Book Review: "Fantasticland" by Mike Bockoven

After reading “Hide” by Kiersten White, many people started recommending the book ‘Fantasticland’ and no matter how terrible the premise initially sounded I gave it a go. I really quite enjoyed “Hide” because of its nature to be a slow burn from the beginning. It had a relatively interesting idea which circulated around the ‘final girl’ story but in a different way. When I started reading ‘Fantasticland’ I was initially unimpressed. It was very much a horror novel trying too hard to be frightening and tense - it ended up being a bit underwhelming in the first few chapters.

In my personal opinion, the chapter about the man taking his family to Fantasticland is way too long and drawn out and the man has no personality that anyone wants to read about. It could have been cut out without changing the book. That family got out of Fantasticland. I didn’t care for them. I was waiting for the actual story. It took a long time to get there. It wasn’t really a slow burner where everything adds on to everything else, instead it began as a set of incoherent interviews with some being better than others. When it comes to horror, it is getting very difficult to impress me. It is not that I did not enjoy this book - it is that I think it could have been a lot better than it actually was.

One of the prime advantages of this book is that it was told in a post modern style. Instead of just relying on chapters, it is told in various interviews with the different people involved in the incident that happened at the theme park. The first one is a historian. Though I enjoyed the chapter, I do have to question why a theme park which is not actually that old (since it is told in interviews it cannot be that old, or else the interviews cease to be reliable) has a historian. Would it not be easier to make her a journalist of some kind who was present at various milestones? I feel like making her a historian was a bit of a cop-out. It filled in all the gaps as to why she would know certain things. Be that as it may, I did like the structure - it felt different to what I had read previously.

However, the one thing I disliked about this book was the fact that it was so predictable from the beginning. When Fresno builds the theme park next to the ocean all the reader can think of is ‘of course he did’ and ultimately, you know exactly what happened there. Yes, there is more of a ‘Lord of the Flies’ story to follow but before that, it makes for a bit of laziness. At least in ‘Hide’ there was some weird cultish stuff that was happening behind the scenes. Though both of them felt shoe-horned into the story, ‘Hide’ was still ever so slightly better. It felt more like a horror novel as there were more layers to the whole narrative. Whereas, I thought I knew what was happening right from the beginning in ‘Fantasticland’.

Be that as it may, the writing style was pretty consistent with voice. The writer has done something really interesting by giving each individual being interviewed a separate voice with some being more jokey than the others and some being more stern than the others. It did feel like they were all separate people rather than different characters being written by the same person. So if you want a big advantage of this novel then there it is.

All in all, I feel like this book could have been more overwhelming and terrifying than it was and though I did like a lot of the foreshadowing and imagery, I have to say I knew far too much about the story before I had realised it in the book - and that has to be a big ‘no’ for me. Though the big idea is something a bit worse than what we imagine it to be, I still have to say that it is pretty obvious as to what it is. Author’s note: if I have to read another author’s note then I might scream.

Note: as I have said, Fantasticland might be an objectively good book, but it is very very difficult to make me scared when it comes to a horror novel. If you have got a horror novel published or unpublished that you think can terrify me, don't be afraid to hit me up. You know where I am.