Book Review: Hell Holes by Donald Firesmith

It’s August in Alaska, and geology professor Jack Oswald prepares for the new school year. But when hundreds of huge holes mysteriously appear overnight in the frozen tundra north of the Arctic Circle, Jack receives an unexpected phone call. An oil company exec hires Jack to investigate, and he picks his climatologist wife and two of their graduate students as his team. Uncharacteristically, Jack also lets Aileen O’Shannon, a bewitchingly beautiful young photojournalist, talk him into coming along as their photographer. 

When they arrive in the remote oil town of Deadhorse, the exec and a biologist to protect them from wild animals join the team. Their task: to assess the risk of more holes opening under the Trans-Alaska Pipeline and the wells and pipelines that feed it. But they discover a far worse danger lurks below. When it emerges, it threatens to shatter Jack’s unshakable faith in science. And destroy us all…

My Review:
Let me get this out of the way first-for some reason when I downloaded the book, I thought it was going to be about Tremors style giant worms underground and coming to eat people. I'm not sure exactly where I got that idea so I was kind of disappointed to see what actually came out of the holes! Now that is purely my fault for getting an idea in my head, not the fault of the book or author for giving a wong impression, because they didn't! Is that all cleared up? Good, then we can move on to the actual review of the book and forget Chuckles stupidity!  

Jack is a geologist and he is called to investigate why huge holes are appearing all over Alaska with no warning, threatening the pipelines in the area and the people who live and work there. Jack and his student Mark lower themselves into one of the holes to have a look around but the gas levels are dangerously high and a quick retreat is needed. However, a preventable accident then occurs which blows up the entire area...and from the holes in the ground comes the deadly demonic hellhounds to the shock of the explorers. It is then up to one team member to save them from the hellhounds and explain the danger that the entire world is in from demonic invasion. 

OK lets deal with the characters now. Jack annoyed me right at the start with the cliche of man turns into gibbering wreck at the sight of a beautiful woman even when his wife is right there with him. He allows Aileen, a stranger claiming to be a photographer to just tag along on the trip, no doubt because of her looks. When they land in Alaska, Bill the wildlife biologist and expedition organiser Kowalski are fawning over her like slobbering dogs. The fact that the woman has to use her feminine charms to get her way over dumb men with their brains in their pants is a cliche that does really annoy me in books. It made me dislike Aileen straight away.

Luckily, after disaster strikes, Aileen reveals that she is on the trip because she recognises the hell holes for what they are and talked her way onto the trip to get a look at the area to confirm it. She is part of an order that looks for demonic activity and tries to stop it, starting with saving them from the first hell hounds. Aileen explains that this will be followed by deadly imps and gargoyles and a full scale invasion from hell, which of course scares the group to death. Now they have to escape Alaska and all the demons and try to stay alive. By this point I had reformed my opinions of the characters, including Aileen and the idiot that is Kowalski. For someone who works around pipelines his gross stupidity for safety issues was quite shocking. The group dynamic actually becomes quite good after we learn what is lurking under the ground.

It did take a bit of time for it to get in to the main point of the story. It was 30% of the way in when the men started to explore the hole. I wouldn't say that it was slow, more that I was impatient for it to get going. I'll be honest-if it had taken any longer for the exploration to start, then I might not have continued to read. However it did start then, and after that, the story certainly kept me interested. It was a bit technical in the early part of the book with details about methane, climate change, permafrost and pingos(?) that I could personally have done without but I guess the author was trying to give some background information to the reader. I thought pingos were the nickname for those black and white winter birds with long beaks but who knew!

Once the story got going, I found it very interesting. I've always liked demons in my horror and urban fantasy reads so the actual story about demonic invasion was interesting. The tension was built up nicely as they tried to hide from the first wave of demons, creeping through a dark building where they could pounce at any time. I grew to care about the characters and not want anything to happen to them. It was also nice to see the men not knowing what to do and looking for the female expert to come up with the plans. I liked the different dangers that each type of demon brings as their dangerous journey continued. After the initial scientific info dump, i didn't find it over descriptive. The story flowed along nicely and there were plenty of demons to keep things interesting. 

For those who are interested, there was no real sexual content other than men drooling. I can't really comment fully on bad language as I have nothing specific in my notes about it but I'm sure there was some. There are of course scenes of injuries and death. The monsters are a bit scary for younger readers so I recommend this to adults and older teenagers if they like the genre. There is a pretty big cliffhanger at the end and you will need to read the second book to resolve that. I do intend to read on when I get the chance.  

Read May 2018.
3 stars.