Horrorstor: A Novel

Grady Hendrix's "Horrorstor" is a wickedly funny and creepy tale that injects fresh blood (or should we say oil?) into the horror genre. Hendrix masterfully weaves together a narrative that's both relatable and absurd. We follow a group of minimum wage employees stuck working a late-night shift in the labyrinthine Orsk (aka IKEA). As they navigate the endless aisles of discounted furniture and malfunctioning appliances, strange occurrences begin to plague the store.But "Horrorstor" isn't all slapstick and spooky furniture. Hendrix cleverly uses the setting to explore themes of consumerism, corporate culture, and the yearning for something more. The Orsk itself becomes a monstrous entity, a symbol of the dehumanizing aspects of mass retail.Hendrix's writing is sharp and engaging. He seamlessly blends pop culture references with genuine scares, keeping you hooked until the very last page. The novel's format, with creepy product descriptions preceding each chapter, adds a delightfully unsettling touch."Horrorstor" is a must-read for anyone who enjoys a good scare with a side of side-splitting humor. It captures the atmosphere of a Scooby-Doo episode where not everything is as it seems, but with a horror twist. Think R.L. Stine or Goosebumps-level chills, coupled with the eerie, otherworldly vibes of the Upside Down from Stranger Things. It's a cute, fun, and delightfully quick read – easily devoured in one sitting. Don't expect to be petrified, but expect to be thoroughly entertained on this hilarious and horrifying journey through the aisles of Orsk furniture.So, grab a flashlight (and maybe some holy water), and prepare to be swept away on a hilarious and horrifying journey through the aisles of Orsk.

I love a classic haunted house as much as anyone. There’s something wonderful about an old abandoned house (or mansion or castle or hotel or insane asylum), dilapidated, decaying, overgrown, crumbling, filled with creaking doors, dark shadows, creepy dolls, and something sinister that whispers from the attic.But there’s also a place in my heart for a modern, clean, brightly-lit building that’s nevertheless crawling with the unquiet spirits of the dead. The suburban home built over an Indian graveyard, the supermarket with bloody handprints appearing mysteriously on the freezer cases, the trendy nightclub plagued by unusual deaths and fashionable vampires. Horror writers love this stuff, too — you can find horror wrapped around modern suburban and retail settings in films like “Poltergeist” and “Dawn of the Dead” (and many other early-outbreak zombie movies) and in books and stories like Stephen King’s “The Mist,” Anne Rivers Siddons’ “The House Next Door,” and Mark Z. Danielewski’s “House of Leaves.”And there’s also this book, “Horrorstör,” a short horror novel (with strong humor elements) written by Grady Hendrix. Its focus is on a haunting at an IKEA-style big box retail store.The lead character in the story is Amy, a slacker in a thoroughly dead-end job working retail at ORSK, a furniture and housewares store designed from the ground up to look and feel like an IKEA store. It has the same winding pathway through the store, the same “Magic Tool” required to put every piece of furniture together, the same style of faux-Scandinavian names for all the products. Amy wants to transfer back to the ORSK store she used to work at, mainly because she thinks she’s about to get fired by Basil, an assistant manager and gung-ho ORSK fanboy. But as it turns out, Basil actually wants to ask Amy and another co-worker, Ruth Anne, an older long-term employee who lives for her job, loves stuffed animals, and is adored by everyone on the staff, to take on a special duty — patrolling the store at night.You see, the store has been suffering unusual vandalism. Some of the glassware has been broken, furniture has been soiled, and there are odd smells in the building. Basil wants Amy and Ruth Anne to join him on a secret late-night patrol, after everyone has gone home, to see if anyone is breaking into the building. They soon find some interesting problems. There are rats in the kitchen showcases, even though there’s no food there and no water hookups. Everyone keeps getting lost, which might make sense if they were just customers and not employees trained to find their way around the store quickly. And the mysterious grafitti messages in the restrooms referring ominously to “the Beehive” are multiplying rapidly.And they do find some unexpected interlopers. Matt and Trinity are a couple of fellow co-workers at ORSK who have sneaked into the store because they thinks there are ghosts in the building and want to make a reality-TV ghost hunter show. And there’s also a homeless man, Carl, who has been secretly living in the store for a few weeks.Trinity has an idea. She still thinks there are ghosts in the building, and what’s the best way to contact ghosts? Let’s everyone hold a seance!And then everything goes straight to hell.Can Amy and her coworkers survive the night shift at ORSK? Can they escape the store? Or are they doomed to toil forever in the stone walls and iron restraints of the Beehive?I really enjoyed this book. I burned my way through it as quickly as I could, and a couple nights, where I made the mistake of reading it too close to bedtime, it actually kept me up late. I did think that the very best parts of the novel were fairly early on, when the scares were subtle and more creepy than heart-stopping. The seasoned employees getting lost in their own store? That was weirdly realistic — you could imagine it happening, but you could also see why it would be really unnerving. The odd sounds after the store closes, combined with the sudden unfamiliarity of the environment of the store was also spooky — and definitely familiar for anyone who’s ever had to work late in their office, where darkness and emptiness make the comfortable surroundings feel strange and dangerous.Even better than that was the graffiti in the restroom. The dozens of scrawled names and scratched-out years, all referencing the mysterious Beehive, feel intensely eerie, a perfect element to place in a modern retail ghost story. There are also some very effective moments when the employees discover that the purely decorative doors in the showcases now open into dank, cavernous hallways leading deep into the earth.And the seance may have been a monumentally stupid move on the part of the characters, but the way they did it was an original and wonderful thing to have in a horror novel. It’s simultaneously terrifying — because you know what’s going to happen — and hilarious — because you know what’s going to happen.Once the Big Bad makes his appearance, and especially when he captures Amy for the first time, the story starts moving away from being a ghost story and edging more into torture porn. The story shows some serious cracks in this section, in part because it’s too long — I just don’t enjoy reading multiple pages about someone being strapped into a torture chair that tightens to the point where she loses sensation in her limbs and can barely draw a breath. (This may also indicate that I have never enjoyed torture porn.) But it’s also a bit too short — we’re told that Amy’s mind breaks almost entirely not long after she’s strapped in, to the point where Stockholm Syndrome sets in and she starts worshiping her captor. And then, when she’s released from confinement, it’s not too many more pages before her mind has completely recovered to its previously healthy state — and even improved, as she’s much braver and more resourceful for the rest of the novel.One of the real selling points of this novel is the fantastic graphic design by Andie Reid and illustrations by Michael Rogalski. The book cover looks like one of the big, glossy IKEA design catalogs — with a few subtle and not-so-subtle differences to give some visual cues to the horrors within — and each chapter opens with a page from the fictional ORSK catalog spotlighting one of their products, complete with IKEA-style art, a faux-Scandinavian name, and upbeat flavor text. But after the supernatural terrors start climbing out of the woodwork after the seance, all the featured furniture gets replaced with medieval torture devices. It makes the story a lot more fun and a lot funnier, while still giving a nice dose of the chills to readers.

I finished reading (and listening) to this book a few weeks ago and I still haven't written a review because I couldn't decide how I felt about it.The characters are relatable, and I definitely felt some of their pain, having worked in retail myself since 2006, which is honestly the number one thing that attracted me to this book. Author Grady Hendrix does a solid job writing about the monotony and frustrations of working with the public and for a larger retail outlet that takes itself too seriously.The book comes across like there will be a logical explanation for all the strange happenings up until right about the halfway mark, then it takes a severe turn into the horror movie type darkness that, even know I had to know it was coming from both the title and the cover, I still didn't really care for it. Maybe it's just me, because I'm not a horror fan. I don't enjoy seeing people suffer and/or die, especially when they're innocent in the overall story. If it's some sadistic villain that is getting what he deserves in a particular grisly way, that doesn't bother me in the slightest. Call it one of my personal character flaws, but I honestly enjoy it. What I don't enjoy is the gruesome endings of teenagers and others that the story wants you to care about for no other reason than to scare the reader or viewer.My other main issue with this story is the ending. It's too open ended for me, personally. If an author wants me to take the time to invest in their story and characters, the least they could do is tell me what the hell happens to them by the end. If I want to make my own assumptions or do all tje work trying to decide their fates, I'll write my own damn story from the get go, thank you very much. No matter how many other opinions I hear about open ended stories, in the end I can't change my mind on this. It feels like a lazy cop out, like the author had this brilliant idea for a tension filled, exciting story, but just couldn't quite decide how they wanted to end it, so they basically decided not to. I'm looking at you, Stephen King.One positive of this one, however, was the accompanying audiobook that I listened to along with it. The overall narration is easy to listen to and I don't really have any feelings about it one way or another, but the chapter breaks, where they describe some product made by the company where the story takes place, get progressively darker and more hilarious as the story progresses, and they're delivered in that perfect smarmy salesman voice with the fake smile that made me laughing out loud by the last few chapters. It was worth listening to the audiobook for these alone.Overall, I definitely don't regret reading this one, but I definitely wish it could have been more.

First Grady Hendrix I've read and I really enjoyed it. I will have to look for more of his books.

Inicialmente, Horrorstor parece uma mistura da divertida série "Superstore" com uma narrativa sobre lugares mal-assombrados. Não deixa de ser, de certa forma, mas é bem mais que isso; o tom mais leve da narrativa vai progressivamente sendo "contaminado" pela escuridão que habita o lugar e os horrores que descreve - sempre envoltos em trevas - são realmente perturbadores.Mais além, o romance ganha força ao comparar essa loja - a Orsk, uma espécie de Ikea, ou Etna, Leroy Merlin etc. - à prisão panóptica que havia naquele mesmo lugar, séculos antes: o trabalho repetitivo, sempre sob supervisão, análogo à escravidão, apagando individualidades, sobre diferentes pretextos - no caso da prisão, os "penitentes" precisavam ser curados de seus pecados; no caso da loja, os funcionários se submetiam à máquina capitalista pois precisavam sobreviver. E mal conseguiam, como no caso da protagonista (que curiosamente (?) se chama Amy, mesmo nome da protagonista de Superstore), sempre individada.Esse foi meu terceiro livro do Hendrix (gostei dos 3) e cada vez mais creio que ele - que por alguma razão ainda não é tão reconhecido (talvez após um de seus romances ser inevitavelmente adaptado, isso mude) - é um dos grandes nomes da literatura de terror contemporânea.

Full of twists and turns. Written brilliantly

Simplemente espectacular. Una historia muy bien creada y muy original.La edición es una pasada,parece un catálogo en vez de un libro.100% recomendable.

This book is a serious page turner, got me out of my reading slump. The story moves fast and it’s interesting.