Elizabeth Hand: Hokuloa Road (AudiobookFormat, 2022, Hachette B and Blackstone Publishing)
audio cd, 1 pages
Published July 19, 2022 by Hachette B and Blackstone Publishing.
This was good! I'm generally a fan of Hand. Loved the atmosphere--just gorgeous lush descriptions of Hawai'i's culture and wildlife--and enjoyed a protagonist who wants to be doing good but always feels like he's messing up. There's a Cass Neary-ish-ness to this, but a lot less gore. Also, a lot less mysticism than I usually expect from her
Grady has a chance to shake up his life as a caretaker/handyman in Maine. He applies for a job in Hawaii, and gets it. Not sure he really wants to shake it up that much, he flies out nervously, meeting a woman on the airplane who he would like to see as soon as they are finished with their pandemic quarantine period. His boss turns out to be a wealthy and eccentric man who has rare birds in a aviary and endangered but very dangerous sea urchins in a tank. He's rarely at his luxurious house, but spends weeks at a remote site. returnreturnWhen the quarantine period is over, Grady gets to know a previous caretaker and her family and learns people have been disappearing from the island. One of them is the girl who he met on the plane. He also discovers a hidden sea cave where indigenous people …
Grady has a chance to shake up his life as a caretaker/handyman in Maine. He applies for a job in Hawaii, and gets it. Not sure he really wants to shake it up that much, he flies out nervously, meeting a woman on the airplane who he would like to see as soon as they are finished with their pandemic quarantine period. His boss turns out to be a wealthy and eccentric man who has rare birds in a aviary and endangered but very dangerous sea urchins in a tank. He's rarely at his luxurious house, but spends weeks at a remote site. returnreturnWhen the quarantine period is over, Grady gets to know a previous caretaker and her family and learns people have been disappearing from the island. One of them is the girl who he met on the plane. He also discovers a hidden sea cave where indigenous people have left petroglyphs carved into the rock, and where someone has defaced the site by jackhammering out one of the symbols, The land has some sort of traditional power that Grady is catching glimpses of, including the figure of a dog that stands on its hind legs and has a strange face. returnreturnI love this author's work, which kept me going even when I began to think I was reading a horror narrative (and I really don't like that genre). The pacing was uneven, dragging a bit in the first half before picking up pace as Grady picks up his courage and embarks on finding the missing girl - and finding out what has happened to so many missing people. In the end I found it an intriguing story, even with the creepy horror bits. I would like to read the author's acknowledgements since the use of Hawaiian words and mythology was pretty fascinating.
