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Fiona Cook (back and catching up!)'s Reviews > Goblin: A Novel in Six Novellas
Goblin: A Novel in Six Novellas
by
by
Fiona Cook (back and catching up!)'s review
bookshelves: into-the-woods, night-vale-or-adjacent, short-n-sweet
May 21, 2021
bookshelves: into-the-woods, night-vale-or-adjacent, short-n-sweet
Welcome to Goblin - town of rain, ghosts (maybe), an unsettling police presence, and 6 novellas to take you on a tour of it's various peculiarities.
I wavered hard between 2 and 3 stars on this one - there's some really good ideas here, and I'm even already fond of Josh Malerman's previous work (even if I am overdue to catch up on his backlog). While there's an inventively creepy backdrop, not many of these stories stuck the landing - there's a lot of just stopping, rather than truly ending, a little too much ambiguity and not enough decisiveness to take these stories to the level I felt they could have been.
In the end, I just don't know that Goblin will stick enough to get it the extra star. Maybe I'll be back to update this review in a couple of months - the best horror is the kind that won't let you forget it - but it might be that this was, in the end, a minor detour.
I wavered hard between 2 and 3 stars on this one - there's some really good ideas here, and I'm even already fond of Josh Malerman's previous work (even if I am overdue to catch up on his backlog). While there's an inventively creepy backdrop, not many of these stories stuck the landing - there's a lot of just stopping, rather than truly ending, a little too much ambiguity and not enough decisiveness to take these stories to the level I felt they could have been.
In the end, I just don't know that Goblin will stick enough to get it the extra star. Maybe I'll be back to update this review in a couple of months - the best horror is the kind that won't let you forget it - but it might be that this was, in the end, a minor detour.
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Reading Progress
May 8, 2021
– Shelved
Started Reading
May 22, 2021
–
Finished Reading
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Lisa wrote: "It's hard to like anything without an ending. I really was curious about those police and the "standing" burials!"Same! They were so intriguing but got so much less attention than they deserved :(
I don’t mind surprise endings but these were all so anticlimactic. I enjoyed the prequel the most too and would have liked to see that okay out a bit differently than it ended up in the epilogue.
Amanda wrote: "I don’t mind surprise endings but these were all so anticlimactic. I enjoyed the prequel the most too and would have liked to see that okay out a bit differently than it ended up in the epilogue."Anticlimactic was exactly the word! Josh Malerman is usually much more consistent; it wouldn't have been so disappointing if the ideas weren't so enticing I guess :D
It was a real shame! I've loved some of his other books, and I feel like this had a bunch of potential - but almost every story just sort of wrapped up without really ending. Better luck on the next one though!