Strange Houses by Uketsu Review

If you like horror novels but wish they had more floor plans, this is the book for you!

The author is approached by a friend who’s thinking of buying his first house - but it’s got a weird layout. Uketsu and his architect buddy look into it and wild theories - that of course prove true - start flying about this being a murder house. The previous occupants being the Japanese Bloody Benders, murdering guests who stay in their house! But whyyyy…

I blitzed the first half of Strange Houses in absolutely no time. I had so much fun and was thinking that this was a vastly superior follow-up to Uketsu’s first book, Strange Pictures. And then I got to the second half and the quality took a sharp turn for the worse. Ho hum. I’m just not allowed nice things.

The floor plans of the first couple houses are creative and creepy in their design with unexplained void space and bizarre room placements. I liked that the author and the architect were telling a horror story in this unique way of speculation and imagery - we don’t meet any of the key players or even go to the houses, it’s all talk; but entertaining talk for that.

Alas, like Strange Pictures, Strange Houses suffers from crushingly convoluted explanations. The second, far worse half of the novel, beginning in the Altar House, is when the pacing grinds to a halt. Partly because the material just isn’t as compelling, but also because the story loses its present-day urgency, taking us back to the stolid past where everything has already happened for decades - the story stops feeling like it's moving and instead becomes static while the reader is talked at for page after page.

The final part is really boring with an incredibly silly explanation involving superstitious wallies doing dumb things, the novel ending in a dreary blur of tedious exposition and flat drama - a far cry from the immediately intriguing, inspired narrative that is the stylish first half of the novel.

Though an imaginative and capable storyteller, Uketsu isn’t the most accomplished of writers - his prose is effectively workmanlike, like a how-to manual for assembling furniture. The combination of practical writing and diagrams there to put across the story as he sees it with little embellishment. And I think partly why that final fourth part of the book falls so flat is because we’re stuck with Uketsu’s unremarkable prose only - the combination of his words and accompanying pictures/diagrams is what makes the best parts of Strange Houses and Strange Pictures memorable and exciting to read.

Still, even half a good horror novel is worth a read if you’re a horror fan, and especially if you enjoyed Uketsu’s first book too. He transitions from puzzle-like imagery to imaginative building floor plans and it’s effective - the use of these kinds of images paired with a twisty, dark story makes for some unique reads and breathes fresh life into the genre. For that, I got enough enjoyment out of Strange Houses, even if the dull second half of the novel lets down the brilliant first half.