A review by lilibetbombshell
Oracle by Thomas Olde Heuvelt

adventurous challenging dark emotional mysterious sad tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

Note: You technically don’t have to read Olde Heuvelt’s book HEX in order to read Oracle, but I don’t think I would’ve understood the character of Robert Grim at all (nor some major parts of the book) without having read HEX first. So I’m going to advise you to read HEX first but I can’t make you do so. You do you.

Somehow, Robert Grim survived the events of the book HEX and has been living at the government’s leisure in a penthouse apartment in Atlantic City. Sure, he’s a miserable hermit of an alcoholic…but he’s alive. 

Then one day the government comes knocking at his door, telling him his service is needed because he’s the only one they have with a particular skill set. He doesn’t really have a choice to say no, and so they’re off for the Netherlands because apparently, a “ghost ship” that looks like it should be at the bottom of the ocean is sitting in the middle of a tulip field and some people have gone in the hatch and, well, disappeared. 

Robert Grim doesn’t know it yet, but he’s about to enter a moral, ethical, and political quagmire that will bring back some of his oldest and darkest memories, but will also maybe give him some closure on why he’s still here when so many have gone. 

Oracle isn’t as brilliant or compelling as HEX, but comparing these two books is a waste of time because we’re comparing two totally different kinds of horrors. Oracle is about more of an eldritch horror: This horror is older than old, incomprehensibly large, ineffable and implacable. It is life and death, baptism and damnation. The horrors in Oracle also cross over time. It’s a larger story with a larger cast of characters and more locales, so it takes more time to get the story going, to get the players moving, and to gain momentum. (HEX, if you’ll recall, was a faster vehicle because it took place almost entirely in one time period, everyone was contained to one village, and the evils were not as ineffable or incomprehensible). 

The premise is compelling, the characters are interesting and sometimes downright loveable, the plot is interesting, and once the story really gets going I became very invested in seeing how it all would end. Once I realized just how evil the evil was getting I got even more excited. The climactic scenes toward the end of the book are extremely well-written and almost cinematic in scale. Loved it.

I was provided a copy of this title by NetGalley and the author. All thoughts, opinions, views, and ideas expressed herein are mine and mine alone. Thank you.