Hallowed: The Collection

by Donald White

Cloaked figures gather around a stone table, perusing ancient parchments. It is All Hallows’ Eve, and they have come to hear tales of great terror. How a ghostly seduction drives a man to madness. Another walks the world of dreams and must come to face his nightmares. A child braves the dark of night, seeking out the place of friendship lost. There is a tale of foul murder, frustrated by forces beyond the mortal ken. There is the story of a wicked man, who faces monstrous vengeance. They shall hear of a quest for ancient treasure, and the inevitable perils of greed. In another, a woman’s paranoia makes her easy prey for an infernal beast. How one man’s obsession grants him power to indulge. They shall learn the dangers of rage, and the awful end for those who give in. And finally, the story of a man doomed to die who spends his last few days in the pursuit of revenge.

What is sacred? And to what purpose do we dedicate our lives? For only through the shedding of blood, can we be truly clean…

282 pages, Kindle Edition

First published December 10, 2013

About the author

Donald White grew up on the coast of North Carolina with his mother and father, an older and a younger sister. He has a degree in Information Systems, having graduated with honors. He is also an avid reader of classical and modern literature. After ten years in the IT business, he decided to focus on writing. His work can be seen in the June 2012 issue of Down in the Dirt Magazine; the winter 2013 issue of Cemetery Moon Magazine; and the Grave Robbers and Memento Mori anthologies edited by James Ward Kirk. The following books are available: Hallowed: the Collection, Tales of Faygaea, Otherplace, Getaway and Afterworld.

Reviews

[Jeffrey Kosh · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a nice surprise!
A collection in the style of ‘Tales from the Crypt’, mixing together short supernatural tales with moral crime stories. I really enjoyed this one. The humor, the atmosphere, and the way the narrative is held together by a common theme of moral lessons.
My personal favorites are Driving Angry (excellent!), Sole Obsession (very funny), and Letting Go.
I’m going to read ‘OTHERPLACE’, a novel by the same author, next.

[Eisah Eisah · Rating 3 out of 5]

I received a free copy of this book in exchange for a non-reciprocal review.

The first thing I noticed about this book was the formatting. I had a mobi file, and there were no page breaks. The table of contents starts right under the copyrights (on the same page), and then the story starts right under the table of contents, instead of each having their own pages.

It opens with something to set the scene to connect the stories. That's an interesting enough concept since most short story collections like this don't bother to link them.
However, picturing a bunch of people in robes standing around a stone table and reading the tales can be pretty humorous at moments. Why?

Well, imagine a hooded figure standing in a circle with other cloaked figures, reading a scroll. Now, imagine that cloaked figure reading this from the scroll:
"That pool boy is sooo handsome."

I keep picturing the cloaked figure adding some sass into that line.

The author also threw in lines with exclamation points, which made it read more like a comic book instead of a horror story.
""So do I," she smirked, patting him on the rear!"
"Even in the darkness of the room, he could make out the face of a woman in the reflection behind him!"
"There, in the darkness of his bedroom, was the face of a woman staring back at him!"

There were some good ideas here. For example, in the second story the idea of having children jumping rope to a rhyme, and the rhyme changing to be a little more sinister each time could work well in a scary story.
But the execution was lacking.

For example, I spent much of the second story confused because it goes right into mentioning the "realms" and "the mist" without explaining anything about them. I had no idea what the setting was supposed to be or why the main character seemed to find it all normal. The text bounced back and forth without making it coherent, so he would be entering "the mist" and then suddenly he would be somewhere where kids were jumping rope.

"Lady Killer", I think, was one of my favorites both in the story and writing style. Both of the characters were interesting, and there could probably be a series written about Lisa. "The Hound" was also pretty good. "The Thing in the Shadows" was fine, too, although it had purple prose breaking up the story that I thought was unnecessary.

"Temple of the Life-Giver" felt like way too much was crammed into a short story.

The writing improved significantly from "Lady Killer" and on, but it still maintained the issues the previous stories did to a lesser extent. When I started reading the book, I thought I was going to end up giving it 2 stars after the first few stories. It started off with way too many italic thoughts, and the writing in the beginning didn't build suspense for me (you can see some of the quotes from above). The latter parts of the book felt a lot different. The characters were built up better in most of them and the writing was more polished.
Still, because the writing did get better later on I bumped it up to 3 stars. It would be great if an editor looked over the work to fix it up.