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katling's review
4.0
Manchester House would be classified as a rollicking good horror story. While haunted house stories are nothing particularly new, Kirch adds enough interesting elements both with the nature of the 'haunting' as well as the collective of characters who investigate it to keep the reader interested in what happens. Flashback scenes are used well and while there are a few passages that might make the squeamish squirm and skip a paragraph or two, they're not gratuitous and when you find out the nature of the 'big bad' in the end, they make sense. The collective of characters exploring the house are nicely flawed but not so much that they are unlikeable. In fact they seem nicely 'normal' with the sole exception of one particular character but his extraordinary status doesn't detract as he has his flaws as well.
Throughout the story the tension builds nicely and the foreshadowing is done lightly and does not beat the reader over the head. The exposition is done reasonably well and without disrupting the flow of the story thanks to one character being a sceptic and asking the same questions the reader might. However while the prose flowed smoothly, the dialogue in places seemed oddly clunky and forced, something that becomes more evident when you read it out loud. The ebook edition that I read (bought for the Kindle) had some spelling errors as well as a rather glaring editing error, probably from the conversion process, where what I presume are meant to be ellipses have been replaced with ampersands.
Overall a nice spooky read and well-recommended for those who like horror.
Throughout the story the tension builds nicely and the foreshadowing is done lightly and does not beat the reader over the head. The exposition is done reasonably well and without disrupting the flow of the story thanks to one character being a sceptic and asking the same questions the reader might. However while the prose flowed smoothly, the dialogue in places seemed oddly clunky and forced, something that becomes more evident when you read it out loud. The ebook edition that I read (bought for the Kindle) had some spelling errors as well as a rather glaring editing error, probably from the conversion process, where what I presume are meant to be ellipses have been replaced with ampersands.
Overall a nice spooky read and well-recommended for those who like horror.
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