New York Times bestselling horror writers Christopher Golden and Tim Lebbon create a music festival to die for in this illustrated novel with artwork by Peter Bergting!
The Valhalla music festival commemorates a long-ago Viking slaughter, but when strange things start to happen it seems the massacre may be far from over. When festival-goers begin to disappear, and musicians find themselves playing mysterious and ancient songs as if possessed, the fans have to figure out what’s going on before the festival site’s haunting past comes back for blood.
Dark bleatings, my lovely tribe! This week I’m here to talk about how cool this illustrated novella from Golden, Lebbon, and Bergting is! I have several tick boxes for what I love in horror fiction, and this hits a few of them. Weird possessions, check. A possible apocalypse, check. Heavy metal.. are you bloody kidding me!? Do you know how rare it is that I get to read a story that features my favourite type of music (and not in a ‘this kid listens to metal and oh look they’re evil and disturbed because metal fans are evil and disturbed’ way)? Not that there aren’t dark things happening at this festival, but kickass guitar solos aren’t the cause of an emo rampage, in this instance.
It’s a fast read about a group who attend a festival, and then people start going missing, and some of the musicians start acting very strangely… like they’re not quite themselves, you might say…
The fantastic illustrations really help to establish the scene and tone (though the writers do an excellent job with this anyway), and add a fun extra layer to the book.
I was totally along for this bumpy ride and enjoyed the entire story immensely, but by far my favourite thing about it was how it ended. I won’t spoil it, but it raised a smile on my thin goaty lips. A wicked smile.
I’d recommend it to… well, most of you, to be honest. There are some great, nasty horror scenes, characters to root for, an infusion of mythology, and a delicious mystery to unravel. If you’d like to get a copy or check out the authors, I have popped some links below for you:
Happy Goat Horror 
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