“Your garden is their battleground.
After a new pesticide turns hedgehogs into flesh hungry maniacs, Harry must seek the help of a fox, a cat and a mouse if he’s to survive the night of the living hogs.
A Romero x Animals of Farthing Wood mashup like you’ve never read before.”
Title: Hedgehogs
Series: Standalone Novelette
Author: Iseult Murphy
Page Count: 65
Genre: Horror
Rating: 4.0/5.0
Date Read: July 14th, 2023
| This one hit my radar out of nowhere! A member of my extended book family in the online book community posted on Twitter she was looking for some cheap reads to spend some credit on at Amazon. Iseult Murphy threw her hat in the ring with Hedgehogs and we both thought it looked interesting so gave it a try as a quick little buddy read. If you aren’t already keeping tabs on my friend, you’re missing out as she continues to read some amazing books and does a great job in sharing her thoughts on those reads! You can find her blog at theshaggyshepherd.wordpress.com or on Twitter @dshaggyshepherd. I promise you won’t be disappointed! Back to the topic at hand being Hedgehogs. This was such a balanced mixture of part terrifying horror and cute little animal story. I never would have expected there to be a story with such a theme. However here we are an Iseult did a great job with such a short story. As short as this read is, I thought the pacing was done really well. I never thought it felt rushed. In my opinion that’s difficult to do in only about 65 pages. If you can imagine this mashup, I’d say this felt like a single episode of watching both The Walking Dead based around Animal Farm. I never thought something like that would work but it honestly did. The world building was also done well for a limited amount of pages to create for us. The author did a great job in giving us details in this animal world and getting the reader to feel the emotions they are dealing with. Scale has a lot to do with this, but we go through different regions (a farm, a road and perhaps a farm house). Our different cultures come in the form of different animal species as well. Even though I shouldn’t be surprised by this point, the character development was also done well in Hedgehogs. We see our protagonist Harry grow throughout the book, but several of the supporting characters such as Cassie, Tina, Merry and Roy all go through some points of growth as well. As a reader I couldn’t help but feel for Harry and his countless struggles in this story. But seeing his interactions and relationships along the way were very touching. I’d say if you want a uniquely blended combination of horror and animal cuteness, give this one a shot! It’s well worth the little time and money to give it a chance. I’d like to check out some more of Iseult’s works in the future as well thanks to this little tale! World Building 4/5 Pacing 4/5 Character Development 4/5 |
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