A review by librarianryan
Empty Eyes by Diego Agrimbau

dark emotional tense fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.5

 
War itself is horror. Abandoned children in an orphanage full of dead bodies is horror. Make one of these children kind of crazy and a cannibal, and the stakes are increased. But luckily, they are two children who don’t want to be cannibals and don’t want to live this life. However, it is World War II, and the children must find a way to survive. It turns out that the dead children of the orphanage aren’t really dead. Their spirits have been moved into the dolls with which they used to play. These dolls have empty eye sockets and once full the dolls come back to life. Their doll life is meant to help the children escape and punish the cannibal child whose parents owned the orphanage. This book is spooky, freaky, and horror laden. The illustrations are fantastic. They perfectly fit the mood. They range from being the gray browns that you would expect when speaking of World War II to the bright vivid colors of a children’s playroom overrun in blood. There are lots of trigger warnings in this book, the main one being cannibalism, but there’s also abandonment, death, destruction, a little bit of everything.  Wow, it’s sad to think about in broad terms (as I discovered while telling a friend about the story) but it’s a fantastic study in horror that I will be recommending for years to come. 
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