomorrow.
I received a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. If you would like your own copy, just click on the Amazon link below.
Amazon Link: Horrorstor: A Novel
Recommended Article: Hauntings, Scary Scenes, and Titles – Gary Hendrix Interview
Favorite Sentences:
“There’s nothing waiting inside but retail slavery, endless exploitation, and personal subjugation to the whims of our corporate overlords.”
Twisting, screaming so loudly and for so long that she forgot she was screaming, Amy clawed at the maple flooring but only succeeded in peeling off one of her fingernails like a wet postage stamp.
The liquid was swirled with yellow filth, like pus from a lanced boil.
Still another featured smashed glass mixing bowls, the shards glittering in her flashlight beam and forming a thick carpet waiting to open veins and arteries.
New Words Learned:
cloying – causing or tending to cause disgust or aversion through excess
ethos – the distinctive character, spirit, and attitudes of a people, culture, era, etc.
expiation – atonement
milligauss – In electricity, a practical unit of magnetic induction equal to a thousandth of one gauss or of one c. g. s. electromagnetic unit.
panopticon – the name of a type of prison designed by Bentham (1791) in which wardens had a constant view of all inmates, and “a showroom” (1850)
pareidolia – the imagined perception of a pattern or meaning where it does not actually exist, as in considering the moon to have human features
rictus – a fixed or unnatural grin or grimace, as in horror or death
runnels – small streams
scrabbling – scratching or scraping
transmutes – transforms
About the Author:
Grady Hendrix is one of the founders of the New York Asian Film Festival and he writes about pop culture on his blog. (http://www.slate.com/authors.grady_hendrix.html)
