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The Unheld: A Novel
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30 copies available
U.S. only
Startling monsters and occult oddities abound in this chilling horror Western as a girl journeys across the haunted Montana Territory to rescue her father from an otherworldly creature.
Charlie’s life is a lonely one. While other twelve-year-olds are in school, she spends her days skinning the animals her mercurial father hunts in the woods just outside their cabin. And the woods and its twisted creatures—an owl with four wings, a boar with two heads, a fox with gills—are becoming stranger by the day.
One night, a nightmarish beast appears and drags Charlie’s father into the wilderness. To find him, she enlists the aid of two unlikely allies also in search of the beast: an Englishman with a connection to a mysterious occult society and a Northern Cheyenne policeman exiled for a crime he didn’t commit. Yet as the trio prepare for the confrontation with the beast, Charlie must decide if her father, a brusque man who has always withheld his affection, is ultimately worth saving.
With its blend of Western grit and supernatural menace, The Unheld is an unsettling and atmospheric horror novel about loneliness, human connection, and how we find each other in a world that seems designed to alienate. With this assured debut, Luke Larkin marks his arrival in the genre and proves the American frontier still harbors untapped stories in its shadows.
Charlie’s life is a lonely one. While other twelve-year-olds are in school, she spends her days skinning the animals her mercurial father hunts in the woods just outside their cabin. And the woods and its twisted creatures—an owl with four wings, a boar with two heads, a fox with gills—are becoming stranger by the day.
One night, a nightmarish beast appears and drags Charlie’s father into the wilderness. To find him, she enlists the aid of two unlikely allies also in search of the beast: an Englishman with a connection to a mysterious occult society and a Northern Cheyenne policeman exiled for a crime he didn’t commit. Yet as the trio prepare for the confrontation with the beast, Charlie must decide if her father, a brusque man who has always withheld his affection, is ultimately worth saving.
With its blend of Western grit and supernatural menace, The Unheld is an unsettling and atmospheric horror novel about loneliness, human connection, and how we find each other in a world that seems designed to alienate. With this assured debut, Luke Larkin marks his arrival in the genre and proves the American frontier still harbors untapped stories in its shadows.
336 pages, Hardcover
Expected publication August 25, 2026
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 84 reviews
March 16, 2026
If there is one thing about me it’s that I will always show up for a Western and if you slap horror into it? Immediate top tier genre status in my house. So when I picked up The Unheld by Luke Larkin I already knew it had potential. I did not expect to end it completely obsessed.This is a horror Western set in the haunted Montana Territory following a young girl named Charlie who has to rescue her father from a supernatural creature lurking in the vast brutal landscape. And when I say supernatural creature I mean something genuinely unsettling and unique not your typical recycled monster. The book blends Western grit with this creepy menacing feeling that just sinks into your bones.
I saw someone describe it as True Grit meets Buffalo Hunter Hunter THEY ARE SO RIGHT. It absolutely carries the stubborn heroine energy of True Grit while tapping into the slow burn dread and historical horror vibes of The Buffalo Hunter Hunter. And as someone who loved Red Rabbit !! Yeah. We are eating GOOD.I won’t lie it’s a bit slow in places, similar to Buffalo Hunter Hunter. This isn’t a nonstop action horror. It simmers a bit in places. But that pacing is intentional. By the time everything plays out I was completely locked in and emotionally wrecked in the best way.What really got me, though, was the loneliness threaded through the story. The frontier setting already carries isolation but Larkin leans into how loneliness makes people vulnerable how it can distort judgment, weaken resolve and even make you susceptible to things that shouldn’t have power over you. The supernatural horror works because the emotional horror is already there. When you’re cut off from community, from connection, from comfort, something inhuman creeping closer feels almost inevitable.But at the same time, the book doesn’t feel hopeless. There’s this undercurrent about human connection about how even in brutal landscapes, love and loyalty can anchor you. Charlie as a heroine embodies that stubborn refusal to give in. She’s tough without losing her heart, and that balance is what makes her unforgettable.If you don’t like Westerns, this probably won’t be a favorite for you. It leans hard into the genre the dust, the grit, the silence between words. But for me? It was perfect. I definitely say give it a try. Western horror is one of my top three genres for a reason and this scratched every itch.I already know I need a physical copy on my shelf when it releases in August 25 2026. This is one of those debuts where you just know the author is going to become a staple in the genre.
I saw someone describe it as True Grit meets Buffalo Hunter Hunter THEY ARE SO RIGHT. It absolutely carries the stubborn heroine energy of True Grit while tapping into the slow burn dread and historical horror vibes of The Buffalo Hunter Hunter. And as someone who loved Red Rabbit !! Yeah. We are eating GOOD.I won’t lie it’s a bit slow in places, similar to Buffalo Hunter Hunter. This isn’t a nonstop action horror. It simmers a bit in places. But that pacing is intentional. By the time everything plays out I was completely locked in and emotionally wrecked in the best way.What really got me, though, was the loneliness threaded through the story. The frontier setting already carries isolation but Larkin leans into how loneliness makes people vulnerable how it can distort judgment, weaken resolve and even make you susceptible to things that shouldn’t have power over you. The supernatural horror works because the emotional horror is already there. When you’re cut off from community, from connection, from comfort, something inhuman creeping closer feels almost inevitable.But at the same time, the book doesn’t feel hopeless. There’s this undercurrent about human connection about how even in brutal landscapes, love and loyalty can anchor you. Charlie as a heroine embodies that stubborn refusal to give in. She’s tough without losing her heart, and that balance is what makes her unforgettable.If you don’t like Westerns, this probably won’t be a favorite for you. It leans hard into the genre the dust, the grit, the silence between words. But for me? It was perfect. I definitely say give it a try. Western horror is one of my top three genres for a reason and this scratched every itch.I already know I need a physical copy on my shelf when it releases in August 25 2026. This is one of those debuts where you just know the author is going to become a staple in the genre.
April 2, 2026
You had me at Western horror.
Something is not right in the woods in Montana. First, the deer started to disappear. Then, other animals started to disappear, one by one, until the forest was silent. The animals started coming back, thankfully… but something was off. A boar with two heads. A snake with 12 legs. A bunny with horns and only air inside when you cut it open. A ominous, unknown force behind it all. This is where we find our three main characters, baffled and bewildered by the changing nature around them. It’s a bleak, haunting story about loneliness and what we can do to fight it. I never knew that hands could be so fucking scary!!!
I was obsessed with Charlie and everything she said/did/thought, but she definitely read more as a 14 or 15 year old. Patton’s character felt very removed which I understood as a necessity, but it was frustrating because he was so interesting.
“Loneliness is a beast onto itself.” Like… come on. That goes so hard. Tattoo it inside my lip. If you’re looking for an atmospheric, well developed debut horror, look no further. Solid 4/5
Something is not right in the woods in Montana. First, the deer started to disappear. Then, other animals started to disappear, one by one, until the forest was silent. The animals started coming back, thankfully… but something was off. A boar with two heads. A snake with 12 legs. A bunny with horns and only air inside when you cut it open. A ominous, unknown force behind it all. This is where we find our three main characters, baffled and bewildered by the changing nature around them. It’s a bleak, haunting story about loneliness and what we can do to fight it. I never knew that hands could be so fucking scary!!!
I was obsessed with Charlie and everything she said/did/thought, but she definitely read more as a 14 or 15 year old. Patton’s character felt very removed which I understood as a necessity, but it was frustrating because he was so interesting.
“Loneliness is a beast onto itself.” Like… come on. That goes so hard. Tattoo it inside my lip. If you’re looking for an atmospheric, well developed debut horror, look no further. Solid 4/5
Did Not Finish
June 12, 2026Unfortunately, I'm tapping out here at 30%. I was hoping that this would pick up and something more intriguing to keep me going would happen, but instead we get another character added and the book slows once again. Just not working for me, so I'm moving on.
Review of advance copy received from Netgalley
The Unheld
By Luke Larkin
Pub Date. Aug 25 2026
This is a hard book to rate. The concept is interesting. The writing is good because t the pacing is just too slow for me.
Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the opportunity to read this book early in return for my honest review.
By Luke Larkin
Pub Date. Aug 25 2026
This is a hard book to rate. The concept is interesting. The writing is good because t the pacing is just too slow for me.
Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the opportunity to read this book early in return for my honest review.
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
The following review was originally published online at Boss Rush Network (URL at the bottom of the review).
BOOK REVIEW: The Unheld Is Western Horror with Deeply Moving Characters and Writing
Title: The Unheld
Authors: Luke Larkin
Genre: Horror / Western
Publisher: Hyperion Avenue (an Imprint of Disney Publishing Worldwide)
Release Date: August 25, 2026
Price: Hardcover $27.99 (USD), Paperback–$18.99
Antonio Gramsci, while imprisoned by Benito Mussolini’s fascist regime, once wrote, “The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born: now is the time of monsters.” While this is technically a popular paraphrasing of his original statement, the quote beautifully captures the spirit of Luke Larkin’s 2026 debut novel The Unheld.
The western horror novel is set during the era of western colonial expansion into the North American interior. Railroad lines are built, towns established, and indigenous people displaced. Predatory capitalists force vulnerable populations to work at gunpoint, profiting from the cheap or often free labor. It is a world in transition, and cruel men consume and abuse those they can, leaving broken and hurting survivors in their wake. Deep within the backwoods of this monstrous world, a young girl named Charlie sets out to right some very personal wrongs, and in the process discovers a beautiful truth and a reason to live in the new world.
Despite being set in the past, readers will find Luke Larkin’s novel full of relevance to the world today, where courage and clarity are just as needed in our own “time of monsters.”
Synopsis
Publisher Hyperion Avenue describes The Unheld as follows:
“Startling monsters and occult oddities abound in this chilling horror Western as a girl journeys across the haunted Montana Territory to rescue her father from an otherworldly creature.
Charlie’s life is a lonely one. While other twelve-year-olds are in school, she spends her days skinning the animals her mercurial father hunts in the woods just outside their cabin. And the woods and its twisted creatures—an owl with four wings, a boar with two heads, a fox with gills—are becoming stranger by the day.
One night, a nightmarish beast appears and drags Charlie’s father into the wilderness. To find him, she enlists the aid of two unlikely allies also in search of the beast: an Englishman with a connection to a mysterious occult society and a Northern Cheyenne policeman exiled for a crime he didn’t commit. Yet as the trio prepare for the confrontation with the beast, Charlie must decide if her father, a brusque man who has always withheld his affection, is ultimately worth saving.
With its blend of Western grit and supernatural menace, The Unheld is an unsettling and atmospheric horror novel about loneliness, human connection, and how we find each other in a world that seems designed to alienate. With this assured debut, Luke Larkin marks his arrival in the genre and proves the American frontier still harbors untapped stories in its shadows.”
Deep Character Development in a Story All About Connection
While Larkin shines in many aspects of his writing, perhaps most notable is his ability to create deeply complex characters that feel real and relatable to readers. The characters of The Unheld are the misfits, outcasts, and forgotten; yet they carry inside the bright and warm flame of humanity. A young girl with a cruel father; a man who puts his life on hold because he can’t admit a truth that would allow him joy; a person estranged from family, trapped in a prison of regret. These characters, lost on their own, find shelter in each other, united by a common cause. Larkin’s ability to weave the lives of his textured characters together creates a beautiful tapestry upon which the story is told.
Larkin also succeeds in exploring the many sides of this troubled era. His characters represent the European colonizers who believe themselves on varying levels to be doing good in the world, represent the working class families just trying to scrape out a life, and represent the indigenous peoples trying to hold tightly to a way of life slipping from their hands. Somehow all of it comes together to tell not just an intricate account of westward expansion, but the emotional tale beneath it all—the violence of selfishness, greed, and loneliness.
A Writer’s Eye for Trauma
Complementing Larkin’s well-developed characters is his rare ability to capture the essence of trauma through his writing. As anyone who has survived trauma or who lives with PTSD will confirm, memory is not linear or continuous. The painful moments from the past often return in fragments, in chunks of memory not bound by the flow of time or logic. These painful remnants unearth regret, grief, longing, and confusion. Larkin’s writing artfully renders these experiences through powerful imagery. As someone still recovering from childhood trauma, I found this writing hit me deeply on an emotional and even spiritual level.
Of particular note is Larkin’s symbolic use of hands throughout the novel. Early on, characters shake hands, hold one another, pass objects, all carefully described by Larkin’s prose in such a way that we understand the individuals through the way they touch the world. However, as the narrative progresses, characters’ hands become disfigured or lost entirely, and animals begin to appear covered in hands, culminating in the terrifying monster made entirely of hands. That the way we touch and connect with one another becomes at once a terrifying symbol of danger and the greatest hope for connection is the perfect literary device for Larkin’s message to readers about the nature of loneliness and the human condition. After all, for a young child, it is the hands of a parent that deliver both the beating and the blessing.
The following section contains MAJOR SPOILERS. If you haven’t read the novel yet and wish to avoid spoilers, please skip down to the section marked “About the Author.”
Hope You Can Read Through Tears
The ending of The Unheld is the culmination of a deeply moving coming of age story. Charlie bravely pushes into a nightmare forest, back to the cabin of her family’s past, now transfigured into a hellish place of flesh and dismembered hands. She has taken this journey because she’s unwilling to let her father die until she’s told him what a “bastard” he is. She knows he was a lousy father and the only solace she may yet find is to tell him off to his face before he dies.
But at the end of her journey, through a supernatural ability called scrying, she is able to see her father’s life from his own eyes, to live his memories as if they happened to her. It is in this process that Charlie discovers empathy for her father, and ultimately forgiveness—not because he hadn’t wronged her, but because she now understands that he did the best of which he was capable. There’s a beautiful truth here at the end of Larkin’s novel. The trauma done to us may never be undone, but there always exists the possibility of healing, and with that a chance at wisdom. However awful our parents may have been, the truth remains that they were wounded, hurting, and sometimes altogether broken human beings too. This is the wisdom that comes with time.
The way Charlie defeats the creature and comes to peace with her father moved me to tears, and to eventually sitting in silence when I had finished the novel. I knew that the book had offered me not only beauty, but also a truth I could feel in my bones.
About the Author
Based in Missoula, Montana, Larkin is a queer author living and working in Big Sky country. He received his MFA in creative writing from the University of Montana, and his work can be found in places like HAD, Sonora Review, Popshot, Firewords, and elsewhere.
Larkin takes care in the “Author’s Note” at the end of his book to communicate that portions of the novel are written from the perspective of a Northern Cheyenne character living in the late 1800s, “a period of rampant violence and too-often untold injustices directed toward Native peoples…” (The Unheld, 331).In order to accurately tell these parts of the story, Larkin relied heavily upon the histories of John Stands in Timber (transcribed by Margot Liberty). He also credits the work of authenticity reader Adria L. Jawort, a gifted Northern Cheyenne writer and journalist.
Final Score
The Unheld, is at its core, is a coming of age story about a child who realizes that her deeply flawed father did the best he could for her, that he failed, and that sometimes at the end of grief lies empathy and forgiveness. The supernatural elements of the story and its ghastly monsters made of hands beautifully blend horror with the equally terrifying truth that to be alone deforms the soul, and that human connection is a need as deep as any biological hunger.
Luke Larkin is an immensely talented writer, and readers will enjoy the well-crafted prose as much as the expertly told story. If you’re looking for a summer read that will transport you out of the world of the familiar while moving the heart and edifying the soul, The Unheld is a must read.
Boss Rush Network is proud to give The Unheld a full five-star rating.
David Lasby is the Editor-in-Chief for Boss Rush Network. His favorite video games are The Legend of Zelda, Metroid, and the Aliens franchise. You can find him on Twitter to talk all things Nintendo, sci-fi / fantasy, and creative writing.
https://bossrush.net/2026/07/book-rev...
BOOK REVIEW: The Unheld Is Western Horror with Deeply Moving Characters and Writing
Title: The Unheld
Authors: Luke Larkin
Genre: Horror / Western
Publisher: Hyperion Avenue (an Imprint of Disney Publishing Worldwide)
Release Date: August 25, 2026
Price: Hardcover $27.99 (USD), Paperback–$18.99
Antonio Gramsci, while imprisoned by Benito Mussolini’s fascist regime, once wrote, “The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born: now is the time of monsters.” While this is technically a popular paraphrasing of his original statement, the quote beautifully captures the spirit of Luke Larkin’s 2026 debut novel The Unheld.
The western horror novel is set during the era of western colonial expansion into the North American interior. Railroad lines are built, towns established, and indigenous people displaced. Predatory capitalists force vulnerable populations to work at gunpoint, profiting from the cheap or often free labor. It is a world in transition, and cruel men consume and abuse those they can, leaving broken and hurting survivors in their wake. Deep within the backwoods of this monstrous world, a young girl named Charlie sets out to right some very personal wrongs, and in the process discovers a beautiful truth and a reason to live in the new world.
Despite being set in the past, readers will find Luke Larkin’s novel full of relevance to the world today, where courage and clarity are just as needed in our own “time of monsters.”
Synopsis
Publisher Hyperion Avenue describes The Unheld as follows:
“Startling monsters and occult oddities abound in this chilling horror Western as a girl journeys across the haunted Montana Territory to rescue her father from an otherworldly creature.
Charlie’s life is a lonely one. While other twelve-year-olds are in school, she spends her days skinning the animals her mercurial father hunts in the woods just outside their cabin. And the woods and its twisted creatures—an owl with four wings, a boar with two heads, a fox with gills—are becoming stranger by the day.
One night, a nightmarish beast appears and drags Charlie’s father into the wilderness. To find him, she enlists the aid of two unlikely allies also in search of the beast: an Englishman with a connection to a mysterious occult society and a Northern Cheyenne policeman exiled for a crime he didn’t commit. Yet as the trio prepare for the confrontation with the beast, Charlie must decide if her father, a brusque man who has always withheld his affection, is ultimately worth saving.
With its blend of Western grit and supernatural menace, The Unheld is an unsettling and atmospheric horror novel about loneliness, human connection, and how we find each other in a world that seems designed to alienate. With this assured debut, Luke Larkin marks his arrival in the genre and proves the American frontier still harbors untapped stories in its shadows.”
Deep Character Development in a Story All About Connection
While Larkin shines in many aspects of his writing, perhaps most notable is his ability to create deeply complex characters that feel real and relatable to readers. The characters of The Unheld are the misfits, outcasts, and forgotten; yet they carry inside the bright and warm flame of humanity. A young girl with a cruel father; a man who puts his life on hold because he can’t admit a truth that would allow him joy; a person estranged from family, trapped in a prison of regret. These characters, lost on their own, find shelter in each other, united by a common cause. Larkin’s ability to weave the lives of his textured characters together creates a beautiful tapestry upon which the story is told.
Larkin also succeeds in exploring the many sides of this troubled era. His characters represent the European colonizers who believe themselves on varying levels to be doing good in the world, represent the working class families just trying to scrape out a life, and represent the indigenous peoples trying to hold tightly to a way of life slipping from their hands. Somehow all of it comes together to tell not just an intricate account of westward expansion, but the emotional tale beneath it all—the violence of selfishness, greed, and loneliness.
A Writer’s Eye for Trauma
Complementing Larkin’s well-developed characters is his rare ability to capture the essence of trauma through his writing. As anyone who has survived trauma or who lives with PTSD will confirm, memory is not linear or continuous. The painful moments from the past often return in fragments, in chunks of memory not bound by the flow of time or logic. These painful remnants unearth regret, grief, longing, and confusion. Larkin’s writing artfully renders these experiences through powerful imagery. As someone still recovering from childhood trauma, I found this writing hit me deeply on an emotional and even spiritual level.
Of particular note is Larkin’s symbolic use of hands throughout the novel. Early on, characters shake hands, hold one another, pass objects, all carefully described by Larkin’s prose in such a way that we understand the individuals through the way they touch the world. However, as the narrative progresses, characters’ hands become disfigured or lost entirely, and animals begin to appear covered in hands, culminating in the terrifying monster made entirely of hands. That the way we touch and connect with one another becomes at once a terrifying symbol of danger and the greatest hope for connection is the perfect literary device for Larkin’s message to readers about the nature of loneliness and the human condition. After all, for a young child, it is the hands of a parent that deliver both the beating and the blessing.
The following section contains MAJOR SPOILERS. If you haven’t read the novel yet and wish to avoid spoilers, please skip down to the section marked “About the Author.”
Hope You Can Read Through Tears
The ending of The Unheld is the culmination of a deeply moving coming of age story. Charlie bravely pushes into a nightmare forest, back to the cabin of her family’s past, now transfigured into a hellish place of flesh and dismembered hands. She has taken this journey because she’s unwilling to let her father die until she’s told him what a “bastard” he is. She knows he was a lousy father and the only solace she may yet find is to tell him off to his face before he dies.
But at the end of her journey, through a supernatural ability called scrying, she is able to see her father’s life from his own eyes, to live his memories as if they happened to her. It is in this process that Charlie discovers empathy for her father, and ultimately forgiveness—not because he hadn’t wronged her, but because she now understands that he did the best of which he was capable. There’s a beautiful truth here at the end of Larkin’s novel. The trauma done to us may never be undone, but there always exists the possibility of healing, and with that a chance at wisdom. However awful our parents may have been, the truth remains that they were wounded, hurting, and sometimes altogether broken human beings too. This is the wisdom that comes with time.
The way Charlie defeats the creature and comes to peace with her father moved me to tears, and to eventually sitting in silence when I had finished the novel. I knew that the book had offered me not only beauty, but also a truth I could feel in my bones.
About the Author
Based in Missoula, Montana, Larkin is a queer author living and working in Big Sky country. He received his MFA in creative writing from the University of Montana, and his work can be found in places like HAD, Sonora Review, Popshot, Firewords, and elsewhere.
Larkin takes care in the “Author’s Note” at the end of his book to communicate that portions of the novel are written from the perspective of a Northern Cheyenne character living in the late 1800s, “a period of rampant violence and too-often untold injustices directed toward Native peoples…” (The Unheld, 331).In order to accurately tell these parts of the story, Larkin relied heavily upon the histories of John Stands in Timber (transcribed by Margot Liberty). He also credits the work of authenticity reader Adria L. Jawort, a gifted Northern Cheyenne writer and journalist.
Final Score
The Unheld, is at its core, is a coming of age story about a child who realizes that her deeply flawed father did the best he could for her, that he failed, and that sometimes at the end of grief lies empathy and forgiveness. The supernatural elements of the story and its ghastly monsters made of hands beautifully blend horror with the equally terrifying truth that to be alone deforms the soul, and that human connection is a need as deep as any biological hunger.
Luke Larkin is an immensely talented writer, and readers will enjoy the well-crafted prose as much as the expertly told story. If you’re looking for a summer read that will transport you out of the world of the familiar while moving the heart and edifying the soul, The Unheld is a must read.
Boss Rush Network is proud to give The Unheld a full five-star rating.
David Lasby is the Editor-in-Chief for Boss Rush Network. His favorite video games are The Legend of Zelda, Metroid, and the Aliens franchise. You can find him on Twitter to talk all things Nintendo, sci-fi / fantasy, and creative writing.
https://bossrush.net/2026/07/book-rev...
July 1, 2026
Twelve-year-old Charlie lives in a secluded cabin with her father who prefers little interaction with his only family member. Her days are spent in isolation, hunting the disturbing animals in the woods, until a horrible creature appears and then vanishes with Charlie’s father. With help from a purveyor of oddities and a Northern Cheyenne policeman, Charlie must decide if she wants to venture into the wilderness in order to save her father. An atmospheric western horror read told from multiple points of view.
This ARC was provided by the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
This ARC was provided by the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
3.8/5
The Unheld is an eerie western horror story that left me feeling like I had just woken up from a Twilight Zone-esque nightmare.
It follows Charlie, a 12-year-old girl who spends her time assisting her father with skinning the animals he brings home after a long day of working as a hunter. When the animals in the woods start to appear with strange deformities, Charlie's father finds it harder and harder to sell his acquisitions. Things, however, take a dark turn when a mysterious, disturbing creature appears and drags Charlie's father off into the woods. Determined to find him, Charlie sets off with two acquaintances: an exiled Native American police officer and a Curio shop owner who each have their own reasons for seeking the beast.
I am, admittedly, not a big fan of westerns, but this one appealed to me because it's from the perspective of a child. While there are actually multiple perspectives in the book, I found each one to be unique and well-written, with Charlie's being my favorite.
Charlie is a great main character in that you originally think she's going to be timid due to her quiet nature. Yet, as the story goes on, Charlie not only talks more, but her fierceness and determination become featured attributes that make her a strong and likeable character. Her curiosity and even her desire for retribution drive both her and the story, and she won't stop until she has found her father and given him a stern talkin' to. I love that she's written like an actual child with little education: she's clever, but not intelligent in the normal sense, which causes everyone to underestimate her. I LOVE an underestimated character.
I also liked Elias' character because even though he's kind of a selfish character using Charlie for his own purposes, he genuinely cares for her as the book continues. He's chasing a lead after years of wasting time, desperate to find his partner, but I never felt like he was planning on putting Charlie entirely in harm's way. He seemed to have a soft spot for the girl and eventually proves himself to be self-sacrificing and caring.
I loved the inclusion of Patton as a character in this book. He provides a really unique perspective that I feel was a wake-up call to me, who has little knowledge of the time in which they lived, and is a character who has basically nothing left to lose. He's already lost his family in some ways and can only hope that bringing his brother back will redeem him in their eyes, even though I doubt that's what would actually happen.
I want to talk about the creature, but I don't want to give too much away. For one, I do wish the description of him would have been a little more detailed, or maybe I just struggled to understand what all those features would look like together. However, what I DID picture, after he was described a little more in-depth, wasn't really scary in the typical sense, but it was super eerie and kind of grotesque in some ways. I also want to talk about one scene that has me questioning everything: the scene in the barn when the creature cowers. Umm did that make anyone else really sad and also like, "I love this creature." Maybe that's an unpopular or even idiotic opinion, but that moment of weakness made me feel so bad for this creature that we never really get to entirely understand. It might be like when I watch Godzilla movies or Jurassic Park, and they spend the whole movie trying to kill this hulking, destructive creature. And then when they finally hurt or kill it, I'm like, "that's just an animal - that's so sad and I hate this movie and those people now."
Basically, the point I'm trying to get at is that I overly empathize with just about any creature resembling an animal or bug and so my feelings about the creature might not be totally sensible. But also, is anyone else really interested in the thought of a prequel that explains how the creature came to be? I feel like that book would make me cry.
Charlie's dad is a good character once you understand his backstory. At first, he's just a grump, but then when you get that insight into his past, you see WHY he treats Charlie the way he does. The only thing I feel is that his total change of heart is a little sudden after he gets taken. I wish we had seen a little more light in him before, or maybe he was still a little grumpy at the end. But honestly, I'm being really picky and the book is totally enjoyable with Dada as is.
Overall, this book is weird when it comes to the creature, which I enjoyed, and really well-written when it comes to the story and characters. It has definitely stuck with me and made me eager to look into Larkin's other work.
The Unheld is an eerie western horror story that left me feeling like I had just woken up from a Twilight Zone-esque nightmare.
It follows Charlie, a 12-year-old girl who spends her time assisting her father with skinning the animals he brings home after a long day of working as a hunter. When the animals in the woods start to appear with strange deformities, Charlie's father finds it harder and harder to sell his acquisitions. Things, however, take a dark turn when a mysterious, disturbing creature appears and drags Charlie's father off into the woods. Determined to find him, Charlie sets off with two acquaintances: an exiled Native American police officer and a Curio shop owner who each have their own reasons for seeking the beast.
I am, admittedly, not a big fan of westerns, but this one appealed to me because it's from the perspective of a child. While there are actually multiple perspectives in the book, I found each one to be unique and well-written, with Charlie's being my favorite.
Charlie is a great main character in that you originally think she's going to be timid due to her quiet nature. Yet, as the story goes on, Charlie not only talks more, but her fierceness and determination become featured attributes that make her a strong and likeable character. Her curiosity and even her desire for retribution drive both her and the story, and she won't stop until she has found her father and given him a stern talkin' to. I love that she's written like an actual child with little education: she's clever, but not intelligent in the normal sense, which causes everyone to underestimate her. I LOVE an underestimated character.
I also liked Elias' character because even though he's kind of a selfish character using Charlie for his own purposes, he genuinely cares for her as the book continues. He's chasing a lead after years of wasting time, desperate to find his partner, but I never felt like he was planning on putting Charlie entirely in harm's way. He seemed to have a soft spot for the girl and eventually proves himself to be self-sacrificing and caring.
I loved the inclusion of Patton as a character in this book. He provides a really unique perspective that I feel was a wake-up call to me, who has little knowledge of the time in which they lived, and is a character who has basically nothing left to lose. He's already lost his family in some ways and can only hope that bringing his brother back will redeem him in their eyes, even though I doubt that's what would actually happen.
I want to talk about the creature, but I don't want to give too much away. For one, I do wish the description of him would have been a little more detailed, or maybe I just struggled to understand what all those features would look like together. However, what I DID picture, after he was described a little more in-depth, wasn't really scary in the typical sense, but it was super eerie and kind of grotesque in some ways. I also want to talk about one scene that has me questioning everything: the scene in the barn when the creature cowers. Umm did that make anyone else really sad and also like, "I love this creature." Maybe that's an unpopular or even idiotic opinion, but that moment of weakness made me feel so bad for this creature that we never really get to entirely understand. It might be like when I watch Godzilla movies or Jurassic Park, and they spend the whole movie trying to kill this hulking, destructive creature. And then when they finally hurt or kill it, I'm like, "that's just an animal - that's so sad and I hate this movie and those people now."
Basically, the point I'm trying to get at is that I overly empathize with just about any creature resembling an animal or bug and so my feelings about the creature might not be totally sensible. But also, is anyone else really interested in the thought of a prequel that explains how the creature came to be? I feel like that book would make me cry.
Charlie's dad is a good character once you understand his backstory. At first, he's just a grump, but then when you get that insight into his past, you see WHY he treats Charlie the way he does. The only thing I feel is that his total change of heart is a little sudden after he gets taken. I wish we had seen a little more light in him before, or maybe he was still a little grumpy at the end. But honestly, I'm being really picky and the book is totally enjoyable with Dada as is.
Overall, this book is weird when it comes to the creature, which I enjoyed, and really well-written when it comes to the story and characters. It has definitely stuck with me and made me eager to look into Larkin's other work.
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
The Unheld is another solid installment in the (what seems to be growing?) mashup genre of horror-western. I've really enjoyed my time over the past year with other entries in the genre like Buffalo Hunter Hunter and The Country Under Heaven becoming fast favorites of mine. I would probably rank this third among those, but that's not to say I didn't enjoy it. I do think I was a little less of a blank slate of a reader, having fairly recently read those, and also Nat Cassidy's When the Wolf Comes Home, which deals with a very similar focus on grief and problematic father figures (or that feeling of being "unheld", so to speak) while dealing with a horror amalgamation of those issues. So, there was a decent amount of ground that I felt I had recently tread, which is of no fault of the author, just coincidental in my reading habits.
What certainly wasn't familiar territory was the supernatural element of this. I don't want to spoil it, but the creature was very unique and unsettling, and in terms of layering grief/trauma with horror, a perfect fit. At times, it was a little hard to even comprehend, but at others, it was truly some of the most imaginative and creepy visuals words could conjure up. I do think that ebbed and flowed somewhat with the detail in the writing. I am very much a movie-in-my-head kind of reader, so when there was a gap in description detail, it threw me off. There were also occasional lapses in the storytelling's authenticity with plot conveniences, underutilized/forgotten aspects, etc. At one point, a character injures their hand pretty severely, and besides an occasional "it hurts," that's never really worked into the story as they do countless things that presumably would be affected by it. Later on, a character is unable to use one of their arms but still uses a rifle without any mention of how that might be impacted. Two characters arrive in town just "coincidentally" on the days things are really popping off plot-wise, when they just as easily could have been written to have been called there. Little misses like that, and an overall matter-of-fact tone without flourish, left things feeling a bit flat and the story a bit less alive as I was left wishing for richer detail.
Going into this, I did think to myself, "Oh, like True Grit with a horror element," but it ended up going in a totally different direction largely thanks to the characters who were actually much more refreshing for the setting. There's not much to compare beyond the main character, Charlie, a tough-as-nails young woman who doesn't let the unforgiving world she lives in hold her back. I also enjoyed Elias, the curioshop owner quite a bit, as he was very much an atypical character for a Western. Additionally, though I would have liked a little bit more of his perspective and for him to be a bit more dynamic as a character, Patton the Cheyenne policeman, was a good choice for a third POV. Elias' contacts in his occult society had a bit too much convenience to the plot in how they were written in and what they introduced. The society also made this feel a bit less like a hard Western, bringing in just a touch of fantasy, but that's not necessarily a bad thing.
I actually thought the pacing for this was good, especially for horror. I was surprised to see that criticism in some of the other early reviews. Things get creepy fairly quickly, and then they escalate soon after, with brief breaks for exposition, and the book as a whole didn't take long to get through. I thought the last few chapters were a bit too much "tell" instead of "show" with the resolution of the monster, but otherwise wasn't a bad route to go with things. For a debut novel, this was solid, and I would be happy to read more from the author and look forward to seeing where he goes from here.
As always, thanks for the ARC!
What certainly wasn't familiar territory was the supernatural element of this. I don't want to spoil it, but the creature was very unique and unsettling, and in terms of layering grief/trauma with horror, a perfect fit. At times, it was a little hard to even comprehend, but at others, it was truly some of the most imaginative and creepy visuals words could conjure up. I do think that ebbed and flowed somewhat with the detail in the writing. I am very much a movie-in-my-head kind of reader, so when there was a gap in description detail, it threw me off. There were also occasional lapses in the storytelling's authenticity with plot conveniences, underutilized/forgotten aspects, etc. At one point, a character injures their hand pretty severely, and besides an occasional "it hurts," that's never really worked into the story as they do countless things that presumably would be affected by it. Later on, a character is unable to use one of their arms but still uses a rifle without any mention of how that might be impacted. Two characters arrive in town just "coincidentally" on the days things are really popping off plot-wise, when they just as easily could have been written to have been called there. Little misses like that, and an overall matter-of-fact tone without flourish, left things feeling a bit flat and the story a bit less alive as I was left wishing for richer detail.
Going into this, I did think to myself, "Oh, like True Grit with a horror element," but it ended up going in a totally different direction largely thanks to the characters who were actually much more refreshing for the setting. There's not much to compare beyond the main character, Charlie, a tough-as-nails young woman who doesn't let the unforgiving world she lives in hold her back. I also enjoyed Elias, the curioshop owner quite a bit, as he was very much an atypical character for a Western. Additionally, though I would have liked a little bit more of his perspective and for him to be a bit more dynamic as a character, Patton the Cheyenne policeman, was a good choice for a third POV. Elias' contacts in his occult society had a bit too much convenience to the plot in how they were written in and what they introduced. The society also made this feel a bit less like a hard Western, bringing in just a touch of fantasy, but that's not necessarily a bad thing.
I actually thought the pacing for this was good, especially for horror. I was surprised to see that criticism in some of the other early reviews. Things get creepy fairly quickly, and then they escalate soon after, with brief breaks for exposition, and the book as a whole didn't take long to get through. I thought the last few chapters were a bit too much "tell" instead of "show" with the resolution of the monster, but otherwise wasn't a bad route to go with things. For a debut novel, this was solid, and I would be happy to read more from the author and look forward to seeing where he goes from here.
As always, thanks for the ARC!
Review of advance copy received from Publisher
The deer disappeared followed by wolves, bears, fish and were replaced by “mostly twisted up animals that nobody dared eat.” In the isolated Montana Territory, twelve year old Charlie lived with her father in an isolated, dilapidated cabin at the edge of the woods. Charlie’s father Webber, a hunter, had little regard for his daughter. She was a filthy outcast, loath to talk to anyone, especially to the townspeople of Plainsend. As the forest animals morphed into creatures; an owl with four wings, a boar with two heads, it was unlikely that Webber would be able to sell the meat of any animals he had bagged.
The railroad ended at Plainsend Station. Blasting through the mountains would create an opportunity to extend the railroad further west. Charlie wanted to be anywhere but here. She dreamed of traveling and leaving her uncaring father far behind. Unable to sell his so called tainted meat, subsistence living offered Charlie no escape from her isolation and loneliness. Charlie tricked Webber into teaching her the alphabet. She now could read the only book in the cabin, a red covered book of stories left by her mother.
Theodore Elias, an Englishman, arrived in town with the intention of opening a shop of curiosities. He came from New York having left “the Society” of mystics behind without providing a forwarding address. He was searching for someone and felt a pull directing him to go West. Charlie wandered among the unopened boxes and crates in Theo’s store. One of his oddities was his friend’s strange amber eyes which allowed him to see specters, images of the dead…his friend’s eyes floated in a jar. Charlie was fascinated…unafraid. “Theodore felt something for (Charlie)...sympathized with her. Or pitied her. For his part, he was “not running away, but toward something…he was certain he was in the right place.”
Charlie felt ghostlike living in her cabin. She conjured up images of the mother she never knew. She imagined touching her and felt that she was being held in return. She learned about her mother “while eavesdropping on her father’s dreams.” At the edge of the forest, in the dead of night, Charlie heard shuffling and noticed the shed door ajar. A human-like creature with “two many hands” was puttering about as though searching for something.
Patton was an exiled Northern Cheyenne policeman, ostracized for a crime he did not commit. A burlap sack hung from his pack as he traveled. “A force was at work on the land itself and had taken his brother.” Patton was searching, being guided by the contents of the burlap bag.
Soon it would be dark and the things that lived in the darkness would come…a beast made of human hands. One night, the beast kidnapped Webber, the hunter, dragging him deep into the unknown. Charlie experienced a plethora of troubling emotions including anger for not being raised up properly and feeling ignored and abandoned. Should she go on a quest to save her father? Was he worth saving?
Charlie’s spunk and determination was constantly tested. She possessed more mettle than her two cohorts, Theo and Patton. The trio’s obsessive search was controlled by the ever present appendages that come and go at will, some added, others claimed by the otherworldly beast. For a debut novel, Luke Larkin's horror western was filled with dread, dripped with discomfort, and was delightfully disturbing in the best possible way. The atmospheric horror will surround the reader in its embrace.
Highly recommended.
Thank you Daniela Escobar and Eloy Bleifuss Prados for the gifted ARC in exchange for an honest review.
The railroad ended at Plainsend Station. Blasting through the mountains would create an opportunity to extend the railroad further west. Charlie wanted to be anywhere but here. She dreamed of traveling and leaving her uncaring father far behind. Unable to sell his so called tainted meat, subsistence living offered Charlie no escape from her isolation and loneliness. Charlie tricked Webber into teaching her the alphabet. She now could read the only book in the cabin, a red covered book of stories left by her mother.
Theodore Elias, an Englishman, arrived in town with the intention of opening a shop of curiosities. He came from New York having left “the Society” of mystics behind without providing a forwarding address. He was searching for someone and felt a pull directing him to go West. Charlie wandered among the unopened boxes and crates in Theo’s store. One of his oddities was his friend’s strange amber eyes which allowed him to see specters, images of the dead…his friend’s eyes floated in a jar. Charlie was fascinated…unafraid. “Theodore felt something for (Charlie)...sympathized with her. Or pitied her. For his part, he was “not running away, but toward something…he was certain he was in the right place.”
Charlie felt ghostlike living in her cabin. She conjured up images of the mother she never knew. She imagined touching her and felt that she was being held in return. She learned about her mother “while eavesdropping on her father’s dreams.” At the edge of the forest, in the dead of night, Charlie heard shuffling and noticed the shed door ajar. A human-like creature with “two many hands” was puttering about as though searching for something.
Patton was an exiled Northern Cheyenne policeman, ostracized for a crime he did not commit. A burlap sack hung from his pack as he traveled. “A force was at work on the land itself and had taken his brother.” Patton was searching, being guided by the contents of the burlap bag.
Soon it would be dark and the things that lived in the darkness would come…a beast made of human hands. One night, the beast kidnapped Webber, the hunter, dragging him deep into the unknown. Charlie experienced a plethora of troubling emotions including anger for not being raised up properly and feeling ignored and abandoned. Should she go on a quest to save her father? Was he worth saving?
Charlie’s spunk and determination was constantly tested. She possessed more mettle than her two cohorts, Theo and Patton. The trio’s obsessive search was controlled by the ever present appendages that come and go at will, some added, others claimed by the otherworldly beast. For a debut novel, Luke Larkin's horror western was filled with dread, dripped with discomfort, and was delightfully disturbing in the best possible way. The atmospheric horror will surround the reader in its embrace.
Highly recommended.
Thank you Daniela Escobar and Eloy Bleifuss Prados for the gifted ARC in exchange for an honest review.
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
My thanks to NetGalley and Hyperion Avenue for an advance copy of this book of horror, telling of a young woman in the Old West, a time of violence and change, with much of this happening in the woods her father's hunts in, woods that have claimed her father for their own.
I was a big ready as a child but horror was not one of those genres that I really dived into. Alien, The Thing, sci fi horror, most everything else was not important. I would rather watch Abbott and Costello meet Dracula rather than anything devoted to the stories of Universal monsters. This changed as I aged, I think because I began to realise that true horror isn't always hidden. It can be in people you know, people you trust, those that fail you, and those that pretend to help. The horror of people watching while bad things happen, and being alone when these things do. Add in a little cosmic scares, and you have a story. Add in great writing and characters one cares about, one has a great story. The Unheld by Luke Larkin is a story of the Old West, old golds, old thoughts, family, and the debt we owe others, even when those people aren't really worth the cost.
Charlie is twelve years old, has no mother, no friends and no future. There is no brightness, just her stories of fables from her mothers book, and the looks that her father gives her when she disappoints him again. Charlie and her father live in the woods of the Montana territory, listening to the explosion of the train being built, skinning game and thinking about the strange woman she sees at night. Game though is getting scarce. Replaced by something that is different. Chickens living without heads. Pigs with deformities. An owl with four wings. A Puma with nothing inside its body. Not much use to the butcher, but of value to the owner of a new shop in town, a curiosity shop, owned by a curious man, willing to pay curiously large amounts of money for things. Which leads to Charlie's dad being grabbed one night, pursuing something that was destroying their shed. Charlie decides to save her father, and asks the business owner, a man who is quite familiar with the occult and a Cheyenne policeman to aid her. As the woods get darker, Charlie wonders if rescue is a good idea, that maybe her need for a reckoning with er father is fueling her pursuit, and leading her to doom.
A dark novel, that is extremely well-written and loaded with lots of themes and ideas. One gets a since right from the beginning where the book is and where it is going. A mix of True Grit, a little To Cast a Deadly Spell, and a bit of Cormac McCarthy. The book is told in different points of view that travel around in time, but this only adds to the story, the disconnect, and what is happening. The characters are very well-developed, especially Charlie and have a rich backstory that adds to them. There is a lot going on here, which adds to the unease of what is coming, and what might happen. Larkin has a strong sense of place. One can smell the mud, the stink of odd animals, feel the pain Charlie feels, and know what her future holds. There is a lot of sadness. A lot of what could have been and loss. And much about hands.
A book that enjoyed, a hybrid weird western, cosmic horror mix, that really works well. Spooky yet filled with lots of good characters, some disgusting stuff, and strong moments. A book I really enjoyed and one I still think about even a few days later. I look forward to more by Luke Larkin.
I was a big ready as a child but horror was not one of those genres that I really dived into. Alien, The Thing, sci fi horror, most everything else was not important. I would rather watch Abbott and Costello meet Dracula rather than anything devoted to the stories of Universal monsters. This changed as I aged, I think because I began to realise that true horror isn't always hidden. It can be in people you know, people you trust, those that fail you, and those that pretend to help. The horror of people watching while bad things happen, and being alone when these things do. Add in a little cosmic scares, and you have a story. Add in great writing and characters one cares about, one has a great story. The Unheld by Luke Larkin is a story of the Old West, old golds, old thoughts, family, and the debt we owe others, even when those people aren't really worth the cost.
Charlie is twelve years old, has no mother, no friends and no future. There is no brightness, just her stories of fables from her mothers book, and the looks that her father gives her when she disappoints him again. Charlie and her father live in the woods of the Montana territory, listening to the explosion of the train being built, skinning game and thinking about the strange woman she sees at night. Game though is getting scarce. Replaced by something that is different. Chickens living without heads. Pigs with deformities. An owl with four wings. A Puma with nothing inside its body. Not much use to the butcher, but of value to the owner of a new shop in town, a curiosity shop, owned by a curious man, willing to pay curiously large amounts of money for things. Which leads to Charlie's dad being grabbed one night, pursuing something that was destroying their shed. Charlie decides to save her father, and asks the business owner, a man who is quite familiar with the occult and a Cheyenne policeman to aid her. As the woods get darker, Charlie wonders if rescue is a good idea, that maybe her need for a reckoning with er father is fueling her pursuit, and leading her to doom.
A dark novel, that is extremely well-written and loaded with lots of themes and ideas. One gets a since right from the beginning where the book is and where it is going. A mix of True Grit, a little To Cast a Deadly Spell, and a bit of Cormac McCarthy. The book is told in different points of view that travel around in time, but this only adds to the story, the disconnect, and what is happening. The characters are very well-developed, especially Charlie and have a rich backstory that adds to them. There is a lot going on here, which adds to the unease of what is coming, and what might happen. Larkin has a strong sense of place. One can smell the mud, the stink of odd animals, feel the pain Charlie feels, and know what her future holds. There is a lot of sadness. A lot of what could have been and loss. And much about hands.
A book that enjoyed, a hybrid weird western, cosmic horror mix, that really works well. Spooky yet filled with lots of good characters, some disgusting stuff, and strong moments. A book I really enjoyed and one I still think about even a few days later. I look forward to more by Luke Larkin.
Review of advance copy received from Edelweiss+
Charlie lives alone with her father, a callous hunter who withholds affection from her to the point where the residents of Plainsend thing she might be feral. The meager pay her father makes from hunting in the woods has been cut even thinner now that the animals are turning up strange--sparrow-winged pheasants, cougars full of air, and owls with extraneous limbs. The butcher won't pay premium for this soiled meat, and Charlie and her father can't eat it unless they char it beyond recognition. When a curiosity shop opens in Plainsend and the proprietor promises to pay handsomely for unusual specimens, Charlie's father captures a beast made entirely of hands. The creature drags him into the woods, and while Charlie debates with herself on whether or not her father is worth saving, she learns that he isn't the only one who was after the beast.
'The Unheld' is Luke Larkin's debut novel, and what a debut! I'm a sucker for strong opening scenes, this starts with a girl and her father wheeling a two-headed hog into town. While the book has three main POV characters, Charlie is the perspective character we're with the most and she's quite the compelling heroine--part Mattie from 'True Grit', part relatably undersocialized girl yearning for belonging. Her struggle with her relationship with her father, especially after she meets someone who is willing to openly show her kindness so soon after meeting her, is tragic and emotional. I enjoyed Theodore's character as well; a character who starts off embodying the sort of shady charlatan you'd see in a Flannery O'Connor short story who ends up being the heart of the group. There aren't enough protagonists rocking a single gold tooth nowadays.
Beyond the characters, the novel's greatest strength is the beast that lies within its pages. I didn't know how to react when its form was first revealed to the reader, but the more that it was described (especially later in the book), the weirder and freakier it became. It's look, it's behaviors, it's calling cards... I never thought I'd find a creature made of hands to be scary, but after reading 'The Unheld' I don't think I'll be seeing cutesy Halloween decorations the same way. You'd think that it could be repetitive, but Larkin manages to keep his hand-horrors fresh, leading to a skin-crawling climax.
I'm not without criticisms for 'The Unheld', most of which I feel are the fault of this being a debut novel. Patton feels a bit disconnected as one of the main characters, which makes sense given his nature but does have him feeling a bit more secondary to Charlie and Theodore. The scrying feels a bit too 'magical' compared to the gritty, surreal horror of the beast. Charlie loses fingers early in the book but rarely does it seem to stop her or hold her back. However, these are all small things compared to what I loved about the book, which was just such a weird and wonderful ride that I can't help but recommend it. Whether you're a fan of horror that's influenced by Westerns or are curious about how spooky hands can be, 'The Unheld' is worth your time.
'The Unheld' is Luke Larkin's debut novel, and what a debut! I'm a sucker for strong opening scenes, this starts with a girl and her father wheeling a two-headed hog into town. While the book has three main POV characters, Charlie is the perspective character we're with the most and she's quite the compelling heroine--part Mattie from 'True Grit', part relatably undersocialized girl yearning for belonging. Her struggle with her relationship with her father, especially after she meets someone who is willing to openly show her kindness so soon after meeting her, is tragic and emotional. I enjoyed Theodore's character as well; a character who starts off embodying the sort of shady charlatan you'd see in a Flannery O'Connor short story who ends up being the heart of the group. There aren't enough protagonists rocking a single gold tooth nowadays.
Beyond the characters, the novel's greatest strength is the beast that lies within its pages. I didn't know how to react when its form was first revealed to the reader, but the more that it was described (especially later in the book), the weirder and freakier it became. It's look, it's behaviors, it's calling cards... I never thought I'd find a creature made of hands to be scary, but after reading 'The Unheld' I don't think I'll be seeing cutesy Halloween decorations the same way. You'd think that it could be repetitive, but Larkin manages to keep his hand-horrors fresh, leading to a skin-crawling climax.
I'm not without criticisms for 'The Unheld', most of which I feel are the fault of this being a debut novel. Patton feels a bit disconnected as one of the main characters, which makes sense given his nature but does have him feeling a bit more secondary to Charlie and Theodore. The scrying feels a bit too 'magical' compared to the gritty, surreal horror of the beast. Charlie loses fingers early in the book but rarely does it seem to stop her or hold her back. However, these are all small things compared to what I loved about the book, which was just such a weird and wonderful ride that I can't help but recommend it. Whether you're a fan of horror that's influenced by Westerns or are curious about how spooky hands can be, 'The Unheld' is worth your time.
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
I received this ARC from NetGalley in exchange for a fair review.
An unsettling historical fiction horror featuring the weirdest damn monster, The Unheld impressed me with its nuance and characterization.
Masterfully titled this Western / historical fiction horror utterly blew me away. Take the girl from True Grit (though she learns to be tough - and what a journey she takes) and add a really weird monster, and you have this stunner of a book.
It’s a horror book that those who don’t like too much gore can still get behind. There’s so much really WEIRD, unsettling stuff in this book, but it’s more uncanny than terrifying. It’s just so inexplicable and strange; I’m not going to tell you what it is, as when the monster starts showing more of itself you’re like *WHAT* (and that’s part of the fun).
The book isn’t the fastest-paced, but I was enthralled. It has the slow burn of a good historical fiction but the looming menace of atmospheric horror. The monster is almost a mystery because you’re not really sure what it is.
It’s also a story about fathers and daughters. There’s no abuse in the story, but there is emotional neglect. Yet, it’s also a story about forgiveness, growing up, and anger. There was a moment in this book that made me tear up. It’s as much a western horror as it is a story about family, and I loved the blend of the two.
The characters are great because most of them have an external conflict tied to the monster, and an internal one linked to something else. Sometimes these issues are conflated, which served to give them depth. I really like Charlie - I love a firecracker of a girl who comes into her own. And when she is paired with a minor character, Flora, their dynamic felt so realistic.
The two other point of views (though the majority of the book follows Charlie) were interesting too, though Patton - or his real name, Paveamohtse- had a more resonating arc. Elias was a little flatter in terms of character, but I still cared about his fate. I wanted a little more about the Society he was part of, though the fact it was vague - and the monster was so isolated to the woods - really helped with the realism and historical fiction feel. It’s clear this book wasn’t just wearing a Western Halloween costume - the details felt realistic, and nothing jumped out at me as anachronistic.
The BIPOC and LGBTQ+ representation was so good because it felt naturalized and fit the time period. Elias never explicitly states to anyone his relationship with Lawrence, though we, the reader, know of course via a flashback (and feel bad he has to keep it hidden), and Patton’s conflict colluding with colonial oppressors was as sad as it was based in reality. The book even brought in a bit of the Chinese workers used to expand the railway and how they were treated, and this book was able to tie the monster to colonialism and Western expansionism in such a subtle, impactful way.
This book for me was a sleeper hit. I thought it was an absolute gem. Highly recommended.
An unsettling historical fiction horror featuring the weirdest damn monster, The Unheld impressed me with its nuance and characterization.
Masterfully titled this Western / historical fiction horror utterly blew me away. Take the girl from True Grit (though she learns to be tough - and what a journey she takes) and add a really weird monster, and you have this stunner of a book.
It’s a horror book that those who don’t like too much gore can still get behind. There’s so much really WEIRD, unsettling stuff in this book, but it’s more uncanny than terrifying. It’s just so inexplicable and strange; I’m not going to tell you what it is, as when the monster starts showing more of itself you’re like *WHAT* (and that’s part of the fun).
The book isn’t the fastest-paced, but I was enthralled. It has the slow burn of a good historical fiction but the looming menace of atmospheric horror. The monster is almost a mystery because you’re not really sure what it is.
It’s also a story about fathers and daughters. There’s no abuse in the story, but there is emotional neglect. Yet, it’s also a story about forgiveness, growing up, and anger. There was a moment in this book that made me tear up. It’s as much a western horror as it is a story about family, and I loved the blend of the two.
The characters are great because most of them have an external conflict tied to the monster, and an internal one linked to something else. Sometimes these issues are conflated, which served to give them depth. I really like Charlie - I love a firecracker of a girl who comes into her own. And when she is paired with a minor character, Flora, their dynamic felt so realistic.
The two other point of views (though the majority of the book follows Charlie) were interesting too, though Patton - or his real name, Paveamohtse- had a more resonating arc. Elias was a little flatter in terms of character, but I still cared about his fate. I wanted a little more about the Society he was part of, though the fact it was vague - and the monster was so isolated to the woods - really helped with the realism and historical fiction feel. It’s clear this book wasn’t just wearing a Western Halloween costume - the details felt realistic, and nothing jumped out at me as anachronistic.
The BIPOC and LGBTQ+ representation was so good because it felt naturalized and fit the time period. Elias never explicitly states to anyone his relationship with Lawrence, though we, the reader, know of course via a flashback (and feel bad he has to keep it hidden), and Patton’s conflict colluding with colonial oppressors was as sad as it was based in reality. The book even brought in a bit of the Chinese workers used to expand the railway and how they were treated, and this book was able to tie the monster to colonialism and Western expansionism in such a subtle, impactful way.
This book for me was a sleeper hit. I thought it was an absolute gem. Highly recommended.
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
As a genre, when I hear 'Western Horror', I automatically think of Stephen Graham Jones, but this is an amazing debut as well. It's a remarkable fusion of horror and Western fiction, proving that the American frontier still holds fertile ground for stories both haunting and deeply human. Rich in atmosphere and emotional depth, this tale delivers unsettling supernatural chills while exploring the loneliness that can exist between even the closest family members.
Set in the Montana Territory during the waning days of the Old West, the novel follows twelve-year-old Charlie, whose isolated life revolves around helping her emotionally distant father hunt increasingly bizarre animals in the surrounding wilderness. Four-winged owls, two-headed boars, and other grotesque creatures hint that something unnatural has taken root in the forest. When her father is abducted by an ancient, otherworldly beast, she embarks on a perilous journey to rescue him alongside two unlikely companions: a mysterious Englishman tied to an occult society and a Northern Cheyenne lawman living in exile.
While the supernatural mystery provides plenty of suspense, The Unheld is ultimately a story about emotional isolation and the difficult work of choosing compassion over resentment. Charlie is an unforgettable protagonist. She's resourceful, resilient, and heartbreakingly vulnerable, everything I love in a strong female character. Her complicated relationship with her father gives the novel its emotional center, transforming what could have been a conventional monster hunt into a poignant meditation on love withheld, forgiveness, and belonging.
The Montana wilderness becomes a character in its own right; vast, beautiful, and quietly terrifying. His descriptions of corrupted wildlife and uncanny landscapes evoke both cosmic horror and classic frontier mythology without relying on gore. Instead, dread accumulates gradually, creating a persistent sense that the natural world has slipped subtly, irrevocably out of balance.
The supporting cast adds welcome depth to Charlie's journey. Each companion carries hidden burdens that mirror the novel's larger themes of exile, grief, and redemption, while their growing trust in one another offers moments of warmth amid the darkness. Larkin also thoughtfully incorporates the historical realities of westward expansion and Indigenous displacement without allowing those elements to overshadow the central narrative.
The author excels in slow-building tension over constant shocks, allowing character development and world-building to take precedence before the story accelerates toward a gripping and emotionally satisfying finale. That patience pays dividends, making the confrontations feel earned rather than merely spectacular.
Set in the Montana Territory during the waning days of the Old West, the novel follows twelve-year-old Charlie, whose isolated life revolves around helping her emotionally distant father hunt increasingly bizarre animals in the surrounding wilderness. Four-winged owls, two-headed boars, and other grotesque creatures hint that something unnatural has taken root in the forest. When her father is abducted by an ancient, otherworldly beast, she embarks on a perilous journey to rescue him alongside two unlikely companions: a mysterious Englishman tied to an occult society and a Northern Cheyenne lawman living in exile.
While the supernatural mystery provides plenty of suspense, The Unheld is ultimately a story about emotional isolation and the difficult work of choosing compassion over resentment. Charlie is an unforgettable protagonist. She's resourceful, resilient, and heartbreakingly vulnerable, everything I love in a strong female character. Her complicated relationship with her father gives the novel its emotional center, transforming what could have been a conventional monster hunt into a poignant meditation on love withheld, forgiveness, and belonging.
The Montana wilderness becomes a character in its own right; vast, beautiful, and quietly terrifying. His descriptions of corrupted wildlife and uncanny landscapes evoke both cosmic horror and classic frontier mythology without relying on gore. Instead, dread accumulates gradually, creating a persistent sense that the natural world has slipped subtly, irrevocably out of balance.
The supporting cast adds welcome depth to Charlie's journey. Each companion carries hidden burdens that mirror the novel's larger themes of exile, grief, and redemption, while their growing trust in one another offers moments of warmth amid the darkness. Larkin also thoughtfully incorporates the historical realities of westward expansion and Indigenous displacement without allowing those elements to overshadow the central narrative.
The author excels in slow-building tension over constant shocks, allowing character development and world-building to take precedence before the story accelerates toward a gripping and emotionally satisfying finale. That patience pays dividends, making the confrontations feel earned rather than merely spectacular.
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
Four stars with a +1 debut modifier for the awesome western horror of Luke Larkin, which captured my interest and held it for the entire book.
Told mainly from the point of view of 12-year-old Charlie, a silent girl who is neglected by her hunter father and lives on the fringes of a small Montanan town in the latter half of the 19th century, the book’s themes of loneliness and isolation is a constant among the other main characters. There’s Theodora Elias, an English investigator of the paranormal looking for his lost lover, and the Cheyenne Paveameohtse, whom everyone calls Patton, seeking his lost brother, whose death he is blamed for by his tribe. Each carries the dismembered hand of their lost one, which moves and crawls and points towards a direction, perhaps toward their loved one.
Charlie encounters these two as her father is captured by a mysterious beast, which drags it into the forest. When his hand is left at her doorstep, she knows the three of them are tied together with the beast that is responsible for the killings and disappearances.
There were two things I enjoyed the most about this book. The first was the character building, especially the inner world of Charlie, who wants nothing but a father’s love but is given his silence and neglect instead. Without a mother, Charlie is raised half feral, with no schooling except her father showing her one letter of the alphabet a day. Her longing for a parent’s touch, a gentle word, not just clean clothes and the ability to go to school with the town kids, is heartbreaking. The other element I enjoyed the most was the setting of Plainsend, Montana, with the all of the historical details that the author took pains to research. The portrayal of Patton, who worked as “Indian Police” at the Fort where his tribe was held captive by the Americans, was also heartbreaking. By associating with the American authorities, he is alienated from his people, who are now entirely reliant on the government dole to survive, their tribal lands and their freedom of movement curtailed. And when his brother disappears and his hand is left behind, Patton is exiled by his tribe, who believe he is the murderer.
I was not so excited about the “handsy” monster, although I think it worked in the end. Charlie’s ability to scry the individual memories of the hands’ owners was a neat touch, however. Overall, however, this is an A+ offering, in my humble opinion.
My profound thanks to NetGalley, the publisher, and author, for an early opportunity to read this book. All thoughts are, of course, my very own.
Told mainly from the point of view of 12-year-old Charlie, a silent girl who is neglected by her hunter father and lives on the fringes of a small Montanan town in the latter half of the 19th century, the book’s themes of loneliness and isolation is a constant among the other main characters. There’s Theodora Elias, an English investigator of the paranormal looking for his lost lover, and the Cheyenne Paveameohtse, whom everyone calls Patton, seeking his lost brother, whose death he is blamed for by his tribe. Each carries the dismembered hand of their lost one, which moves and crawls and points towards a direction, perhaps toward their loved one.
Charlie encounters these two as her father is captured by a mysterious beast, which drags it into the forest. When his hand is left at her doorstep, she knows the three of them are tied together with the beast that is responsible for the killings and disappearances.
There were two things I enjoyed the most about this book. The first was the character building, especially the inner world of Charlie, who wants nothing but a father’s love but is given his silence and neglect instead. Without a mother, Charlie is raised half feral, with no schooling except her father showing her one letter of the alphabet a day. Her longing for a parent’s touch, a gentle word, not just clean clothes and the ability to go to school with the town kids, is heartbreaking. The other element I enjoyed the most was the setting of Plainsend, Montana, with the all of the historical details that the author took pains to research. The portrayal of Patton, who worked as “Indian Police” at the Fort where his tribe was held captive by the Americans, was also heartbreaking. By associating with the American authorities, he is alienated from his people, who are now entirely reliant on the government dole to survive, their tribal lands and their freedom of movement curtailed. And when his brother disappears and his hand is left behind, Patton is exiled by his tribe, who believe he is the murderer.
I was not so excited about the “handsy” monster, although I think it worked in the end. Charlie’s ability to scry the individual memories of the hands’ owners was a neat touch, however. Overall, however, this is an A+ offering, in my humble opinion.
My profound thanks to NetGalley, the publisher, and author, for an early opportunity to read this book. All thoughts are, of course, my very own.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
Review of advance copy received from Netgalley
This is mostly the story of Charlie, a twelve-year-old girl who lives in the dusty frontier town of Plainsend, with her emotionally distant father. Something's amiss in Plainsend - the animals they hunt and sell in the town are often deformed, some in more horrible ways than others.
With the arrival of Theodore, a young man from London who brings a curio shop and whose motives are obscure; and Patton, a Cheyenne Native American who has taken up the mantle of an Indian 'police officer' and is living in exile from his own people and in disgrace among white men, the stage is set.
I wanted to like this story more, because I like Westerns and I like body horror. I had some difficulty getting into the prose. I feel like the story could have used an editor to help direct and trim the story. I noticed multiple instances when characters would mention something "they'd never seen before, but nonetheless seemed familiar". I also was able to count several times when the characters made choices and then were thrown into an action scene, only to immediately backpedal and ask themselves why they were doing this, and then try to reverse their prior actions immediately. This made me feel more as if they were puppets moving around to suit the plot rather than characters. Charlie also occasionally had multiple moments where she didn't seem to be acting characteristic of a 12 year old girl, and I managed to entirely forget that 2 of her fingers had been shot off because it really doesn't seem to impact her at all.
The prose also feels stilted and slowed in several places because of many flashbacks. They're integral to the emotional thread of the story and the ultimate reveal of the hand-beast's motives, but also, it felt as if they could have been woven more organically into the story.
It is shown at the end that the hand-beast preys on the lonely and those who long for comfort. But the resolution and defeat of the monster seems nebulous and confusing. I had trouble following the action. People start losing body parts randomly; the beast is as huge as a house and a meadow and then it's not. Charlie is saved, then she's saving someone else, then they're saving her again. The action was blurry to me, and I felt that the sudden resolution of Charlie's deadbeat father suddenly gushing a torrent of apology to her was a little un-won.
I did find Charlie's loss of her mother and her longing for her very keenly written. You really feel for her. I also thought her rivalry with Flora, a pretty little "proper" 12 year old girl, was very funny and touching in how it was written and how they eventually develop a friendship of sorts.
Thank you to Netgalley for a free ARC in exchange for my honest opinion!
With the arrival of Theodore, a young man from London who brings a curio shop and whose motives are obscure; and Patton, a Cheyenne Native American who has taken up the mantle of an Indian 'police officer' and is living in exile from his own people and in disgrace among white men, the stage is set.
I wanted to like this story more, because I like Westerns and I like body horror. I had some difficulty getting into the prose. I feel like the story could have used an editor to help direct and trim the story. I noticed multiple instances when characters would mention something "they'd never seen before, but nonetheless seemed familiar". I also was able to count several times when the characters made choices and then were thrown into an action scene, only to immediately backpedal and ask themselves why they were doing this, and then try to reverse their prior actions immediately. This made me feel more as if they were puppets moving around to suit the plot rather than characters. Charlie also occasionally had multiple moments where she didn't seem to be acting characteristic of a 12 year old girl, and I managed to entirely forget that 2 of her fingers had been shot off because it really doesn't seem to impact her at all.
The prose also feels stilted and slowed in several places because of many flashbacks. They're integral to the emotional thread of the story and the ultimate reveal of the hand-beast's motives, but also, it felt as if they could have been woven more organically into the story.
It is shown at the end that the hand-beast preys on the lonely and those who long for comfort. But the resolution and defeat of the monster seems nebulous and confusing. I had trouble following the action. People start losing body parts randomly; the beast is as huge as a house and a meadow and then it's not. Charlie is saved, then she's saving someone else, then they're saving her again. The action was blurry to me, and I felt that the sudden resolution of Charlie's deadbeat father suddenly gushing a torrent of apology to her was a little un-won.
I did find Charlie's loss of her mother and her longing for her very keenly written. You really feel for her. I also thought her rivalry with Flora, a pretty little "proper" 12 year old girl, was very funny and touching in how it was written and how they eventually develop a friendship of sorts.
Thank you to Netgalley for a free ARC in exchange for my honest opinion!
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
4.25/4.5 stars ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️💫
Ebook format 📖
ARC provided by the publisher in exchange for an honest review via NetGalley.
The Unheld has a mixture of western vibes, occult themes and cosmic horror?
Honestly, I have no idea how to describe the horror and beast in this book and I think that’s fantastic.
All I can describe about the beast is it terrorizes our main character and the small fronter town of Plainsend. Plainsend is in the Montana Territory, and the railroad is blasting its way through the territory and mountains.
Charlie, our main character, is a lonely 12-year-old girl living on the outskirts of this rural community.
I wanted to reach into this book and just give this character a hug. I loved her!
She’s being raised by her dad Webber, and he has little use for her besides chores and cleaning animals that he shoots. Webber is a drunk and a lousy father, but he’s an excellent hunter. He’s noticed that all the forest animals from deer, owls to wolves are being twisted and made odd.
Imagine a deer with a normal face but it’s got two mouths, the insides are just full of air, and the tail is an extra leg. This creature doesn’t exist in this book, but others do exist with oddities and mutations like this or even more strange.
One day, two strangers arrive in Plainsend at different times and Charlie is instantly fascinated by both.
One of the strangers is Theodore Elias and he’s arrived from New York City and has heard of the animal oddities. He wants to investigate what is going on and has a mysterious past.
The other stranger is Patton and he’s Cheyene. He’s been forced to work as Indian Police and it was interesting and sad to read about his story. He was a man with one foot in both worlds, white and Indigenous, and you can tell it broke him.
I don’t want to share too much about Theo or Patton’s past because it will ruin a bit of the plot and surprise of just where this book is going.
Speaking of plots, I do think this was a bit slow in some places, but I still enjoyed it. The action simmers for about half of the book until it goes off for a wild and adventurous ending for Charlie and others.
I think the supernatural horror in this was fantastic!
I’m not going to describe much about the beast because I think it’s best to go into this one a bit blind. I guess my hint would be it’s unusual and blew my imagination away.
If this is Luke Larkin’s debut novel, I’m excited to see what else he will write in the future!
Ebook format 📖
ARC provided by the publisher in exchange for an honest review via NetGalley.
The Unheld has a mixture of western vibes, occult themes and cosmic horror?
Honestly, I have no idea how to describe the horror and beast in this book and I think that’s fantastic.
All I can describe about the beast is it terrorizes our main character and the small fronter town of Plainsend. Plainsend is in the Montana Territory, and the railroad is blasting its way through the territory and mountains.
Charlie, our main character, is a lonely 12-year-old girl living on the outskirts of this rural community.
I wanted to reach into this book and just give this character a hug. I loved her!
She’s being raised by her dad Webber, and he has little use for her besides chores and cleaning animals that he shoots. Webber is a drunk and a lousy father, but he’s an excellent hunter. He’s noticed that all the forest animals from deer, owls to wolves are being twisted and made odd.
Imagine a deer with a normal face but it’s got two mouths, the insides are just full of air, and the tail is an extra leg. This creature doesn’t exist in this book, but others do exist with oddities and mutations like this or even more strange.
One day, two strangers arrive in Plainsend at different times and Charlie is instantly fascinated by both.
One of the strangers is Theodore Elias and he’s arrived from New York City and has heard of the animal oddities. He wants to investigate what is going on and has a mysterious past.
The other stranger is Patton and he’s Cheyene. He’s been forced to work as Indian Police and it was interesting and sad to read about his story. He was a man with one foot in both worlds, white and Indigenous, and you can tell it broke him.
I don’t want to share too much about Theo or Patton’s past because it will ruin a bit of the plot and surprise of just where this book is going.
Speaking of plots, I do think this was a bit slow in some places, but I still enjoyed it. The action simmers for about half of the book until it goes off for a wild and adventurous ending for Charlie and others.
I think the supernatural horror in this was fantastic!
I’m not going to describe much about the beast because I think it’s best to go into this one a bit blind. I guess my hint would be it’s unusual and blew my imagination away.
If this is Luke Larkin’s debut novel, I’m excited to see what else he will write in the future!
Review of advance copy received from Netgalley
The woods are dark and deep, but they're anything but lovely...
12-year-old Charlotte - Charlie - is lonely. Tucked away in the vast Montana Territory, she has only her mercurial father - who doesn't even seem to like her most days - for company, helping him process and skin the animals he hunts outside their isolated cabin. While the few other children in the nearby town go to school, there's little place for her - ragtag and unpolished as she is. And the animals her father hunts certainly don't help them seem less welcoming to the locals - the forest provides, but in the form of an owl with four wings, a boar with two heads, a fox with gills - an they're only getting stranger by the day.
On the day a nightmarish beast suddenly appears, dragging her father into the forest, Charlie must enlist the services of strangers if she stands any chance at getting him back: an Englishman with a connection to a mysterious occult society and a Northern Cheyenne policeman exiled for a crime he didn’t commit. But as the trio prepare for a western-style showdown with the beast, Charlie is faced with the horror that her affection-starving father may not be worth saving after all...
I'm not a frequent horror reader, but the idea of a western almost gothic horror with mutated animals, family regret, occult societies, the vastness of the prairie, and and unlikely found family drew me in - and days later, I'm still at the edge of the woods peering into the darkness for things with too many eyes and arms. This book is absolutely DRIPPING in the macabre, and is thickly suffused with the strange and ethereal air of a dark an dusty cabinet of curiosities bound by the endless isolation of a prairie barely touched by the hands of industrialization. The heavy themes are well-carried on the many backs and limbs of the unnatural creatures buried within the physical and metaphorical woods of Charlotte and all her friends, and the irresistible pull of knowing and unraveling kept me hooked.
For those looking for the lonesome pull of the west; the yearning of unrequited love in all its forms; the oil-slicked and chugging smokestacks of 'progress' into the untamed wilderness, this is a story you may want to read under the dim light of a fire, hands and arms tucked into clothing or blankets lest you find yourself with more appendages than you started with.
12-year-old Charlotte - Charlie - is lonely. Tucked away in the vast Montana Territory, she has only her mercurial father - who doesn't even seem to like her most days - for company, helping him process and skin the animals he hunts outside their isolated cabin. While the few other children in the nearby town go to school, there's little place for her - ragtag and unpolished as she is. And the animals her father hunts certainly don't help them seem less welcoming to the locals - the forest provides, but in the form of an owl with four wings, a boar with two heads, a fox with gills - an they're only getting stranger by the day.
On the day a nightmarish beast suddenly appears, dragging her father into the forest, Charlie must enlist the services of strangers if she stands any chance at getting him back: an Englishman with a connection to a mysterious occult society and a Northern Cheyenne policeman exiled for a crime he didn’t commit. But as the trio prepare for a western-style showdown with the beast, Charlie is faced with the horror that her affection-starving father may not be worth saving after all...
I'm not a frequent horror reader, but the idea of a western almost gothic horror with mutated animals, family regret, occult societies, the vastness of the prairie, and and unlikely found family drew me in - and days later, I'm still at the edge of the woods peering into the darkness for things with too many eyes and arms. This book is absolutely DRIPPING in the macabre, and is thickly suffused with the strange and ethereal air of a dark an dusty cabinet of curiosities bound by the endless isolation of a prairie barely touched by the hands of industrialization. The heavy themes are well-carried on the many backs and limbs of the unnatural creatures buried within the physical and metaphorical woods of Charlotte and all her friends, and the irresistible pull of knowing and unraveling kept me hooked.
For those looking for the lonesome pull of the west; the yearning of unrequited love in all its forms; the oil-slicked and chugging smokestacks of 'progress' into the untamed wilderness, this is a story you may want to read under the dim light of a fire, hands and arms tucked into clothing or blankets lest you find yourself with more appendages than you started with.
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
I loved this book; horror westerns are incredible and this one fits right in with all of the others. The atmosphere of loneliness and creeping dread, the abundance of mutated, freakish animals, and the possibility of something worse out in the forest had me on edge the whole novel.
While I'm not usually a fan of kids as main characters, I really liked Charlie. She was tough and braver than half the men in the book. Her loneliness and longing for something better made my heart hurt. I truly felt for this girl stuck in the this empty land with a father that could be so much better to her. I also enjoy Theodore, I always like the weirdo characters with a heart of gold and he had plenty of both between his oddities, background, and actions to look after Charlie. I do wish Patton had more connections with the rest, though it was understandable considering his circumstances, but his determination and dedication were admirable for someone deemed an outsider by society.
I have not read of a monster more upsetting and unsettling than this one in a while. This creature was wholly something I wouldn't want to see in my worst nightmares and the more they encountered it the worse it got. Between it and the crazy mutated animals, it was hard to imagine myself in Charlie's shoes going after her father. I know I would have turned tail and run for the hills.
The only real downsides to this book were that Charlie reads older than she is described, but that may just lean into her having to grow up faster since she is partly raising herself, and the pacing is a big issue; there were quite a few slow spots that could have used a bit more of a boost to keep up the intensity of the narrative.
But overall, I highly recommend this book to any horror or western fans, this is a great use of both genres.
Thank you NetGalley for lending me an early copy!
While I'm not usually a fan of kids as main characters, I really liked Charlie. She was tough and braver than half the men in the book. Her loneliness and longing for something better made my heart hurt. I truly felt for this girl stuck in the this empty land with a father that could be so much better to her. I also enjoy Theodore, I always like the weirdo characters with a heart of gold and he had plenty of both between his oddities, background, and actions to look after Charlie. I do wish Patton had more connections with the rest, though it was understandable considering his circumstances, but his determination and dedication were admirable for someone deemed an outsider by society.
I have not read of a monster more upsetting and unsettling than this one in a while. This creature was wholly something I wouldn't want to see in my worst nightmares and the more they encountered it the worse it got. Between it and the crazy mutated animals, it was hard to imagine myself in Charlie's shoes going after her father. I know I would have turned tail and run for the hills.
The only real downsides to this book were that Charlie reads older than she is described, but that may just lean into her having to grow up faster since she is partly raising herself, and the pacing is a big issue; there were quite a few slow spots that could have used a bit more of a boost to keep up the intensity of the narrative.
But overall, I highly recommend this book to any horror or western fans, this is a great use of both genres.
Thank you NetGalley for lending me an early copy!
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
The Unheld wasn't what i was necessarily expecting, but not in a bad way!! set in the late 1800s in Montana, Charlie is a 12 year old girl with an emotionally neglectful father. he's a skilled hunter who can no longer hunt sufficiently due to all the creatures slowing becoming... inherently wrong? think: a living coyote skin, an owl with four wings, headless chickens, a wolf with hands as its paws, etc.
i'll say that right away, the first quarter of the book sucked me in. we're introduced to a small but compelling cast of characters, all with their own issues but ending up to be related in one way: by the fact that they all have a hand of someone close to them, left behind by a beast that they either don't know or can't describe.
i didn't expect the amount of hands that this novel describes. the beast is hands, the cabin is hands, my mind is hands. the book did lull for me in the middle sections, but the last quarter i was once again sucked back in during the climax, which was intense and i felt like i was on a sketchy tilt-a-whirl county fair ride, but one i'd want to go on again and again. i also really, really love the ending. i think our character arcs wrap up quite nicely and realistically for them all, which is something i look for in my reads.
all that is to say, this book is a western horror that tenderly holds the themes of grief and rage and loss, all tied up in the complicated feelings that is simply being human. the yearning - both platonic and romantic - that characters had for their relationships was gut wrenching at times, because despite how raw it felt, it always felt relatable. ouch!
3.75 stars, rounded up to 4 on varying sites. a fun horror with a very creepy beast and a lovely, intimate cast of characters.
Thank you to NetGalley & the publisher for providing and e-ARC in exchange for an honest review.
i'll say that right away, the first quarter of the book sucked me in. we're introduced to a small but compelling cast of characters, all with their own issues but ending up to be related in one way: by the fact that they all have a hand of someone close to them, left behind by a beast that they either don't know or can't describe.
i didn't expect the amount of hands that this novel describes. the beast is hands, the cabin is hands, my mind is hands. the book did lull for me in the middle sections, but the last quarter i was once again sucked back in during the climax, which was intense and i felt like i was on a sketchy tilt-a-whirl county fair ride, but one i'd want to go on again and again. i also really, really love the ending. i think our character arcs wrap up quite nicely and realistically for them all, which is something i look for in my reads.
all that is to say, this book is a western horror that tenderly holds the themes of grief and rage and loss, all tied up in the complicated feelings that is simply being human. the yearning - both platonic and romantic - that characters had for their relationships was gut wrenching at times, because despite how raw it felt, it always felt relatable. ouch!
3.75 stars, rounded up to 4 on varying sites. a fun horror with a very creepy beast and a lovely, intimate cast of characters.
Thank you to NetGalley & the publisher for providing and e-ARC in exchange for an honest review.
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
I received a digital advanced review copy from NetGalley without obligation to write a review
THE UNHELD is a deft blend of historical American West, supernatural themes, magical realism, secret societies, and the weird western genres. As a debut novel, it is exceptional, and near perfect. Luke Larkin is a writer to watch. The characterization is rich and intriguing, and the storyline is not without well-detailed emotional moments.
The story is told from three different points-of-view from main character Charlie (a 12-year old girl living with an introverted and selfish father), and secondary characters Theodore (a member of a society dedicated to exploring and containing weird occurrences) and Patton (a Cheyenne police officer exiled from his family). They come together as all three are searching for a lost family member or lover - - all who were allegedly spirited away by a monstrous threat that manifests with severely mutated wildlife in the Montana wilderness of the 1800's. Larkin has the ability to vividly capture the emotions and mindset of these characters and memorably conveys that to the reader.
The story contains one of the most unique and disturbing monsters in horror fiction, and very symbolic. I can't say more without spoiling things.
At its core THE UNHELD is a rich depiction of loneliness and the importance of family and friends connections throughout life.
If there is any limitation to the novel, it's that Larkin offers no explanation as to the origins of the monster and why it picked this particular area of the American West to manifest. It also surprised me that none of the characters even speculated or discussed this. However, it did not ruin my reading enjoyment or appreciation for this excellent work of fiction.
THE UNHELD is a deft blend of historical American West, supernatural themes, magical realism, secret societies, and the weird western genres. As a debut novel, it is exceptional, and near perfect. Luke Larkin is a writer to watch. The characterization is rich and intriguing, and the storyline is not without well-detailed emotional moments.
The story is told from three different points-of-view from main character Charlie (a 12-year old girl living with an introverted and selfish father), and secondary characters Theodore (a member of a society dedicated to exploring and containing weird occurrences) and Patton (a Cheyenne police officer exiled from his family). They come together as all three are searching for a lost family member or lover - - all who were allegedly spirited away by a monstrous threat that manifests with severely mutated wildlife in the Montana wilderness of the 1800's. Larkin has the ability to vividly capture the emotions and mindset of these characters and memorably conveys that to the reader.
The story contains one of the most unique and disturbing monsters in horror fiction, and very symbolic. I can't say more without spoiling things.
At its core THE UNHELD is a rich depiction of loneliness and the importance of family and friends connections throughout life.
If there is any limitation to the novel, it's that Larkin offers no explanation as to the origins of the monster and why it picked this particular area of the American West to manifest. It also surprised me that none of the characters even speculated or discussed this. However, it did not ruin my reading enjoyment or appreciation for this excellent work of fiction.
Review of advance copy received from Netgalley
Rating 3.5
In most stories, the monster hides in the dark. In The Unheld, the darkness is the monster. The true horror isn’t only the animals stitched wrong or the shape moving between the trees, it’s the shadow that surrounds everything, pressing in from all sides.
Larkin delivers a Western braided with horror, myth, and a kind of emotional severity, set against the stark immensity of the Montana frontier. It unfolds like a meditation on isolation, slow, numbing, and hard to forget. But if you prefer horror packed with high-octane monster action, this story may feel too restrained.
The land feels alive, though not magical or whimsical. It is watchful. Resentful. The horror seeps in rather than striking outright. Much remains ambiguous, the creature, the land, the deeper metaphysical questions are never fully defined. Whether that feels powerful or frustrating depends entirely on the reader’s taste.
The strongest part of the novel, for me, is Charlie. She holds the story together. Her longing gives it a steady heartbeat. Her journey isn’t just about finding her father, it’s about facing a lifetime of emotional distance. That deeper, psychological thread lifts the story beyond a simple monster hunt. Her growth feels real because it’s hard-won, shaped by pain and sadness.
That said, the other characters, especially her father, remain deliberately hard to read. While that distance supports the novel’s themes, it also makes it harder to fully connect. We understand the wound more than we truly feel the loss.
Overall, The Unheld is cold and deliberate. It stays with you. It asks whether surviving without tenderness turns you into something monstrous. And it suggests the most dangerous wilderness isn’t the forest, but the emotional world we inherit.
In most stories, the monster hides in the dark. In The Unheld, the darkness is the monster. The true horror isn’t only the animals stitched wrong or the shape moving between the trees, it’s the shadow that surrounds everything, pressing in from all sides.
Larkin delivers a Western braided with horror, myth, and a kind of emotional severity, set against the stark immensity of the Montana frontier. It unfolds like a meditation on isolation, slow, numbing, and hard to forget. But if you prefer horror packed with high-octane monster action, this story may feel too restrained.
The land feels alive, though not magical or whimsical. It is watchful. Resentful. The horror seeps in rather than striking outright. Much remains ambiguous, the creature, the land, the deeper metaphysical questions are never fully defined. Whether that feels powerful or frustrating depends entirely on the reader’s taste.
The strongest part of the novel, for me, is Charlie. She holds the story together. Her longing gives it a steady heartbeat. Her journey isn’t just about finding her father, it’s about facing a lifetime of emotional distance. That deeper, psychological thread lifts the story beyond a simple monster hunt. Her growth feels real because it’s hard-won, shaped by pain and sadness.
That said, the other characters, especially her father, remain deliberately hard to read. While that distance supports the novel’s themes, it also makes it harder to fully connect. We understand the wound more than we truly feel the loss.
Overall, The Unheld is cold and deliberate. It stays with you. It asks whether surviving without tenderness turns you into something monstrous. And it suggests the most dangerous wilderness isn’t the forest, but the emotional world we inherit.
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
The Unheld is one of those quiet, creeping horror stories that builds atmosphere first and then lets the dread seep in slow. The Montana Territory setting isn’t just a backdrop, it’s alive in the worst way. Everything feels off. The animals, the air, even the silence. And the longer you’re in it, the more it presses in on you.
Charlie as a main character really worked for me. She’s tough in that way kids have to be when they grow up too fast, but there’s still this ache under everything she does. Her relationship with her father is honestly the heart of the story, and it’s not softened or romanticized. He’s distant, hard, and not easy to love, which makes her journey feel heavier. It’s not just about rescuing him, it’s about whether he deserves it at all.
The horror here leans more eerie and uncanny than outright gore. The creatures are strange in a way that feels wrong on a fundamental level, like nature has been twisted just slightly out of shape. That unease carries through the whole book. It’s not constant action, but it doesn’t need to be. The tension sits under your skin.
The side characters add depth without taking over. The Englishman and the Northern Cheyenne policeman both bring their own weight and history, and they make the journey feel bigger than just Charlie’s story. There’s a sense of something older and more occult lurking behind everything, which I wish had been pushed even further.
If I had one complaint, it’s that the pacing can feel a little slow in places, especially if you’re going in expecting more traditional horror beats. This is more about mood and internal conflict than nonstop terror.
Overall, it’s atmospheric, a little bleak, and quietly emotional in a way that sneaks up on you.
Charlie as a main character really worked for me. She’s tough in that way kids have to be when they grow up too fast, but there’s still this ache under everything she does. Her relationship with her father is honestly the heart of the story, and it’s not softened or romanticized. He’s distant, hard, and not easy to love, which makes her journey feel heavier. It’s not just about rescuing him, it’s about whether he deserves it at all.
The horror here leans more eerie and uncanny than outright gore. The creatures are strange in a way that feels wrong on a fundamental level, like nature has been twisted just slightly out of shape. That unease carries through the whole book. It’s not constant action, but it doesn’t need to be. The tension sits under your skin.
The side characters add depth without taking over. The Englishman and the Northern Cheyenne policeman both bring their own weight and history, and they make the journey feel bigger than just Charlie’s story. There’s a sense of something older and more occult lurking behind everything, which I wish had been pushed even further.
If I had one complaint, it’s that the pacing can feel a little slow in places, especially if you’re going in expecting more traditional horror beats. This is more about mood and internal conflict than nonstop terror.
Overall, it’s atmospheric, a little bleak, and quietly emotional in a way that sneaks up on you.
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
Unsettling dystopian horror novel set in the West during the period of western expansion
Animals have returned grotesquely changed. Charlie, a twelve year old girl, and her father, Webber, a mercurial, brusque man, have been hunters before this wild life change. When a beast appears and drags her father away, Charlie feels compelled to find him. With help from Theodore, a man from London with ties to an occult society, and Patton, a Northern Cheyenne accused of a crime he didn’t commit, Charlie sets out to find her father and save him from the beast. When finding her father and the beast, Charlie must decide if rescuing a man who has never shown her affection is worth it.
The book starts off with a bang - weird creatures, dark forces, and great atmosphere- but then morphs into more of an historical fiction tale - the beast remains to keep a sense of horror alive. As he writes in a note at the book’s end, the author was trying to give the Northern Cheyenne character, Patton, a important place in the story, to honor that part of the book’s western setting when white man advancement was changing the landscape for Native Americans. I appreciated reading this but was then confused as to what the novel was about. I think this created a weakness in the book
The book though is written well. Charlie is a well developed character as is Patton. The beast elements were somewhat scary - more so in the beginning than the end. I think I’d have preferred this to book to tackle Patton rather than Charlie and have developed more how Native American were challenged fur their heritage.
This is a book for lovers of a horror set in the West.
My thanks to NetGalley and Hyperion Avenue for granting me access to this ARC.
Animals have returned grotesquely changed. Charlie, a twelve year old girl, and her father, Webber, a mercurial, brusque man, have been hunters before this wild life change. When a beast appears and drags her father away, Charlie feels compelled to find him. With help from Theodore, a man from London with ties to an occult society, and Patton, a Northern Cheyenne accused of a crime he didn’t commit, Charlie sets out to find her father and save him from the beast. When finding her father and the beast, Charlie must decide if rescuing a man who has never shown her affection is worth it.
The book starts off with a bang - weird creatures, dark forces, and great atmosphere- but then morphs into more of an historical fiction tale - the beast remains to keep a sense of horror alive. As he writes in a note at the book’s end, the author was trying to give the Northern Cheyenne character, Patton, a important place in the story, to honor that part of the book’s western setting when white man advancement was changing the landscape for Native Americans. I appreciated reading this but was then confused as to what the novel was about. I think this created a weakness in the book
The book though is written well. Charlie is a well developed character as is Patton. The beast elements were somewhat scary - more so in the beginning than the end. I think I’d have preferred this to book to tackle Patton rather than Charlie and have developed more how Native American were challenged fur their heritage.
This is a book for lovers of a horror set in the West.
My thanks to NetGalley and Hyperion Avenue for granting me access to this ARC.
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
Thank you to NetGalley and Hyperion Avenue for the opportunity to read and review this book.
The Unheld is a split perspective historical horror novel set in the Montana territory during the westward expansion era. The heart of the novel is Charlie, a 12 year old who lives alone with her emotionally distant father on the edge of Plainsend (some of the promo materials for this book comp to True Grit, and I really think that it is a bold swing but definitely fits for Charlie). As strange creatures keep appearing in the woods surrounding their town and threatening their hunter livlihood, Charlie must grapple with the isolation she feels pressing in at home and in the only town she has ever known.
This book has some of the most unique horror creatures I have seen in a long time. The descriptions are otherworldly and unsettling all while being grounded in the familiar shapes of woodland creatures and human appendages. The last third of the book is full of unsettling and surreal imagery, and was honestly my favorite part.
That said, the earlier parts of the book have some issues with pacing and worldbuilding that made it a bit clunky. Patton felt like an underutilized character; there was such a huge opportunity for lore creation and social commentary with his background and it was largely wasted. I also wanted to learn more about Elias and The Society's exploration of strange phenomena (there were hints to it but not enough).
Overall, this is a pretty solid horror debut, and I will be keeping tabs on whatever Luke Larkin releases next. 3.5 stars rounded up.
TW hands??? I guess???? If disembodied hands give you the ick this is not the book for you.
The Unheld is a split perspective historical horror novel set in the Montana territory during the westward expansion era. The heart of the novel is Charlie, a 12 year old who lives alone with her emotionally distant father on the edge of Plainsend (some of the promo materials for this book comp to True Grit, and I really think that it is a bold swing but definitely fits for Charlie). As strange creatures keep appearing in the woods surrounding their town and threatening their hunter livlihood, Charlie must grapple with the isolation she feels pressing in at home and in the only town she has ever known.
This book has some of the most unique horror creatures I have seen in a long time. The descriptions are otherworldly and unsettling all while being grounded in the familiar shapes of woodland creatures and human appendages. The last third of the book is full of unsettling and surreal imagery, and was honestly my favorite part.
That said, the earlier parts of the book have some issues with pacing and worldbuilding that made it a bit clunky. Patton felt like an underutilized character; there was such a huge opportunity for lore creation and social commentary with his background and it was largely wasted. I also wanted to learn more about Elias and The Society's exploration of strange phenomena (there were hints to it but not enough).
Overall, this is a pretty solid horror debut, and I will be keeping tabs on whatever Luke Larkin releases next. 3.5 stars rounded up.
TW hands??? I guess???? If disembodied hands give you the ick this is not the book for you.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
Thank you Netgalley and Hyperion Avenue for the ARC. Review left voluntarily.
The setting, writing, and characters were good but there were a couple hurdles that detracted from my overall enjoyment.
For me, the biggest offender was just the amount of time it takes to get from one part of the story to the next, It felt like between every significant part of the story there is a mountain of backstory to get through. I understand why the backstory is there, it does add to the story, it all flows well and at no point did it feel like a chore for me to read, I just would have preferred some of this be trimmed down a bit to favor what is going on in the "present." At about 60% of the way through the book, it felt like I was at a spot that should have happened around 35-45% of the way though. These backstories were important to understand what the big bad is, so there is a fine line that is there and won't be the same reader to reader.
The other aspect that struck me was the few times where the personality of the MC would just flip, grow, or expand. Mainly just becoming someone that had a good read on someones personality or being much more articulate for being a child that had a lonely upbringing living in the woods.
Aside from those, the setting was awesome and things just don't feel quite right, even if you ignore the odd animals. I did a quick search to find something related to the monster in this, and didn't see anything. So props for that. It is a good read that will be more impactful for some than others, I feel like parents would be hit harder by the overall story than others, but what do I know here, i'm not a parent.
The setting, writing, and characters were good but there were a couple hurdles that detracted from my overall enjoyment.
For me, the biggest offender was just the amount of time it takes to get from one part of the story to the next, It felt like between every significant part of the story there is a mountain of backstory to get through. I understand why the backstory is there, it does add to the story, it all flows well and at no point did it feel like a chore for me to read, I just would have preferred some of this be trimmed down a bit to favor what is going on in the "present." At about 60% of the way through the book, it felt like I was at a spot that should have happened around 35-45% of the way though. These backstories were important to understand what the big bad is, so there is a fine line that is there and won't be the same reader to reader.
The other aspect that struck me was the few times where the personality of the MC would just flip, grow, or expand. Mainly just becoming someone that had a good read on someones personality or being much more articulate for being a child that had a lonely upbringing living in the woods.
Aside from those, the setting was awesome and things just don't feel quite right, even if you ignore the odd animals. I did a quick search to find something related to the monster in this, and didn't see anything. So props for that. It is a good read that will be more impactful for some than others, I feel like parents would be hit harder by the overall story than others, but what do I know here, i'm not a parent.
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
Several other reviewers described this book as a crossbreed between True Grit and [whatever creepy novel you want to insert here - H.P. Lovecraft came to my mind]. Absolutely true. Charlie, the 13 year old protagonist, lives in a crumbling cabin in the woods with her grumpy taciturn father. Nothing unusual about that - but we open on Charlie's dad bringing a two-headed hog to town like it's just another day to haggle with the butcher. Larkin slowly and carefully unfolds the stories behind the world he's created, a slow burn that worked perfectly for me. We slowly the meet the two other POV characters, a member of a magickal investigation society chasing his lost love, and an outcast Native hunter who's after the monster to find his own lost relatives.
I was intrigued enough to keep reading, but what really drew me in was the last third of the book, when we begin to see things from the monster's perspective. The monster in this case (without spoiling anything) is the collective grief of America. The sense of loss we have on an individual and on a national scale. Our desire to take anything we want, and when we lose it, to try to replace it without any feeling for others - whether it's our mother or Native American lands. This was a page-turner for sure, a spooky monster tale that entices you into reflection on the nature of loss, oppression, parenting, and love. This summer's Goth beach read for you to wrap up in black and devour under an umbrella while everyone else plays in the sun.
I was intrigued enough to keep reading, but what really drew me in was the last third of the book, when we begin to see things from the monster's perspective. The monster in this case (without spoiling anything) is the collective grief of America. The sense of loss we have on an individual and on a national scale. Our desire to take anything we want, and when we lose it, to try to replace it without any feeling for others - whether it's our mother or Native American lands. This was a page-turner for sure, a spooky monster tale that entices you into reflection on the nature of loss, oppression, parenting, and love. This summer's Goth beach read for you to wrap up in black and devour under an umbrella while everyone else plays in the sun.
July 14, 2026
The Unheld blends the harsh beauty of the American frontier with unsettling horror to create something that feels both familiar and wholly original. A mashup of Western novel, horror, and coming-of-age story, it shows there is plenty of unexplored terror lurking in the shadows of the Old West. From its striking opening, where we observe a father and daughter hauling a grotesque, deformed hog into town, Larkin immediately establishes a world where the unnatural has become disturbingly commonplace. At the center of it all is Charlie, a fiercely resilient child whose emotional journey is every bit as compelling as the supernatural environment that surrounds her. Her search for her newly missing father, who has rarely shown her affection, becomes an exploration of loneliness and the often complicated nature of familial love. Charlie is easy to root for, and her unlikely companions add warmth and humanity to an otherwise bleak landscape. The novel's monster is a triumph. Larkin crafts one of the most unique creatures, transforming something ordinarily human into a source of visceral dread. The horror escalates through vivid, unsettling imagery, balancing grotesque body horror with an almost folkloric sense of mystery. Atmospheric, emotionally resonant, and very strange, The Unheld is an exciting new horror installment, one capable of finding fresh nightmares in even the most familiar landscapes. Thank you Hyperion Avenue and NetGalley for the ARC. You can pick this one up August 25, 2026 wherever you buy your books!
Review of advance copy received from Publisher
Thank you to Hyperion for the advanced copy giveaway!
This was not my cup of tea. Ultimately I think the author was trying to do too many things in this book. Between the cursed wildlife, the Society, the beast who was a commentary on American loneliness, Charlie’s family dynamics and also child neglect, Patton’s betrayal of his Cheyenne roots, the homophobic backstory — the author was trying to do and say too many things, and did not tie them cohesively together. I was left wondering what message, exactly, he wanted me to leave with. I think the horror descriptions were extremely compelling, and I’m impressed by Larkin’s ability to imagine unique and shocking creatures. I was not happy with the resolution of Charlie’s story. I know she’s supposed to be an exceptional child, but some of the things she said, did, or thought were just not realistic for a 12 year old. I read that the author included Patton because he felt a western story in this time period would be incomplete without a Cheyenne character. Unfortunately, Patton very much read like an add on, and I feel like his story wasn’t even really very important to the plot.
Overall, I enjoyed the descriptions in this book but I think the messaging and narrative left a little something to be desired. Still a unique horror read.
This was not my cup of tea. Ultimately I think the author was trying to do too many things in this book. Between the cursed wildlife, the Society, the beast who was a commentary on American loneliness, Charlie’s family dynamics and also child neglect, Patton’s betrayal of his Cheyenne roots, the homophobic backstory — the author was trying to do and say too many things, and did not tie them cohesively together. I was left wondering what message, exactly, he wanted me to leave with. I think the horror descriptions were extremely compelling, and I’m impressed by Larkin’s ability to imagine unique and shocking creatures. I was not happy with the resolution of Charlie’s story. I know she’s supposed to be an exceptional child, but some of the things she said, did, or thought were just not realistic for a 12 year old. I read that the author included Patton because he felt a western story in this time period would be incomplete without a Cheyenne character. Unfortunately, Patton very much read like an add on, and I feel like his story wasn’t even really very important to the plot.
Overall, I enjoyed the descriptions in this book but I think the messaging and narrative left a little something to be desired. Still a unique horror read.
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
Western horror is my kryptonite. I see it, I grab it, I devour it. So when I picked up The Unheld, I was ready for dust, dread, and danger.
The beginning delivered. Webber and his daughter Charlie are living off the land, fending for themselves in the woods on the outskirts of town — self‑isolated, relying on each other for survival — until the woods start spitting out disfigured nightmare creatures. You’d think losing their main source of food would be the problem, but that ends up being the least of their worries. Because with these strange animals comes something much larger and much scarier, and it seems to be stalking their cabin. Webber manages to catch it and chain it up in his shed, even turning it into a money‑maker by selling tickets to townspeople who want to see the thing up close. But it breaks loose and drags Webber away.
The setup was killer. I was convinced I was holding a five‑star book.
And then… the vibes shifted. Hard. What began as western horror slowly morphed into historical weird fiction and started feeling like a mashup of Stranger Things and Pan’s Labyrinth. I held on, but I wasn’t fully sold. And when the ending went a little Wizard of Oz on me, I was out.
I finished it, but not happily. More like stubbornly.
If you’re into genre chaos, this might thrill you. I just wanted the western horror I was promised, not a surreal carnival of plot detours.
The beginning delivered. Webber and his daughter Charlie are living off the land, fending for themselves in the woods on the outskirts of town — self‑isolated, relying on each other for survival — until the woods start spitting out disfigured nightmare creatures. You’d think losing their main source of food would be the problem, but that ends up being the least of their worries. Because with these strange animals comes something much larger and much scarier, and it seems to be stalking their cabin. Webber manages to catch it and chain it up in his shed, even turning it into a money‑maker by selling tickets to townspeople who want to see the thing up close. But it breaks loose and drags Webber away.
The setup was killer. I was convinced I was holding a five‑star book.
And then… the vibes shifted. Hard. What began as western horror slowly morphed into historical weird fiction and started feeling like a mashup of Stranger Things and Pan’s Labyrinth. I held on, but I wasn’t fully sold. And when the ending went a little Wizard of Oz on me, I was out.
I finished it, but not happily. More like stubbornly.
If you’re into genre chaos, this might thrill you. I just wanted the western horror I was promised, not a surreal carnival of plot detours.
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
First and foremost, thank you to the publisher and Netgalley for the opportunity to read The Unheld as an ARC.
The Unheld is a Western horror sprinkled with some elements of grief, body horror, and hard truths regarding this country's history. The characters are diverse and the plot is compelling. The way Larkin describes the creature will make you shudder. It really is super gross to image a creature composed entirely of human hands.
My only qualm is in the way the main character, Charlie, is originally described. She is presented as not talking much, to the point where her own father does not really speak with her. However, we never really expand upon that, and she's actually speaking fairly regularly from the first couple chapters. I think it would have been interesting to delve into this selective muteness and see her purposefully overcome it and come into her voice.
I did also appreciate that the author touched on the treatment of Native Americans at the time this story would have taken place. The treatment by the government and the creation of reservation land, but also the attitude that your average white American may have held towards a Native person. How Patton needed to present a certain way to try to ensure his own safety, and his weariness at dealing with white folk feel realistic.
Overall, I did enjoy this story. It skews a little towards YA/coming of age since the main character is a little girl, but there's nothing wrong with that.
The Unheld is a Western horror sprinkled with some elements of grief, body horror, and hard truths regarding this country's history. The characters are diverse and the plot is compelling. The way Larkin describes the creature will make you shudder. It really is super gross to image a creature composed entirely of human hands.
My only qualm is in the way the main character, Charlie, is originally described. She is presented as not talking much, to the point where her own father does not really speak with her. However, we never really expand upon that, and she's actually speaking fairly regularly from the first couple chapters. I think it would have been interesting to delve into this selective muteness and see her purposefully overcome it and come into her voice.
I did also appreciate that the author touched on the treatment of Native Americans at the time this story would have taken place. The treatment by the government and the creation of reservation land, but also the attitude that your average white American may have held towards a Native person. How Patton needed to present a certain way to try to ensure his own safety, and his weariness at dealing with white folk feel realistic.
Overall, I did enjoy this story. It skews a little towards YA/coming of age since the main character is a little girl, but there's nothing wrong with that.
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