Dark Hollow by Brian Keene

Important Note- 3/24/11: Many Dorchester (which includes Leisure and Kensington and more) authors have recently announced that Dorchester has been failing to send their royalty payments since mid-2010 and is also selling digital copies of books they no longer own the rights to and haven’t owned the rights to since December 2010. Furthermore they are refusing to release rights to books they aren’t paying royalties on and using you, the reader, as their excuse. More information is available here and while there are many wonderful writers under the Dorchester umbrella I have to, at this time, highly recommend that no one buy new books, print or digital, from Dorchester as the money is NOT going to the authors as it should.

I found The Conquerer Worms disappointing so it took me a while to pick up Dark Hollow by Brian Keene. And once again I’m disappointed, but this time it’s because I put it off reading this book for so long.

Dark Hollow is the tale of a small town in Pennsylvania, once a farming community, now home to Adam, a midlist mystery writer, his wife and their dog. But their town is also home to something else, an other-worldly creature, summoned long ago and finally awakened again with the first day of spring.

Dark Hollow is a very compelling tale. Sure there’s a monster in woods, and some creepy carnivorous demon trees, but the real horror is in the effect the events of the story have on the characters, particularly Adam and his wife. Keene is able to drive a man’s loyalty into very dangerous places, pitting his own nature against his ideals. The conflict made Dark Hollow hard to put down and held up through the very last line.

It’s easily my favorite Keene work so far. While it counts as horror, there’s less gore and violence and far more dread and conflict, which is exactly why Keene seems ready to cross the line into a position rare for a horror author–mainstream acceptance.