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inkandplasma 's review for:
Horseman
by Christina Henry
Full review available on my blog from 2nd December 2021: https://inkandplasma.com/2021/12/02/horseman/
Thanks to Titan Books for the eARC of this book. It has not affected my honest review.
Content Warnings: gore, blood, violence, animal death, character death, sexual harassment, attempted assault, period typical racism, transphobia and homophobia, misgendering and deadnaming.
I actually don’t know the legend of Sleepy Hollow very well. I watched a few episodes of a Sleepy Hollow tv show years ago, but have never delved much deeper into it, so most of what I know comes from pop culture references to the Headless Horseman. From what I can tell, though, this book is much more a Sleepy Hollow continuation as opposed to a strict retelling. I actually kind of preferred that as it allowed Henry to delve into lots of fresh new aspects and create a character that we hadn’t seen before.
Ben, as our main character, was a really interesting perspective. I liked him a lot, both as a child and, after a time skip later in the book, as an adult. He was brash and reckless, selfish in moments and constantly quick to anger. But I loved this, because it felt incredibly true to character for a teenager growing up with split expectations – to become his father from his grandfather, or to be a girly-girl from his grandmother – and the pressure of being a trans character in the 1800s (if that time period is wrong, my bad, I failed GCSE history). I was initially a little wary when I realised Henry had given us a trans protagonist, as in my experience this can be handled badly in historical fiction, but I think she did well in the way he was written and treated by other characters and I liked having a queer protagonist in a Christina Henry horror novel! More trans horror is needed tbh.
HORSEMAN is a very atmospheric read. It’s gripping from the early pages and its relatively short page count works really well in combination with the slow and sinister pacing. This is a glancing-over-your-shoulder kind of read and the small-town setting really added to that. I love horror stories set in little towns, especially when you add a gloomy and threatening forest to that, because there’s a real sense of uncanny fear from knowing that the protagonist knows everyone in town and that one of them is a monster or a villain anyway. Adding to that the legend of the Headless Horseman threaded throughout the novel and I was constantly going back and forth between whether the threat was human or supernatural as I read.
I have seen a fair amount of mixed opinions on the ending of this book, but I really loved it. The final section of this book, after Ben is all grown up, is really emotive and powerful and I didn’t see the last few twists coming. I found myself genuinely emotional by the end of HORSEMAN and that’s rare for a horror novel.
Thanks to Titan Books for the eARC of this book. It has not affected my honest review.
Content Warnings: gore, blood, violence, animal death, character death, sexual harassment, attempted assault, period typical racism, transphobia and homophobia, misgendering and deadnaming.
I actually don’t know the legend of Sleepy Hollow very well. I watched a few episodes of a Sleepy Hollow tv show years ago, but have never delved much deeper into it, so most of what I know comes from pop culture references to the Headless Horseman. From what I can tell, though, this book is much more a Sleepy Hollow continuation as opposed to a strict retelling. I actually kind of preferred that as it allowed Henry to delve into lots of fresh new aspects and create a character that we hadn’t seen before.
Ben, as our main character, was a really interesting perspective. I liked him a lot, both as a child and, after a time skip later in the book, as an adult. He was brash and reckless, selfish in moments and constantly quick to anger. But I loved this, because it felt incredibly true to character for a teenager growing up with split expectations – to become his father from his grandfather, or to be a girly-girl from his grandmother – and the pressure of being a trans character in the 1800s (if that time period is wrong, my bad, I failed GCSE history). I was initially a little wary when I realised Henry had given us a trans protagonist, as in my experience this can be handled badly in historical fiction, but I think she did well in the way he was written and treated by other characters and I liked having a queer protagonist in a Christina Henry horror novel! More trans horror is needed tbh.
HORSEMAN is a very atmospheric read. It’s gripping from the early pages and its relatively short page count works really well in combination with the slow and sinister pacing. This is a glancing-over-your-shoulder kind of read and the small-town setting really added to that. I love horror stories set in little towns, especially when you add a gloomy and threatening forest to that, because there’s a real sense of uncanny fear from knowing that the protagonist knows everyone in town and that one of them is a monster or a villain anyway. Adding to that the legend of the Headless Horseman threaded throughout the novel and I was constantly going back and forth between whether the threat was human or supernatural as I read.
I have seen a fair amount of mixed opinions on the ending of this book, but I really loved it. The final section of this book, after Ben is all grown up, is really emotive and powerful and I didn’t see the last few twists coming. I found myself genuinely emotional by the end of HORSEMAN and that’s rare for a horror novel.