This was an entertaining tale. It once again proves that death makes a very likeable character. I skimmed through the short story at the end that the book was based on, but having just read the novel, I was only looking for the few differences between.

( )

Probably the best of the Orangefield novels. Hardboiled detective Bill Grant is Sarrantonio's best realized character and he stays for then entire novel here. Sarrantonio is trying to capture some of the feel of Charles L. Grant's Oxrun Station novels and stories but he just isn't the writer Grant is. Tying himself to the Halloween holiday especially makes it hard to provide sufficient variety to the plots. Unlike Oxrun Station, these novels should be read in the proper chronology (NOT the order they were written). ( )

I love reading Al Sarrantonio's Orangefield books during the month of October. Even though the writing is less than stellar, the spooky little town with it's famous pumpkin festival and eerie Lord of the Dead sightings is the perfect setting to settle into around the time of Halloween.

Unfortunately, Halloweenland didn't live up to my expectations. It starts off creepily enough; a wife and her husband decide to have a baby, but the husband is late home from work on the night they had scheduled. The wife is awoken in the middle of the night by her husband's cold hands, apologizing for being late but says he made a promise and intends to keep it. The next morning the wife discovers that her husband died during the night, in a car crash, and was already pronounced dead before the time she thought she slept with him.

The book started out as a 70-page novella called The Baby and then was boosted up to a 230-page novel for this publishing. It's a stark contrast between the original and the additional content, not just because the extra text takes place five years later, but because it doesn't evoke that Halloween atmosphere that the series is known for. I found the 2nd part to be meandering and dull, and he also sort of ruined his Samhain character that he built up with the other books. The whole thing just kind of fell flat for me.

The original novella is actually included in the book too. I skimmed it, and it seems to be the first 70 pages copy-and-pasted with a couple different paragraphs at the very end.

I still think Horrorween Hallows Eve are nice books to read during Halloween and I would still recommend them, but this one just didn't do it for me. It's too bad. ( )

A sense of deja vu hangd of the whole affair, but it's an enjoyable conclusion to the Orangfield series. ( )

Halloweenland is a novel that had its first breath as the short story ‘The Baby,’ and it is this short story which opens the book (and lasts the first 77 pages — and not to mention is included again at the end of the book as ‘The short Curious History of ‘The Baby”, serving no purpose but to seemingly take up space).

Marianne Carlin wants a baby more than anything else in this world. Her husband, Jack, would rather drink and hang out with his friends. On the night when they plan to conceive their child, Jack comes home late and smells of booze. But he promised, and so they make love. Marianne’s dream come true and she finds out she’s pregnant … problem is Jack died hours before they made love.

On top of that, Orangefield residents are once again reporting ‘Sam Sightings’—encounters with Samhain, the Lord of the Dead and alcoholic Detective Bill Grant is once again pulled into the fray. The hunt for Marianne’s evil offspring, who is a vessel for the Uncreator, takes him on a whirlwind journey spanning two continents as he tried to save the world.

On the whole, if Rosemary’s Baby and The Omen (with a little evangelical misinterpretation of Samhain thrown in) had a love child, you’d get Halloweenland. However, I really would have liked this novel better had the skewed views of Samhain not been included. That did not make me happy at all, and despite this being fiction, I longed to throw a history book at Sarrantino. Samhain is an Irish festival honoring the dead, not a god, geez! There was also not much horror—if any—and I really expected more from a Bram Stoker Award winner. Not once was I creeped out and this has me not wanting to rush out a read anything else by Sarrantino. 2.5 pumpkins out of 5.

http://www.read-all-over.net/fiction/horror/halloweenland-by-al-sarrantonio/ ( )