slade house

"A stranger greets you and invites you inside. At first you won't want to leave. Later you'll find out that you can't."

I never read anything by David Mitchell before so this is definitely an unbiased opinion. Slade House is a pretty small book, made up of 5 short stories that are linked to each other. It is a story revolves around the mysterious building--Slade House, that can be found in the narrow Slade Alley, hidden neatly behind a handleless small iron door which doesn't allow just anyone to enter. It shows itself to only certain people one night every nine years, and what happens in Slade House, literally stays in Slade House. It is a haunted house with mysterious conspiracy hovering around it and before you can escape, you are trapped and sucked into being a part of it.

I didn't know what to expect in terms of pacing and character development, but I must say Mitchell did a pretty good job introducing the main events to the readers in each of the chapters. Each characters successfully earned sympathy from me and whenever they are in menacing situation, I panicked and screamed in silent (well, it's a book) to warn them, again and again. Some parts are done wittily, some are just pure evil and makes you read the lines again to make sure you're in the right story. The Grayer twins characters almost feel like the spin-off of The Shining's Grady twins, both set of twins are equally as sinister in their own ways. Another work that I was reminded of was Haruki Murakami's dreamlike scenario in most of his books. If you have read some of it, then you're lubed to access this magical surrealism world that David Mitchell endorsed as well. So far, I don't have any negative thoughts because to be honest I signed myself up with zero expectation, so really I can only go up from there. Slade House is a horror sci-fi number that probably won't make any sense towards the end, but it makes you hoping that there will be a sequel.