Tower Hill

What a great story! I felt like I was reading a classic "horror" novel from back in the day. No over the top gore, excessive expletives. Very real characters and excellent scenery description. I am always searching for religious horror-there's not a lot around-so I was very pleased to come upon this book. It is probably just me but I felt an explanation of some sort should have been given as to why Al Shtenko knew what he did and why. Highly recommended!

This is my 2nd book I read by Sarah Pinborough. She really knows how to grab a reader's attention and tell a great story. I couldn't put this book down! Entertaining and scary! Highly recommended.

It is rare that I give a horror novel 5 stars, but then again it is rare that a horror novel evokes a sense of disturbed creepiness in me. I won't say that it "scared me" but it did keep me engaged from beginning to end, and for some reason this book came across as more plausible than many of the other supernatural horrors that I have read. It could be that it is a Christian based horror; I don't know that an atheist would find this as creepy as I did. Short Summary - Tower Hill is a tiny town that hasn't change for decades, housing a large church, a small university and a very small town population. Two not so nice individuals (one is a depraved serial killer) have followed a series of riddles and clues to find their way to Tower Hill where they discover two religious artifacts hidden... and the rituals required giving them the power of God, but it requires the help of the townspeople. Two college students and a police deputy find themselves in a bizarre situation as suddenly the sleepy little town becomes host to a series of murders and mutilations, and the townspeople suddenly aren't acting the way they should. Pinborough's characters are very real and conflicted. Almost equal time is spent between our four "good guys" and our two "bad guys" and as the reader you get a bit of a sense as to how this can play out, however nothing is spoon-fed to you. I appreciate the intelligence of her horror, the concept of biblical power in the wrong hands is believable to me (I mean Hitler was hunting for religious artifacts from all religions) and although at first it seems a bit strange that religious items of this magnitude would be hidden in "the new world" Pinborough does an excellent job of connecting all of the dots for us without breaking down into pages of exposition. Though there is one element of the story that didn't make a whole lot of sense and was never truly explained I'll forgive her for that because I enjoyed the rest of the book so much (for those of you who have read the book - the item in the town drunk's pocket really has no explanation at all, it is to that which I am referring). This book takes on a very creepy vibe right from the beginning and you can feel your mind thinking "no, don't do that!" as you read what the characters are doing, because they are so real, you genuinely want them to make it out of this okay. As with any good horror, not all of them do (I hate the ride off into the sunset endings of many horror novels). The resolution is what is expected, and the story maintains its level of creepiness throughout. This is only the second of Pinborough's novels that I have read, and I have to admit that I like her sense of mood, and her ability to maintain it from beginning to end. There is some gore in this book, and a bit of sex, but what keeps this book moving is the characters and the overall sense of panic that the reader develops. If this were a movie, you wouldn't be able to keep yourself from yelling at

It doesn't exactly take a rocket scientist to notice that the field of horror is male dominated, probably more so than mysteries or science fiction. The biggest female name in the genre is Anne Rice, and even she is not so much a horror writer as an author who uses the trappings of horror (vampires, witches, etc.) to tell dark fantasy stories. It isn't really fair, because a woman can write just as well (or just as poorly) as a man. Sarah Pinborough is hardly a household name, but her book Tower Hill is an example of a horror novel comparable to many other mid-tier writers of the genre, regardless of gender. In a way, Tower Hill is a buddy novel. Unfortunately, in this case, the buddies are a pair of murderous thugs who have a plan to take over the small Maine college town called Tower Hill. One becomes the new town priest (after disposing of the real one), while the other becomes a professor who also leads a club delving into the paranormal. Between the church and the club, most will be drawn in, where they will be slowly transformed into a sort of pod people. Liz and Steve are a couple apartment-mates who are also part of the freshman class at the university. Liz has grown up in a repressed highly-devout environment which gives her a skepticism about the new priest. Steve is a kid from Detroit whose poverty will put work ahead of any gatherings. Together, they are a couple of the few who realize that something sinister is going on, but even they don't realize that these evil doings have a supernatural quality; the priest and professor are using Tower Hill to transform themselves into something more than human. Pinborough's writing style makes this a fast-moving story which is good for around 85% of the book. The ending - as in many horror novels by many authors - is rather flaky, though there a couple nice twists too. Overall, this is worth reading. If you read a lot of horror, you won't find anything exceptionally different about Tower Hill, but you also won't find anything all that bad either.

In Maine college roommates Steve and Liz are excited to be accepted by Tower Hill as incoming freshmen. At the same time that the two students look forward to the semester, Jack arrives posing as Father O'Brien, a priest he killed with assistance from his friend Gray Kenyon, a teacher at the school. These two psychopaths have come a long way from finding a chest filled with documents in a cave in Afghanistan. They seek two objects with Jack finding his first and then locating the red stone meant for Grey. As the duo becomes less human, they begin to change the townsfolk into zombies they control. Liz and Steve realize something ugly and supernatural is occurring in Tower Hill; they believe they must fight it, but have no idea what or how only why. TOWER HILL focuses on the basic essences of human nature and supernatural evil; however Sarah Pinborough does this with a fascinating twist. The prime players are not the heroic somewhat stereotypical Liz and Steve; but instead the story line predominantly concentrates on Jack and Gray; readers know them better than their two student opponents. Thus paranormally caused evil has a human face with a deep look inside their rational thoughts that seem logically yet perverse as if a different value system motivates them. Fans will appreciate this strong horror thriller in which the malevolent duo owns the story line. Harriet Klausner