Ten Sleep

If you're looking for a simple horror story, look elsewhere. This is an amazingly intelligent eco horror tale. It made me cheer, it made me cry, and it did the thing I love a book to do most, look up words and terminology with which I was not familiar. I quite liked Greta's journey of self discovery. Not quite sure if I liked Hannah, perhaps a sequel is in order to explore that, please? Also quite enjoyed Think Tank.

I can't write a review that is as "literate" as those I've read because I don't have the eco-horror-thriller-Western genre terminology. Friends have introduced me to authors and books I would have previously never picked up (Alix Harrow's Starling House for example) and I've enjoyed them thoroughly. I read Nick Belardes' The Deading and loved it, so I dove right into Ten Sleep.And I mean dove in - couldn't put it down. It's five-plus stars all the way.The story centers around a cattle drive in Ten Sleep, Wyoming, with Greta Molina the main (human) character. We hear so much of her inner dialogue that my first instinct at least was get over it, Greta - I won't go into what - until I berated myself somewhat when I understood she's working out who she is, coming to terms with her past, her family, a potential break-up, trusting herself, the things we all do or did that take time. We don't do it, of course, surrounded by half-alive taxidermied creatures and we can give her some grace. Yes, she seems that real. Taxidermy and special magical "mud" from Mother Canyon along with who we have finally figured out is the (human) antagonist drive the story to it's climax on the 10th day (the 10th sleep), but along the way tension builds day by day until the creepiness and otherworldliness is almost too much to bear. BUT - the tension is broken by chapters interspersed about the animals. Whereas Belardes does an incredible job creating a sense of place for the Wyoming prairie - we really feel it, he seems to inhabit the world and language of animals and birds. We're introduced first to the prairie dogs and Yellowbrown which gives us an idea of the central role creatures will play as protectors. Chapter by chapter, from creepy characters to ghost trains to a certain amount of gore but not so much as to gross me out anyway, the tension builds but the complex climax is unexpected and satisfying.

I finished this book a few days ago and thought I had done this review, but I must have spaced it... I enjoyed this audiobook. The story pulls you in. I listened to it mostly at night in the dark while everyone was asleep, so it amped up the spook that this book is already full of. I loved it.

First I loved the setting in Wyoming near Ten Sleep. I lived not far from there for 12 years of my life so the names and places were putting a smile on my face.Now for my thoughts on the book. It was weird and creepy. The bear in the story confused me at first but then things started to click as I got further into the book. Nobody is safe and there are a lot of weird creatures in the area. I like bizarro horror so this was not too different from that.I enjoyed listening to the audiobook. The narrator does a good job. She kept me interested in what was happening. If you like weird western horror, take a look at this.

I want to preface this review by saying that this is one of those stories where my two star could easily be your five star. This is always true with any book, but I think it's especially true of this one. The things that I didn't like will definitely be elements of appeal for others. So don't let my review run you off.That said, why 2⭐?The narrative felt so over-labored and gory that it exhausted me. I found myself wishing that I could read the same plot points but in a novella format and often found my attention drifting. By the final stretch, I bumped the audio to 1.5x speed just to get through it.That said, I didn't want to DNF, because even at its most tedious, there was one specific mystery I was intensely invested in. It's what kept me going throughout this whole 12+ hour experience.Except. Turns out… there's no resolution. And frankly? I'm torqued-off about it.In addition, this book is gory… Very, very, very gory. And gory in an animal death/dismemberment kind of way that I find incredibly upsetting. I’m not a gore-lover at the best of times, but I can respect it when it’s done more sparingly—that kind of punchy gore that blindsides you and sticks with you. Since the gruesome imagery of this book started practically from page one and never let up, I was almost numb to it by the end. Almost.As for the horror overall? It was weird and interesting. I never thought I would be freaked out by a taxidermied buffalo, but that definitely happened. The taxidermy element as a whole is genuinely cool—an unusual and effective take on the living-dead concept.And the animal POV chapters—especially early on—were a highlight: brutal, unique, and structurally inventive.🎧 AUDIO-SPECIFIC:The narrator has a wonderful voice, and I really enjoyed her performance. There were a few hiccups, including a handful of mispronounced words. I wouldn’t normally nitpick because we all stumble, but one of the words was "plumage," and unfortunately, the author used this word often. There were also a couple of small audio-mixing issues, like sections that had clearly been re-recorded and not integrated back in very well, but nothing too distracting.TL;DR: A gory, overly long horror novel with a compelling core. I never lost my curiosity, but I did lose my patience.(Advance Listening Copy (ALC) courtesy of NetGalley and RBmedia/Recorded Books.)