A chilling slice of Alpine horror from the Hugo Award-winning Dutch author, Echo revels in its grimly gothic story of disfigured mountaineers, sinister villages and legends of human sacrifice.
It's one thing to lose your life - it's another to lose your soul.
When climber Nick Grevers is brought down from the mountains after a terrible accident he has lost his looks, his hopes and his climbing companion. His account of what happened on the forbidden peak of the Maudit is garbled, almost hallucinogenic. Soon it becomes apparent more than his shattered body has returned: those that treat his disfigured face begin experiencing extraordinary and disturbing psychic events that suggest that Nick has unleashed some ancient and primal menace on his ill-fated expedition.
Nick's partner Sam Avery has a terrible choice to make. He fell in love with Nick's youth, vitality and beauty. Now these are gone and all that is left is a haunted mummy-worse, a glimpse beneath the bandages can literally send a person insane.
Sam must decide: either to flee to America, or to take Nick on a journey back to the mountains, the very source of the curse, the little Alpine Village of Grimnetz, its soul-possesed Birds of Death and its legends of human sacrifice and, ultimately, its haunted mountain, the Maudit.
Dutch writer Thomas Olde Heuvelt is a Hugo Award-winner and has been hailed as the future of speculative fiction in Europe. His work combines a unique blend of popular culture and fairy-tale myth that is utterly unique. Echo follows his sensational debut English language novel, HEX.
Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton
ISBN: 9781529331776
Number of pages: 416
Weight: 623 g
Dimensions: 236 x 160 x 42 mm
ECHO is a compulsive page turner mixing supernatural survival horror and pulp adventure. You'll be happily rooted to your reading chair, safe (maybe) from the shadow of the Maudit - Paul Tremblay, author of A Head Full of Ghosts and The Pallbearers' Club
Echo is a haunting contribution to the literature of folk horror, and its scenes in the monstrous mountains convey a sense of uncanny dread that rises through terror towards awe. Few writers in our field have scaled such heights - Ramsey Campbell
Hallucinatory, eerie and terrifying, Echo is an engine of menace, an icicle in your heart. I've rarely been so frightened and yet so transported by a book. It left me breathless - Catriona Ward, author of The Last House on Needless Street
Can a place - say a mountain or a glen - be evil? Thomas Olde Heuvelt's long-awaited second novel ECHO delivers an emphatic 'Yes!' on a breath of icy air. His deft prose will have you absolutely frigid, sitting up straight and hearing every squeak in the house . . . and savoring every delicious frozen shiver - John F.D. Taff, Multiple Bram Stoker-Nominated author of The Fearing and editor of Dark Stars
Thomas Olde Heuvelt is a literary showman, proudly naming and displaying his influences before blending them into something unique and new. ECHO is a heartbreaking, intimate, and genuinely frightening epic - Shaun Hamill, author of A Cosmology of Monsters
Thomas Olde Huevelt has outdone himself with ECHO. The climbing sequences are Jon Krakauer-esque, and the narrative evokes the terror of a vintage Dan Simmons or Peter Straub novel. Thrilling, horrifying, supremely confident storytelling - Nick Cutter
I just scaled Mt. Olde Heuvelt and let me tell you, the view up here is absolutely terrifying. Reading ECHO caused me vertigo. The sense of dread inspired by this breathtaking novel - the dread of something monstrous wearing the face of someone we love - reaches so deep, I can still feel the lingering chill in my bones well after putting the book down - Clay McLeod Chapman
Evoking the sensibilities of Clive Barker's Sacrament while tinged with a Palahniuk-esque transgressive streak, this is, unquestionably, Thomas Olde Heuvelt's masterwork. Like a climber at the summit of a great mountain, this tale will chill you to the bone and leave you breathless - Ronald Malfi, author of Come with Me
Nothing about this book feels derivative... it's too uniquely terrifying. Partly that's down to the deft remixing of conventional horror motifs like undead birds and pitchforkwaving villagers, but mostly, it's the climbing sequences, so vividly rendered that you can almost feel the windchill... It's rare to find a horror novel that's genuinely hair-raising, but every chapter here introduces some new nightmarish detail that'll push you to switch on every light in your home. Fans of Paul Tremblay and John Ajvide Lindqvist, seek this out - SFX
Chilling, stealthy, horrendous, ECHO grips like an ice-pick and chills like a glacier - Daily Mail
An ambitious, capacious work... containing everything from psychological suspense to cosmic horror. With moments of wonder as well as terror, it looks likely to be one of the highlights of this year's horror scene - Guardian
Echo is horrific, poignant, creepy, brilliantly written-expect to see it on bestseller lists and year's end best lists, and hopefully awards consideration. Don't sleep on this one - Jeff VanderMeer
The most frightening opening scene ever written - The Guardian
4.5*
Echo stars with a bang. The first pages make you hold your breath and you don't know what's going on. Cryptic, creepy and fascinating. I knew it'll be a book I'll enjoy.
Nick loves the...
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A young girl, Julia, trapped in a snowbound chalet in a mountainous area of Switzerland, is under attack by ghostly apparitions. Her brother, Sam, rushing to save her, is struggling through unnatural levels of snow... More
One of the most memorable books I have ever read is HEX by Thomas Olde Heuvert. I remember the storyline and the characters so clearly, despite reading it six years ago, and I recommend it to everyone and anyone who... More
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