The Hole by Aaron Ross Powell; Permuted Press; 2011; 536KB pgs; $7.99 US

Some of the most memorable horror tomes released over the last 40 years has dealt with apocalyptic fiction.  If you mention The Stand, Swan Song, Dark Advent, or I Am Legend to any horror loving fanatic a light shines in their eyes and a smile inevitably crosses their lips…and you won’t get them to stop talking about the novel.  Of course there have been many other novels written about the end of the world and some of those are classics in their own right (A Canticle For Liebowitz and On The Beach to name just two), and as long as the real life terrors in the world continue to inhabit our nightmares, you can bet readers will flock to those types of books as a safe way to deal with these fears.

Now, with The Hole, Aaron Ross Powell has made his own contribution to the sub-genre, and though it is not as sprawling or as character packed as any of the novels mentioned above, it’s deserves a space on your bookshelf right alongside your other post-apocalyptic fiction novels.

The Hole starts with sickness, a vile plague that quickly sweeps the land, initially causing people to develop flu like symptoms and then progresses into a deadly, life sapping dementia.  We meet Elliot, whose wife and child have succumbed to the virus, and Evajean, whose husband has also fallen victim.  Coincidentally, Elliot and Evajean live across the street from each other in a small Virginia town and seem to be the only two survivors in their vicinity.

A friendship develops between the two, and while deciding what to do, Evajean tells Elliot that just before her husband died he commanded her to go to Salt Lake City.  Not having a clue what to do, Elliot agrees to travel to Salt Lake City with Evajean and see if they can find any other survivors.

What they discover on their journey is that there are other survivors, that the land is now populated with strange beasts, and that their living across the street from each other may not have been a coincidence.

The Hole possesses an awful lot of things I love in horror novels and a few that I don’t.  I enjoyed the fact that the novel focused almost exclusively on Elliot and Evajean.  Powell did a fantastic job with the characterization on these two allowing the readers to claim them as their own.  Also, considering the scope of the novel, the author never lost his way by attempting to over describe the desperation of the landscape, keeping the carnage and the sense of loss personal to the central characters.  Lastly, Powell did a wonderful job with his plot devices; nothing in the action seemed pedestrian and though the story is essentially a fantasy, the characters reactions to the widely imaginative obstacles they face were true to themselves.

The only fault I could find with The Hole was in editing, as a few spots in the narrative slowed down to the point of weariness and redundancy.  Occasionally I thought non action scenes stretched out for too long due to exposition and I was tempted to rush through them.  And I also thought the author had characters going over the same thoughts or reliving action scenes too much.  From what I understand, this story started out as serial blog entries, so this may explain these instances.

While The Hole is not as epic as other post apocalyptic novels, it is different enough in both scope and plotting as to merit reading, and I would consider it worthwhile and entertaining enough to add to your reading list.

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Feb 9, 2012

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