Excellent premise, but main protagonist disappeared 3/4 of the way through the book and the story finished with characters who had been minor up to that point. The plot kind of wandered around a bit, right when it should have been building to a climax. The actual climax felt kind of tacked on, although the idea it embodied was fascinating. ( )

http://tamaranth.blogspot.co.uk/2018/02/201707-heklas-children-james-brogden.htm... ( )

I actually began this novel a while back but had to stop because of my workload. The novel stayed in the back of my mind and I'm glad that I finally got the chance to read this book now.

This novel was both a hit AND a miss for me. The beginning was intriguing and it really grabbed my attention; that's why I kept thinking about it even when I stopped reading the novel! The author did a great job setting the scene, and I got really invested in Nathan's character. I suspected that the author would lean towards the fantasy-horror genre combination, and I was pleased to see that my prediction was true. I liked the introduction of the Bronze Age warrior and really wanted to see where the author was going to go with that. Very quickly, the author switched from having Nathan as a main character, to someone else .... and then it switched again to Nathan ... and then went back to someone else. That part was a little baffling because it made me feel like I wasn't reading a continuous story but rather two different stories happening within the same timeline. It worked in the sense that it added more intrigue to the story but it also failed by making things more confusing and muddled. The story itself grew more complex but it had its flaws. A lot of details were skimmed over and could have used some more buildup, and it lost some of its horror feel near the end. The way certain characters were connected didn't really work for me, and some of the conclusions that were drawn were a bit too unbelievable for my taste. By the end of the novel, I felt like I had read a really complicated and intriguing novel ... but one that lacked a consistent flow. Since there were elements that I still enjoyed about this novel, I'm giving it a 3/5.

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I am not a reader of the horror genre so take this review as the opinion of someone almost completely ignorant of the genre. The premise was excellent and the story moved quickly most of the time. I liked the inclusion of mythological elements and the horror parts of the story were truly frightening. But, while I understood what happened at the end, I didn't fully understand why. ( )

Mystery, horror, fantasy, archaeology, mythology... Helka's Children spins the wheel of life. I gobbled this book up in a day.

From the publisher:
A decade ago, teacher Nathan Brookes saw four of his students walk up a hill and vanish. Only one returned - Olivia - starved, terrified, and with no memory of where she'd been. After a body is found in the same woodland where they disappeared, it is first believed to be one of the missing children, but is soon identified as a Bronze Age warrior, nothing more than an archaeological curiosity. Yet Nathan starts to have terrifying visions of the students. Then Olivia reappears, half-mad and willing to go to any lengths to return the corpse to the earth. For he is the only thing keeping a terrible evil at bay. ( )