3 Stars
Cons: It seems that in every novel, every teenage girl is portrayed as either a foul mouthed, drinking, drugging loser, or a vapid, mindless barbie doll with no brains. Vic McQueen (protagonist) as a teenager was just plain unlikable/Manx as an antagonist was creepy but his dated way of speech was just silly at times.
Full Review:
Vic McQueen has the unique ability to travel from her home in Haverhill Massachusetts, to any destination she wishes via a dilapidated old bridge called the Shorter Way. This can only happen if she's on her Raleigh Tuff Burner Bike though. She often travels across the bridge in order to find lost items but the trips back always leave her sick and feverish, so she does so sparingly. On one of her journeys, she runs into a young librarian named Maggie who explains that there are others who can manipulate space as she can, all they need is a "knife" with which to cut reality. Vic has her Raleigh and Maggie has her Scrabble Tiles, which she can use to spell out things that will happen. She knew that she would meet Vic that day because Scrabble tiles spelled it out.
But Maggie and Vic aren't the only ones who can bend reality; there is also someone, the Wraith, who can do so as well. He's a kidnapper named Charles Manx, who uses henchman, such as Bing Partridge (a low life loser who killed his Father and Mother) to abduct children for him. Bing kills the parent/guardian who was with the child and Manx uses ability to warp reality to bring the children to Chritsmasland, a place much like Vic McQueen's Shorter Way Bridge. It is an Inscape, a place of his own imagining.
And though Christmasland seems wonderful at first glance, on deeper inspections it's true, horrible colors bleed through. The children who are taken there turn into many teethed, twisted, Vampiric monsters and never return, or at least no one has yet. In honor of each child he takes to Christmasland, Manx hangs up a Christmas Ornament in the woods behind his house in Colorado and when he is captured and sentenced to life in prison, thanks to Vic McQueen, the reporters dub his house, the Sleigh House, a sickening play on words.
As a teenager, Vic is troubled, drinks, occasionally uses ecstasy and though she likes to make her mother think she's sleeping around, she's not actually. Her Father left her and her Mother when she was a pre-teen and she's never forgiven him for abandoning her. Soon after her Father leaves and her Mother has gone through her room after catching her with a boy at night, Vic storms off. She rides her bike until she finds the Shorter Way and crosses the bridge with the thought in her head that she WANTS trouble. And trouble is what she finds.
She comes out in the front yard of the Sleigh House and in the garage, the 1938 Rolls-Royce Wraith is idling. On closer inspection she sees that a child is sleeping in the backseat. She tries to get him to come with her, knowing in her bones that there's something horrible and sinister about this place, but the boy doesn't want to go. In fact, his mouth full of razor sharp, hooked teeth are a clear indicator that something is very, very wrong. Vic has found the the trouble she was so eagerly looking for and her anger is quickly replaced by fear. As she flees from whatever the child, she realizes that they're not alone. She runs through the house in a desperate attempt to escape the monstrous child and as she passes a window, she spies a man in the front yard, tall, bone thin and holding her Raleigh Tuff Burner, and looking thoughtfully at the Shorter Way Bridge, which is still there after Vic crossed it. He casually pushes her bike through the bridge and it vanishes and Vic knows she's trapped.
She escapes, narrowly and manages to make it out onto the highway where someone on a motorcycle pulls over to help her. She jumps on the back, saying that they need help, that she's being chased and her hero, Lou Carmody, pulls off and heads to the nearest store, a gas station. All seems well and Vic seems safe, trying to tell her story so it makes sense but then, an old black Rolls-Royce pulls up to one of the pumps. It's Charles Manx, he's followed Vic and the results are a horrific, blood bath but Manx is arrested and Vic escapes.
The next time she's forced to think about Charles Manx and Christmasland, it's after receiving a collect call from a child on the other end, asking her when she'll return because the last time they played together was ever so much fun. She realizes that it's the boy who had been in the Wraith and she is horrified. The calls continue and Vic's sanity quickly unravels. Lou, takes their son, Bruce Wayne, away, knowing that Vic is ill and needs help but not sure how to go about it. Her life unravels and she is soon Hospitalized, put through detox and comes out the other side convinced that the Shorter Way was imply a delusion and none of what happened with Manx was real. It's all easy enough to convince herself of this until Maggie Leigh shows up on her front lawn one July afternoon with newspaper clippings about how Manx's body disappeared from the morgue and she warns Vic that Manx is coming for her for revenge.
Though Vic was selfish at times, in the end she turned herself around and was a hero. Lou, was always a likable and gentle person who would always do the right thing. And all the wrongs that happened in the book are more or less put right. It was an entertaining read though the beginning was sometimes tough to get through because Vic was such a selfish, self-centered, unlikable person that at times I was so disgusted with her actions that I almost put the book down. But I didn't and was glad that I managed to follow through to the end. Though I didn't find it nearly as horrifying/entertaining as Heart Shaped Box or Horns, it definitely had a dark fantastic sense of horror and tension that definitely kept the pages turning until the end.
I'd recommend this book to anyone who's read any of Hill's works though it is a long one, so prepare yourself
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