Hex
Hex a horror novel written by the multiple award-winning Dutch author Thomas Olde Heuvelt. The work came out for the first time in 2013. However, the writer edited it and changed both the setting and the outcome, later translating it into English. In 2016, it was published in the United States by Tor Libros and in the United Kingdom and Australia by Hodder and Stoughton. Later, it was published in thirteen other languages.
Reception by English-language readers was mostly positive. Soon, The work began to receive the attention of the most prominent newspapers and some world-renowned authors, as is the case of the king of horror, Stephen King, whom Hex He found it “Totally brilliant and original.”
Synopsis of Hex
Once upon a time, in small town America
The novel is found set in Black Spring, a quiet American town where, apparently, normality prevails. The adults work hard and the children work hard in school, and at night everyone eats dinner at home, tells each other news about their day, and has fun as a family. However, Black Spring hides a macabre secret beneath its surface.
The townspeople were cursed a long time ago by a vengeful entity. During the 17th century, a woman named Katherine Van Wyler was convicted of witchcraft. The citizens accused her of having brought her young son from the dead, so she was—both literally and metaphorically—signed to an eternity in hell. But the lady did not stop there.
Back in Black Spring
The fact that Nocturna Ediciones has left the original title of the novel in its Spanish edition is delightful, given that the word hex It can mean both “hex” and “evil eye.””. This semantic game is closely related to the plot, which could shed some clues for readers who take the opportunity to read this work.
To begin with, instead of staying in your resting place, Katherine gets up and begins to wander through the town while muttering curses with his cooked lips. Everyone who hears her becomes a prisoner of her particular torment, fearing the moment when the witch opens her eyes, also joined by seams because of her punishment. Still, the inhabitants of Black Spring have become accustomed to this presence.
A town that resists opening to the world
Today, Katherine exists as another inhabitant of Black Spring., where the founders imposed a sort of silent quarantine to keep outsiders ignorant of what was happening in their lands. However, In this world completely invaded by technology, where updating social networks is more important than anything else, Young people have stopped believing in the paranormal.
Even so, the most senior citizens of the town were fully committed to safeguarding this secret. This is because they think that, If someone realized that Katherine Van Wyler's ghost was haunting their people, most likely very soon they will be surrounded by charlatans horror lovers or scientists eager to demonstrate their superiority.
An original mix between fiction and reality
On the other hand, the latter could resort to something even worse: wanting to open that mouth and those cooked eyes on their own. In that case, they believe that all hell would break loose, since, according to legend, if the prophecy about Katherine's Evil Eye were to come true, everyone would be in danger of death. To avoid the catastrophe, the residents watch the witch's steps with an advanced surveillance system.
High technology and a team dedicated full time to erasing traces that could be within the reach of prying eyes creates a peculiar realism within the plot. It's not often that a story about witches, pacts and curses is accompanied by the scope of human development. In this sense, Thomas Olde Heuvelt manages to create a system that allows the specter to be hidden in plain sight.
Now you see it, now you don't
Hex It has a mix of engineering and paganism that has surprised more than one reader. The author describes that the inhabitants of Black Spring devised a structure that allows the creature to be hidden. when it remains standing for hours on the road, or when a resident receives a visit from a relative who arrives from one of the nearby towns, although this does not help much.
It turns out that Katherine's curse extends beyond her own lands, so it's possible that the cursed energy emanating from Black Spring and beyond attracts people who shouldn't be there in the first place. Definitely, Hex It is a novel with an interesting premise that is worth checking out.
About the Author
Thomas Olde Heuvelt was born on April 16, 1983, in Nijmegen, Netherlands. Inspired by the exploits of writers such as Roald Dahl and Stephen King, studied English and American literature at the Radboud University of Nijmegen and at the University of Ottawa, in Canada. The author published his first work when he was nineteen years old.. Since then, she has written five novels and several short stories.
His talent and effort have earned him several literary awards, including the Paul Harland Award, which he obtained in 2005, 2009 and 2012. Likewise, he has won the Hugo Award three times, the first time being in 2013 and the last time being in 2015. He was also a laureate of the Science Fiction & Fantasy Translation Awards.
Other books by Thomas Olde Heuvelt
Novels
- From Onvoorziene (2002);
- PhantasAmnesia (2004);
- Leerling Tovenaar Vader & Zoon (2008);
- Harten Sara (2011);
- Eco (2019)
Story Collections
- Om nooit te vergeten (2017)
Tales
- «From Bank in het sterrenlicht» (2006);
- «From Koperen Krokodil» (2006);
- «Tulpen in windmolens In the van of Tierra de Champignons» (2006);
- «From Kronieken Van to Weduwnaar» (2008);
- «Harlequín on Plaza de Dique» (2010);
- «Alles Van Waarde es Weerloos» (2010);
- «Balora Met het grote hoofd» (2012);
- «The Ink Readers of Doi Saket» (2013);
- «The Day the World Turned Upside Down» (2014);
- «Hertenhart in Gembertimbaaltjes» (2017)
- "You Know How History Goes" (2017);
- «Dolores Dolly Poppedijn» (2019)