A fun romp in the woods- The opening and first few chapters were very strong and reminded me much of The Descent.

However the story kind of ambles as the protagonists make bad decision after bad decision. I understand that sometimes in horror you have to have a bad move to make a good story, but some of the decisions made make little sense for a character of their background.

An up-and-coming climbing professional didn’t pack extra gear and safety equipment? A guy with at least some camping experience just drank stale liquid from a random bottle that he found? Nobody bothered to bring extra communications like a radio or something? Those are some of the major ones, but there were also many little things.

I’m aware that these characters don’t have the hindsight that they’re in a tragic horror, but as someone with camping experience, it’s really odd to me that characters with experiences camping and climbing would not at least prepare for plausible dangers, even if it was just supposed to be a weekend trip.

The ghost scenes were pretty cool, and the imagery was very fun to linger on. My only issue with it is that the food metaphors were a little silly. Feast, banquet, sweets, etc etc I get these particular words used about the ravenous eating the ghosts do but ‘slurped like spaghetti’ and ‘picking the flesh…like fried chicken’ made me chuckle in a way that I don’t think the author was intending it to. The metaphors sometimes shifted a scary scene into a comedic one without meaning to, and it took me out of it a few times.

I was general entertained throughout, though. If you’re looking for a campy horror with crazy ghost scenes and a bad end for the protagonists (minus the dog), you may enjoy this book! If you’re hoping for something slower and more subtle in its scares like The Descent, maybe pass.