Hellboy: Emerald Hell

Hellboy Novels #7

by Tom Piccirilli

Hellboy comes to the crossroads in Enigma, Georgia, a small town best by strange occurrences. Sent to keep an eye on Sarah Nail, a young girl hiding from the curse of her family, Hellboy becomes entangled in the blood debt of evil mystical preacher, Brother Jester. Stuck between human malice and the mysteries of the occult, Hellboy comes up against an intrigue of ghosts, demon trees, talking bullfrogs, and a race of lost mutant children.

Genres: Horror, Fantasy, Comics, Fiction, Supernatural, Graphic Novels, Paranormal

216 pages, Paperback

First published February 12, 2008

About the author

Thomas Piccirilli (May 27, 1965 – July 11, 2015) was an American novelist and short story writer.

Piccirilli sold over 150 stories in the mystery, thriller, horror, erotica, and science fiction fields. He was a two-time winner of the International Thriller Writers Award for "Best Paperback Original" (2008, 2010). He was a four-time winner of the Bram Stoker Award. He was also a finalist for the 2009 Edgar Allan Poe Award given by the Mystery Writers of America, a final nominee for the Fantasy Award, and the winner of the first Bram Stoker Award given in the category of "Best Poetry Collection".

Reviews

[Quentin Wallace · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow, this was a good one. This may have been the best of the Hellboy novels so far.

If you have ever read A Choir of Ill Children by Tom Piccirilli, then you will probably love this book. It's practically the same setting. The term "a choir of ill children" is even used in the book, and there really IS a choir of ill children in the book as well.

In this one, Hellboy is called into the swamp to find a missing pregnant girl. To make things worse, her "father" has basically returned from the dead to find her, and he's enlisted the aid of two swamp-dwelling serial killers to help him. However, it's not really her father, it's the husband of her mother. He murdered her mother when he found her with child after he'd been gone on a tent revival trip.

The father of the baby is also looking for the pregnant girl, and he's got powers of his own. But there's a twist to that too.

Add in some blood sucking plants and killer gators, and you've got one hell of a novel. Great action and great atmosphere. The writing is superb.

If you're a Hellboy fan you'll like this one. Even if you don't like Hellboy, if you're a Piccirilli fan, this one is worth picking up. If you liked a Choir of Ill Children and wanted to find something similar here it is.

[Chad · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hellboy heads deep into the swamp to help a pregnant teenager escape her stepfather. He's a deceased preacher who refuses to die. Along the way he teams up with the preacher's protege, battling gators, plant monsters, demented hillbillies and shadow-casting dead preachers. It's a fun solo adventure for Hellboy.

[Iva · Rating 4 out of 5]

Насправді, це щирі 3.5, оскільки місцями проза була аж надто "простою" й "прямолінійною". Всесвіт Геллбоя загалом, бува, цим грішить, бо основою для захоплення має бути динаміка, масштабне тло, міти тощо, але де цю схематизацію витягає стильний візуал, там для прози вона змушує твір шкутильгати.
Особисто мені зайшло, читатиму ще прозового Пеклика. Може, далі спробую щось з антологій: ця новела була короткою, але у саме що короткій прозі те спрощення мало б менше даватись взнаки.

[Alex · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think my main problem while reading this book was that the author seemed more excited to have a story set in the swamps with evil preachers and witches than he wanted to write a Hellboy story. All of the descriptions of the swamp and life around the area felt like it had way more emphasis put into it than the character of Hellboy. And I know HB is usually a quite character until he gets pissed off, but something about him felt off here.

I also have to say I felt the same as Hellboy about the catfish in this novel everytime one showed up, the catfish joke didn't even pay off by the end. But that's how I felt about the plant descriptions and the story about what Bull Gators do to their prey and just the hunt for Sarah in general. The novel felt like we were running in circles around two plot points and then it all ended with a round table, repetitive discussion about who is who's father and why they actually aren't. The book felt too short for what the author wanted to do with it, but at the same time I probably would have washed out if it was longer.

I loved Fishboy Lenny though.

[Patrick Hayes · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a novel, not a comic book, from 2008 of which I was totally unaware until I saw it in a store. I stopped purchasing comic books for ten years and it was published during my absence from collecting. I'm so happy I saw this because it was great.

Hellboy is solo in the swamps of the South looking to help a man whose daughters have been cursed to silence. The supernatural hero must navigate the swamps and its denizens, both good and bad, to help these women.

That's all that needs to be said, because anything more would spoil this book's delights. The characters are outstanding. I'm not a fan of Southern supernatural tales which often come off as cliches, but I believed every man, woman, and monster and was riveted by each. The villain comes close to being a trope, but there is enough about him that is different to keep him being over-the-top. I really liked how his evil was resolved. Hellboy is great. He's very much in the "I just hit it to make it go away" mode and thinking his way through an obstacle is not easy for him.

I loved this book and absolutely recommend it to anyone who loves Hellboy or dark fantasy/horror.

[Mark · Rating 4 out of 5]

In Enigma Georgia a family is in trouble and Hellboy is visiting to find out more and offer a solution. This is a book and not a comic and surprisingly that works pretty good too at least this writer does offer a lot of mood and great descriptions and wicked ideas. The whole book is not actually a Hellboy kick 'em or sock 'em but he takes part in journey to save a pregnant young girl from a man who killed her mother and believes he is owed a family and a grandchild. This man used to be man of God and now he is a walking and talking excuse for his own failings and in doing so he brings along two angel faced and ice-cold killers.
The journey is full of details that have been done really good and the horrors that are encountered and lived are quite well brought to paper by this writer who clearly knows his skills. The Emerald Hell is something believed when you have read this book.
This book is so excellent I will continue to find a few more and see if they really remain this good. Really fun and enjoyable reads with an original idea about the story of Sirens who drawn men to their death.

I really enjoy the comics and their dark fantasy and horror themes the book does deliver that as well and in spades. Hellboy seems to enjoy the story as well is somewhat wary but recognises when something special has happened.

[Joe Lambert · Rating 3 out of 5]

Another fun Hellboy story. While I enjoyed this one, it probably will never be one of my favorites. It made me realize it's not just Hellboy that I love as a character, but also the world of Hellboy and the BPRD. It seems like Hellboy was a convenient character to make an otherwise independent idea make sense, since almost everything related to the larger HB lore feels tacked on. Plus there was some ideas that weren't adequately explored, and a couple reveals towards the end that didn't feel earned. Overall, good, but too average to be above 3 stars

[Blake Billings · Rating 5 out of 5]

I wasn't sure about this at first. It's so different than some other Hellboy stories I've read. By the end, though, I had absolutely fallen in love with this story. The voice actor was incredible and really brought life to each and every character.

This was a much more intimate story and I think that is really what grabbed me. There were still supernatural elements, but they felt entirely different. Overall, I would definitely suggest this story to any fan of Hellboy.

[Burton Olivier · Rating 4 out of 5]

Felt like such a departure from the other Hellboy novels that it threw me off at first but then I came to love it, great story.

Little nitpick about the printing though, I don't know why they made this shift but the format is different from the paperbacks I'm used to. The pages are wider and the font a little smaller so you get less pages and more words on each page and I don't think I like it.

[Daniel · Rating 5 out of 5]

This one was fantastic. The storytelling is strong and the characters stronger still. There is a despair and humanity to the evilest of beings in this book and the turnaround that ensues that almost brought a tear to my eye. The action is awesome but the thing that makes this book stand out is the attention to detail that the author adds. He draws you in and its very hard to put this book down. Not a huge, sweeping epic, but a powerful tale of the strange, the weird and the damned in even the most devout. Really excellent read. Ready for more!

Danny

[Billy · Rating 4 out of 5]

What I said in my review of Hellboy: The Bones of Giants about the difficulty of translating the visual medium of comics and the character of Hellboy to prose I think will hold for pretty much every one of these novels, but here again, it has been done very skillfully. If anything, Tom Piccirilli has done a better job of nailing the atmosphere and plotting of a Hellboy story than Christopher Golden did in The Bones of Giants, but I think his work with the character of Hellboy himself is lacking compared to Golden's. Here, Hellboy seems to be a good guy along for the ride with others who do more regularly to push the plot forward, compared to other characters who feel more three-dimensional; Hellboy does come alive here when he's agitated, but he's always been more than just a gruff exterior and a mean right hook, which he only just barely rises above here. While there are some shorter Hellboy stories without as much characterization, that track doesn't work in a novel, which is to its detriment, as it means I can't in good conscience round up my rating.

The plot in this one is what shines here. Hellboy travels to the rural swamps of Georgia to undo a curse on a family by saving pregnant teenager Sarah, who's run off and is being pursued by fallen, dark-magic-fueled traveling preacher (well, former preacher) Brother Jester, who was married to her mother but isn't her father, and his cronies. Hellboy pairs with John Lament, a backwoods man with powerful faith and magic of his own who also seeks Sarah for altruistic purposes (the twist is in the particulars of why, not a heel-turn), and along the way deals with witches, gators, and murderous flora, before everything culminates in a showdown at a lovely village within the swamp populated by kind folk and mutated kin (shoutout to Fishboy Lenny, he's a real one).

All in all, a great read and some nearly top-tier Hellboy if not for that characterization issue. Consider the four stars I've rated it four-and-a-half.

[Blake Adamson · Rating 5 out of 5]

How do you measure the strength of a writer? Surely, to this question there are few wrong answers. One way that I've come upon is to look at the writer's work with someone else's characters. If you can enjoy the story without prior knowledge of the the characters, then you're probably reading the work of a good writer.

Such is the case of Tom Piccirilli's foray into the universe of Hellboy, subtitled Emerald Hell.

Taking place in the backwoods of the deep south, this yarn finds the world's greatest paranormal investigator searching an otherworldly swamp for missing pregnant girls, alongside one of the missings' sweetheart, John Lament.

Piccirilli does a good job of introducing and fleshing out characters in the span of a few pages. Within three paragraphs, you know what many of the people you meet between the covers of this book are all about and why you should follow them. Lament wants to find his lost love, the wealthy Bliss Nail wants to lift the curse on his family, and the Farrell brothers want to do whatever they want at anyone's expense.

But the real star of the show is the sinister Brother Jester; formally a preacher, now an undead fiend, Jester hooks the reader in every scene he's a part of and it is he who serves as the antagonist of the novel.

But there are some rather... awkward moments. Usually involving backwoods talk put to paper and activities that one might almost call "stereotypical".

Regardless, Hellboy: Emerald Hell is a fine book for fans of Mignola's famous character and bibliophiles alike.

I myself read it in the span of a day. No exaggeration.

[Stjepan Lukac · Rating 1 out of 5]

As an avid fan of everything Hellboy and Mignola in general, I had previously read some of the HB novels and, for the most part, really liked them.

Emerald Hell on the other hand, at least to me, was dishearteningly incoherent. The characters are one-dimensional and even the ones you‘re supposed to care and root for, feel bland and purposeless.

Moreover the pacing of the story feels random and unconsidered. A lot of story-hooks are thrown in that end up leading nowhere or remaining entirely unresolved.

Though I really liked the idea for the setting, almost everything else about this story was regrettably disappointing.

[Gilbert Stack · Rating 3 out of 5]

Hellboy goes down to the Bayou to help out with some supernatural trouble and spends most of the novel slogging through swamps, being annoyed by people, and trying to keep some sort of undead ghost-thing from messing with a young pregnant woman. It’s an enjoyable story, but I couldn’t help but think when it was over that nothing about the resolution actually required Hellboy’s presence. He’s involved, but, in my opinion, totally unnecessary. That’s a strange thing to say about Hellboy.

[Nick Padula · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fun spooky Southern Gothic adventure that unfortunately underutilized its titular character and the world he’s from. I probably would have enjoyed it more if it was its own story separate from Mignola’s franchise. Perhaps my expectations were too high, Hellboy us my favorite comic book character after all and it’s hard to live up to the story and visuals of the graphic novels.

[The Geeky Viking · Rating 4 out of 5]

First time reading Tom Piccirilli but it certainly won't be my last. This is one of my favorite Hellboy tales, and has Hellboy travelling down south deep into the swamps to confront a preacher gone bad. Tom nails the Hellboy tone perfectly and the characters are well-drawn.

[Lynda · Rating 5 out of 5]

First rate.

[Bryan House · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved the characters in this book. I don't know too much about Hellyboy (other than the movies) but the book was much better than expected. Quick Paced and fun story!

[Derrick · Rating 2 out of 5]

So.... this was odd and dark. I enjoy the narrator and the character of the novels, but this was just a sad dark story.

[Graham Carter · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ending let the entire book down. no need for two thirds of the story if it was all going to come down to such a predictable ending!

[Caspar Vega · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wayne Mitchell's Hellboy voice rules.

[Matthew Parody · Rating 5 out of 5]

Good story.
Hellboy is always fun. A couple fun twists at the end.
Didn’t care for the “mirroring” bit at first but it grew on me toward the end.

[Zach · Rating 3 out of 5]

I’m a huge fan of ol Red, having read all his graphic novels, and this is my second try at a novel version. I didn’t love it. It was just fine. It was a fantastic setting for Hellboy to play around in. What’s not to like about a dark and creepy swamp filled with gators?

It’s called Emerald Hell and if you didn’t know that going in you’d be reminded about 7 or 8 times when the author uses that exact phrase to describe the swamp during the story. Got it.

It takes awhile to get to the action, which is odd since Hellboy is all about action. I didn’t think regular old gators made a realistic tough fight for HB since he’s a six and a half foot super strong demon. But they sure wore him out. In fact, other than tearing up a big plant monster all the baddies in this book seemed to have his number including the Big Boss.

Overall I found it uneven. The few action scenes there were decent. The book coulda used 50% more fights and 50% less descriptions of trees and plants. Hellboy was way more chatty than in graphic novels, which I get since it’s a novel, but he asked so many damn questions which isn’t in his character at all. He hits things and doesn’t worry too much about the details. That’s what I like.

[Ben Meneses-Sosa · Rating 5 out of 5]

In this adventure, Hellboy travels deep south of the United States to help a local man - whose family bears a curse - locate his heavily pregnant illegitimate daughter. The latter is also sought by a dark preacher who is the one that set the curse to her father and killed her mother who was his wife. It's the Hellboy universe colliding with Melrose Place (but in a good way)!

Unlike all the other Hellboy books that I've read, this one does not feature people from the BPRD although Hellboy is not short of colourful allies from the land of catfish and moonshine. Additionally, the mystery to be solved seems more intimate and in smaller scale than others faced by our hero in previous occasions. There's no impeding apocalypse or the threat of billions perishing but that doesn't mean the story is less engaging.

A must read for Hellboy fiends!

[Damon · Rating 3 out of 5]

I've read all of these Hellboy novels, because... Well, because I like Hellboy. None of them have really captured what's great about the character in the comics, and many, if not most, of them, have seemed more or less like the same story the author would have written if it was NOT a Hellboy novel, only with Hellboy tacked on. This one was not really an exception - it was okay, but it really didn't come alive at any point, and there was the overwhelming sense that you'd read the story before - you know exactly how it's going to come out, and while it's not NOT fun reading along until it does, there's not really any surprises. So I dunno - in this case, stick to the comics unless you're a die-hard fan.

[travis williams · Rating 5 out of 5]

I like pancakes

I gave this book five stars because not only did I enjoy this book but I'm a huge fan of hellboy I love hellboy and I loved his adventures and stories what I liked most about this book was the struggle hellboy had with his adversary because like usual his brute strength would help him win his battles but this time around he simply only had to wait for the enemy to destroy themselves sort to speak and what I disliked about this book was the confusion between what really happened to Sarah was she raped or not I wasn't sure by the end but I recommend this book to all fans and any new comers sorry for the spoilers but still a good read in my eyes

[Doug · Rating 3 out of 5]

Maybe it's the upcoming movie (I'd like to think I'm not that suceptible to marketing...but I probably am), but Hellboy has been on my mind lately. I requested what I thought was an HB trade paperback from the library, and unbeknownst to me, it turned out to be a novel. I'm past the midway point and have been reading it last thing before bed, and first thing in the morning. Now that vacation has officially started, I'm hoping to finish it quickly so I can move on to some other HB books I checked out.

[Haaley · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have read Emerald Hell before and I don't usually like to read books more than once. That being said I was just as enthralled with reading it the second time as the first. I love books that play a movie in my head. I love to be there in the action and feel like I am witnessing these events unfold. I am a big fan of Hellboy. I believe that Emerald Hell should be made into a movie- and if it isn't a movie with real people and actors then an animated one like Blood and Iron would be just as good.

[Roxy · Rating 3 out of 5]

I gave it three stars because the only character from the Hellboy universe was Hellboy himself. Zero mention of Liz or Abe or the BPRD. It was written as if Hellboy was just a one-off character in this story. While the story line was interesting, I think including at least either Abe or Liz, if not both, in the story could have made it even better.

[Craig · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a good story, but less of a Hellboy adventure and more of a Southern Gothic than one might expect. Hellboy is all on his own, without the usual BPRD companions and trappings. The setting is wonderfully creepy and convincing, and the characters are very well drawn. It's a quick, fun read.