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Blood Orchard  

Book review by Sarah Hayes

The headlines read of six-month old triplets kidnapped, bloodied. The small town where they live is under a literal lockdown, and the sheriff is hell bent on finding the babies’ kidnappers, merrily abusing his powers as he goes. Having recently moved into town, Coren Raines finds himself in a hellish world of panic rooms and dead girls springing out of a well smelling of oranges. The deeper he falls down the bloody rabbit hole, the more Raines learns that this town is brimming with secrets better left buried.

In 1993, a terrible team of blondes bullied the town, beating on the young and the old alike. No one ever dared touch them, as they were the sheriff’s children. They called them the Blondies, and their favorite target was one Francine Heller. When the opportunity for a bit of revenge falls into Francine’s lap, she falls into some bad company in order to make the Blondies feel the same pain she has. But vengeance doesn’t sleep and the town will soon smell of blood and oranges once again.

Blood Orchard is a visceral mess of carnage and cusses and little else. I can handle gore and violence done right; this is gore and violence done wrong. All of the horror elements fall flat due to Hintz’s continual abuse of the “show, don’t tell” rule. None of the characters involved have any redeeming factors to them. There’s a difference between having a cast of gritty flawed characters and having a cast of utterly hateable characters, and Blood Orchard seems to gleefully drop itself into the later category. I’d be more forgiving of Blood Orchard if it had a decent story or even decent writing, but no, the story is lackluster and the writing lazy. But give Hintz credit: it’s a story you’d be hard-pressed to pull away from before the book’s end. It pulls you in and demands that you finish it, like it or not, and that is a compliment that is hard to earn.

Blood Orchard by S. D. Hintz

Book Review by A. R. Braun

Blood Orchard, a twisted horror novel by S.D. Hintz, pulls no punches as far as gore, bad language and sex—in my opinion the perfect novel! There’s no limit to the twisted goings-on in Onward, where old-west-type “justice” prevails and mercy is hard to come by.  The tome delivers mayhem in a fresh, thrilling form of originality.

Coren Raines has moved to the small town of Onward just outside Chicago, but is he ready to face the ghosts and the murderous past that wait for him there? A recently divorced man who makes a living by stock trading on the Internet, he’s soon visited by the town’s sadistic sheriff, Paul Pritchard. He soon endeavors to force a false confession from Coren about set of triplets that have recently been kidnapped.

When reporter Jay Donovan comes on the scene to uncover the real truth about the missing triplets, he finds he’s taken on more than he can handle after getting knocked off his motorcycle by the sheriff. When Prichard tells him to move on, Jay refuses to leave until he unearths the mystery of not only the three missing babies, but also the sheriff’s triplets who disappeared when they were seventeen years old. Jay interviews a resident and uncovers the sheriff’s daughters’ infamy. Can Jay finally write the story that will give him the fame and the recognition he deserves?

I was captivated till the end, finally satisfied that there’s a horror author sick enough to be a no-limit soldier on the written page, enjoying the graphic, original bad language and the over-the-top gore. The plot stood strong throughout, weaving the tale of what happened to the sheriff’s triplets piece by piece the further you read on. The book also makes a statement about bad habits and small-town philosophy. Any true horror fan would be a fool not to pick up a copy of Blood Orchard.