Deadfall Hotel

By: Steve Rasnic Tem

Narrated by: Matt Godfrey

The Deadfall Hotel is where our nightmares go, it’s where the dead pause to rest between worlds, and it’s where Richard Carter and his daughter Serena go to rediscover life - if the things at the hotel don’t kill them first.

Think of it as the vacation resort of the collective unconscious. With the powerful prose that has earned him awards and accolades, Steve Rasnic Tem explores the roots of fear and society’s fascination with things horrific, using the many-layered metaphor of the Deadfall Hotel. Drawing inspiration from literary touchstones John Gardner and Peter Straub, Tem elegantly delves into the dark corners of the human spirit. There, he finds not only our fears, but ultimately our hopes.

Cover art by John Kenn Mortensen.

©2012 Steve Rasnic Tem (P)2018 Steve Rasnic Tem

Didn't captivate me.

I just couldn't connect with this book. My mind kept wandering. I couldn't figure out what the story was about. I am going to try it again at another time. I don't know if it was because I had just finished listening to another book and that story was still in my head. I was voluntarily provided this free review copy audiobook by the author, narrator, or publisher for my honest review.

Interesting Journey

Nervous to read a novel about a strange Hotel, I’m glad I went on the trip. Comparisons to The Shining faded away quickly as Deadfall Hotel is a much different animal. Most importantly, it is well written. I may try another of the author’s books. That said, there are issues. There is not a lot of tension in the plot and this is more of a journey story, not a traditional plot-exposition-climax thing. The Deadfall is an interesting place, but not all the time. The weakest part of the book is the protagonist. He may be an ”everyman,” but he’s a dull one. Not a lot of character to develop. It unfolds like a series of adventures in, outside or around the Hotel and some work better than others. I could not get onboard with the cat thing. Great voice artist.
I was given a free review copy of this book and have voluntarily left this honest review. 

Special Scary Fun

Man, I wanted to love this book. Give me a haunted hotel or house any day, and I want to immerse myself in it. This story had so much potential for greatness but fell a little short for me.

The setting is a hotel where monsters, ghosts, and creatures go on vacation or to retire. Deadfall Hotel is not what I would call a horror story. It was not scary but more like some of Stephen King’s books’ unusualness rather than scariness. There are supernatural elements like ghosts, monsters, a swimming pool that appears and disappears randomly, and the hotel has its own weird quirks.

Jacob, the current caretaker, was the hotel manager before Richard and his daughter, Serena, came to Deadfall Hotel. Richard takes the manager’s job and Jacob stays on as a mentor of sorts. There seems to be a history of former managers becoming caretakers and staying on to help care for the hotel’s “special” clientele. Throughout the book, Jacob shares parts of the story through his journal entries, and I found those parts the most revealing.

Richard, a single dad following the death of his wife in a house fire, responds to a job ad, and the next thing you know, he’s the new manager of the Deadfall Hotel, where apparently, no experience is required. Although, I don’t know what prior experience he could have had to prepare him to manage a hotel like Deadfall.

After Richard and his daughter settle in, it’s not long before Richard’s dead wife makes several cameo appearances; not so much to interact with Richard or his daughter, but more so with Jacob. Richard is the protagonist in the story, but his character is never fully developed. For a story with so much going for it, none of the characters were compelling. I never discovered a sense of who Richard or his daughter was. I felt lost at times because the story seemed to jump from scene to scene without smooth transitions and no strong sense of the timeline. A book needs a definite ending. This one sort of rambles on.

On the bright side, the narrator, Matt Godfrey, has a pleasant reading voice and did a fantastic job with each of the characters, particularly the voice of Jacob. I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Bottom-line, I would have liked: more depth to the characters, Jacob’s point of view instead of Richard’s, and that all the under-developed great ideas within the story could have been …well – more.

Audiobook was provided for review by the author/narrator/publisher.
Please find this complete review and many others at my review blog.
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A strangely interesting read

This is a very hard book to give a review on. If you are a fan of strange horror as I am I suspect that you will enjoy this gread. The characters are strangely interesting and engaging. I enjoyed this book a great deal. I was voluntarily provided a review copy that the author publisher or no writer at no cost to me. Our opinions are my own

Okay, but...

Normally this would be right up my alley.
Love the narrator. Matt Godfrey has the perfect young dad voice, but I just didn't like the character. Sure, he's been through a lot in life and is just drifting.
What I did enjoy, however, was the "Shining" vibes mixed with older Hollywood horror. There was just something off, and I can't quite put my finger on it.
 “I was given this free review copy audiobook at my request and have voluntarily left this review."