Horrorstör

While Horrorstör is supposed to be a horror story, anyone who has ever shopped at a certain Swedish furniture store and purchased furniture from there will appreciate Mr. Hendrix’s satire about the future of big-box shopping experiences. In fact, certain elements of the story are outright funny. Readers might feel uncomfortable chuckling at the humor behind the horror, but they will do it nonetheless because Mr. Hendrix captures the experience of such stores with biting accuracy. Everything about such stores, from the deliberate lack of windows, meandering floor plans, pithy slogans, staging, and the like garner his scrutiny, and his snide commentary makes for some amusing statements in the throes of all of the suspense.

Horrorstör show more is a visual delight. Filled with catalog pages, signs for the employees, bathroom wall graffiti, and floor plans, readers obtain a greater appreciation for Mr. Hendrix’s commentary when they feel as if they are part of the Orsk family. Indeed, one loses a sense of camaraderie without the visuals. The graffiti is not quite as menacing, the floor plan is not as innocuous, and the furniture is less threatening when one must use one’s imagination. This is all necessary for the horrors to come; without the visuals, the suspense level is not nearly as high as it should be. For this reason, it is one of the few novels where it might not translate quite as well to an audio format as a traditional novel.

To appreciate the atmosphere of the novel, one must read it in the proper setting. It is a novel best consumed in solitude and/or at night to capture the essence of the story. Conversely, sitting in a similar boxy horror surrounded by humanity – like an airplane – will reduce the apprehension and the fear one should feel reading this novel. Instead, that experience only heightens that satire because one understands exactly what it feels like to be trapped inside a structure with no clear exit strategy. Those readers who may be hesitating to read Horrorstör because of the horror may enjoy it more should they read it during the day, while traveling or on a shopping break, as it creates a completely different feel to the book than reading it in the dead of night in a silent house.

The story itself is not surprising in any way. It progresses at a quick pace with almost no character development or exposition. In many ways, it is a stereotypical horror story in which Mr. Hendrix gleefully implements all of the trademarks of such stories. Rather than causing issues for readers though because of its predictability or penchant for formulaic plot development, one can appreciate the story for what it is – a social commentary on modern-day marketing and retail sales. It has its moments of intense terror and gruesome discoveries, but mostly, readers will appreciate the tale of soulless big box shopping and its adoption of buzz words and phrases that serve to hide its true capitalistic nature. show less

Conceptually brilliant, this thriller incorporates hilarious satire around the Ikea concept, but with a zombie infestation. The Ikea knockoff is Orsk, with the same homey endless store layout and silly product names, and our heroine is Amy, a low level employee who is trying to transfer back from the Cuyahoga store to the one in Youngstown, but must suck up to her manager to get the transfer. He's a by-the-rules guy who's very worried about odd occurrences throughout the store overnight and enlists Amy and another employee to stay after closing time to figure out what's going on. Many, many scary things manifest themselves, and Amy, her manager Basil, and her co-workers discover the source: the Orsk store had been built on the grounds show more of an old prison/workhouse called the Beehive, run by an unsavory and cruel overseer. Yup, it’s coming from inside the phony rooms of the phony house. The two disparate elements do mash together in a satisfying way, but the highlight is the Ikea parody - the book looks just like a catalogue, and the evolution of the benevolent chintzy assemble-it-yourself particle board crap into implements of torture and punishment is eerily perfect.

Quote: "Amy had answered like an actual human being until she realized his questions were nothing more than an opening of a very boring lecture on the importance of human capital in Orsk culture." show less

Well, this was an absolute joy. The story was a reasonably standard haunted house story, but the presentation? the package? the writing? and the coolness of the horror elements? All top notch.

The characters were totally real, whether they were the retail lifers, the manager that had drank the corporate juice and was all-in, or the one that had essentially been a failure and was almost to the point of believing this was all they were meant for. The dialogue and situations and backstories all rang completely true.

And then there's the setting, the biggest character in this story, the Corporate American knockoff of Ikea. The way Hendrix uses all of the store's unique qualities raises this story well above most others in the same show more vein.

Absolutely a breath of fresh air. show less

This is a damned clever book. Taking place in an Ikea knockoff store called Orsk, Horrorstör is presented in a format that resembles a catalog that someone would get in the mail from one of these flat-box furniture stores, complete with order forms, product descriptions and drawings of furniture sold in the store (that slowly morph in appearance and description into products that have a more sinister feel to them). Everything about the actual look and feel on the book is spot on in creating the feel of one of these catalogs. Kudos to the design team at Quirk!

Possible Spoilers!

The story opens like any other day at a retail location, with employees plodding along to their job. Amy is a disillusioned Orsk employee, and she's trying to show more stay out of her manager, Basil's, way, as she's sure he is out to get her and she's trying to keep from being fired before her transfer to another location comes in. Hendrix really gets the feel of the various retail employees. Amy, the disillusioned clerk who feels she's suited for better; Ruth Anne, the overly energetic and bubbly employee that everybody likes; Basil, the over optimistic manager who tries to turn everything into a learning opportunity for his employees; and so forth. On this particular day at Orsk, tho, something has happened that has Basil worried. Someone has vandalized a couch on the sales floor overnight.

The story falls back on several familiar horror tropes, yet doesn't feel familiar when you read it. The Orsk store is built on top of an old prison (the Beehive) that was demolished over a century ago, and since it's construction, there has been more and more unusual activity happening in the store. Thinking it's no more than vandals that sneak into the store at night, Basil decides to bring in two employees to stay overnight (Amy and Ruth Anne), to try to catch the culprits before Orsk corporate managers arrive at the store in the morning to evaluate what exactly is going on. What follows is a slow decent into madness for the Orsk employees as their world and that of the Beehive begin to blur and collide inside Orsk.

Really, this is one of the most unique horror novels, in both presentation and story, that I've read in a while. I'm hoping that there will be more to this story, as the ending leaves a little, tiny gap for more to happen. Recommended!

Horrorstör: A Novel by Grady Hendrix will be released on September 23, 2014, from Quirk Books. show less

This anthology is great because not only did it introduce me to a bunch of new authors, but it introduced me to the HOWL Society (the "Horror-Obsessed Writing and Literature" society) which I'm very excited to learn more about - and maybe join one day??

Man, what a fun collection of stories! There is so much variety presented here (body horror, sci-fi horror, folklore, occult/cults, cosmic horror, hilarious horror, demons, monsters, evil twins, etc). Seriously, there's definitely something for everyone here - and luckily for me almost all of it worked! It just seemed like everyone involved had a great time writing these twisted tales, and their enthusiasm and creativity spills from the pages.

And speaking of the writers, it was awesome show more getting to meet a huge cast of new (to me) authors! Lots of talent here for sure. Oh, and several of the authors also provide illustrations for the stories which were so cool! Like I said, lots of talent.

I really did enjoy most of these stories, but some stand out ones for me were:

"Manufactured Gods" by P.L. McMillan - an epic blend of sci-fi horror, tech horror, and Egyptian mythology where a group of scientists go to explore the ruins of Earth and find a truly unsettling monster deep below ground.

"Red Punch Buggy" by B.O.B. Jenkin - at first read I found it to be a funny and disturbing little tale, but it has since burrowed into my brain and I can't stop thinking about it. Much like Scott Cole's Crazytimes, it uses humor mixed with shocking violence to wonderful effect.

"A Fistful of Murder" by Lindsey Ragsdale - a story about a man who finds a dollar bill with the word KILL written on it, and every time he looks at it he is forced to do just that. It's a simple idea but structured and played out beautifully.

"Suspended in Light" by Alex Wolfgang - another one that got under my skin and I can't stop thinking about. Creepy story of a women reviewing old film reels and unleashing a haunting force. I didn't fully understand the ending, but I enjoyed the ride. show less

Imagine if [b:Generation X|3378|Generation X Tales for an Accelerated Culture|Douglas Coupland|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1327348719s/3378.jpg|2851520] era [a:Douglas Coupland|1886|Douglas Coupland|https://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1264509011p2/1886.jpg] wrote a horror novel, where instead of sitting around every evening telling angsty stories, his characters discovered a den of horrors under the surface of the IKEA-ripoff big box store where they work.

The novel looks like an IKEA catalog (except take a look at the wall art):


with this as the back cover (which is pretty much what happens):


And I feel like the execution lives up pretty well to the promise. I was genuinely horrified/terrified when I was supposed to be -- like when Ruth show more Anne gouges out her own eyes while being dragged off by the penitents -- but also highly amused by the parody of the soul-killing world of retail customer service, management psychology, etc. Hendrix does a great job of balancing the two genres in an original way. show less

Yes, it's a gimmick - a haunted house novel (though more inspired by the likes of The Amityville Horror and Paranormal Activity than, say, Shirley Jackson) set in an IKEA ORSK furniture megastore, and the low-wage employees (sorry, "partners") forced to investigate it at the risk of their lives or lose their jobs. Cue a bunch of fairly obvious jokes about silly product names (often actually Norwegian insults) and corporate doublespeak - designing the whole thing as an almost perfect knockoff of an IKEA catalogue is just the tip of the iceberg.

But here's what Hendrix gets right, apart from actually being funny: He does what a good horror story should do and finds a pain point, the bit where he's not just trying to scare readers by going show more "BOO!" but actually taps into a real-life fear that anyone who's ever worked the so-called service industry can relate to. Where hard work is praised and demanded, but not actually valued in the currency we use to measure everything; where companies use words like "family" and "values" (and in some cases even "family values") until their employees aspire to furnish their own homes with their company's products (if they can afford them); where dreams of stardom and success are dangled carrot-like over a treadmill that just speeds up the faster you move. Basically, this is Barbara Ehrenreich's Nickel And Dimed left to rot in an Indian burial ground.

The hard work makes Orsk your family, and the hard work is free.

I put down the book, I look about my largely IKEA-furnished home, and a chill creeps up my spine. Not only did they make me want to buy it, they made me put it together myself. As if my time (and the occasional cut) cost nothing. How did they do that?

But, y'know, then you get our heroine triumphantly wielding an Allen key too. So 'sall good. show less