Review: Sleepless Hollow by Graham Bradley
Bradley successfully blends occult detective, buddy comedy and action in this fun read that's perfect for getting into the Halloween spirit.
August is a month that gets a tough rap: no holidays, back to school shopping and the lingering doldrums that summer’s end is on the horizon. However, if you change your perspective and think of it as pre-Fall, then it reminds you that it’s the perfect time to start drawing up that Halloween season reading list! Let me help you with a great starter — Graham Bradley’s Sleepless Hollow.
The paperback is also an absolute steal at just $7.99!
The Story
The early American Gothic masterpiece The Legend of Sleepy Hollow follows the life of superstitious schoolteacher Ichabod Crane as he attempts to settle into the post-Revolutionary War settlement of Tarry Town, New York as a schoolmaster. While a lanky and plain man, he quickly ingratiates himself to the locals, making himself useful with odd jobs and “carrying the whole budget of local gossip” of the local women. Being knowledgeable in much folklore, he is a favorite among the children, whom he can captivate with dark and foreboding tales.
While he’s well-liked by many, the one true person that matters to him is the beautiful Katrina Van Tassel, daughter of a wealthy farmer. However, Ichabod, a Yankee and an outsider, finds himself with stiff competition from the town rowdy and local Uberchad Abraham Van Brunt, who also seeks to woo the lovely Katrina. When Ichabod’s proposal is rebuffed one night at a harvest festival, he rides home crestfallen late at night along a dark and foreboding road. It is here he crosses paths with the legendary Headless Horseman, the vengeful ghost of a long-dead Hessian rider, who pursues Crane into the night. The next morning, Crane’s horse is found, but no trace of him, with his fate after his meeting with the Hessian left unanswered.
The story put the quaint little real-world town of Sleepy Hollow, NY on the map, and tourists visit the place in droves every Halloween season. However, as the title of Bradley’s work might imply, something strange is happening this Halloween in Sleepy Hollow; all of a sudden, nobody in the town is able to sleep. This gets the notice of a ghost named Silas Proctor, a soldier in the Spectral Forces, an enforcement body beyond the veil of the living that essentially serves as a military, complete with its own stifling chain of command and choking bureaucracy. Yes, you see ghosts roam all over the place, mostly shuffling mindlessly and harmlessly in the places they once knew. But a few, like him, have more agency, and are even able to interact with those with the gift to see them (like our barista protagonist Josie). He’s noticed the stringy lines of glowing energy that flow upwards to the night sky while people dream are weak, and knows something’s up, but can’t quite tell what. He’s bound to the spectral realm, tasked with policing the little areas of town he’s able to haunt, but equipped with weaponry and tech to handle most mischievous spirits that get any ideas about bothering the “morties”.
Josie, who relishes the chance to use her gift to prove that ghosts are real and subsequently punch a ticket out of town to fame and greener pastures, is on cordial terms with several of the late locals, and often gets pulled into various schemes to help the spectrals resolve unfinished business,. But Halloween’s right around the corner, and Silas knows that all this strangeness can’t mean anything good; sure enough, he eventually uncovers a plot being laid by a long-banished adversary to unleash thousands of spirits into this plane; and given that an original manuscript of A History of New England Witchcraft, a tome said to hold the key to resurrection, sits on display in Josie’s mom’s coffee shop, it’s up to them and a few enlisted friends to stop an army of vengeful spirits, including that of Ichabod Crane and the Headless Horseman themselves, from once again wreaking havoc in Sleepy Hollow.
The characters
One thing Bradley really excels at is writing his characters colorfully and uniquely. Our main protagonist is Josie, a twentysomething local girl who’s tight with her family and helps out at her mom’s coffee shop. She has the ability to not only see but talk to and even touch the local spirits that roam her hometown. In this sense she lends the story a bit of a lighter take on the occult detective genre. Her hometown is painted as a charming upstate hamlet that almost reminded me of Star’s Hollow, complete with squabbling rivalries between her mom and the uppity members of the DAR. Josie has a good heart, and is eager to help her friends. She’s likeable and compassionate, and while her conscription into the fight against the spectral army being awakened is a rough one, she proves a willing ally with a great deal of heart.
Josie is balanced by Silas Proctor, the SpecForce agent who’s been assigned to Sleepy Hollow for the last two hundred or so years. He knows that if his higher-ups get wind of Josie’s ability to see spectres, they’d enlist her whether she wanted to or not, something that involves wiping her memories and worse. He’s sympathetic to her dreams, but also gruff and protective, and will go to great lengths (like tampering with her ghost-hunting footage, much to her despair) to try to protect her. He takes his role very seriously, and has a history with John Crowe, a brilliant scientific mind with more ambition than ethics.
John Crowe, an inventor, once worked alongside Silas to develop the Morpheus Engine, a system that could harvest human brainwaves for energy to open the barrier between the world of the living and the higher planes. Deemed too dangerous to continue, Crowe was shut down. But he’s as patient as he is devious, and he’s been working in the shadows, growing in power and his ability to manipulate the physical world; Bradley really introduces a cunning and worthy adversary in Crowe, and while I’m a sucker for a friends-turned-rivals trope, this one really does a good job of establishing his threat to our heroes.
Kay is one of the few registered mortal freelance ghost hunters that Silas can call on to help with the growing ghost horde threat. She reminded me of Sarah Connor, if she were a wine aunt instead of a protective mother. Though she starts out as an opportunist, looking to get the insane bounty on Crowe’s head, she eventually warms to Josie, she’s loyal to Silas, and she’s got a heart of gold.
And of course, it wouldn’t be a Sleepy Hollow story without Crane and the Hessian, both of whom not only appear but are major fixtures; however Bradley puts a very unique dynamic between the two that I don’t want to spoil; I’ll only say his iteration of Crane is no longer the timid, unsure milksop we know him from the original legend.
The World
Bradley’s Sleepy Hollow comes alive with all the charm of the real-world town. Living in upstate New York myself, I can attest the vast swath of the state north of Albany is beautiful, especially as the leaves turning all along the Adirondacks and Hudson Valley are in glorious full swing. Small town rivalries and melodrama pepper the slowly simmering anger of a populace that, while functional, is wrestling with the stresses of sleep deprivation. When the fit hits the shan, it feels almost like an adventure night at a Halloween Theme Park (and I mean that in the best way) - Sleepy Hollow at Halloween is teeming with decorations, costumed visitors and a tinge of danger and mischief in the crisp air. It’s the perfect place to have a ghost-horde driven action-horror movie breaking out in the middle of it.
The Politics
None.
Content Warning
None. There’s plenty of gunplay, crashes and the occasional death (one early scene with John Crowe wherein he shows off his ability to possess a body, also shows that his leaving said body kills his host), most of the violence is squarely action-oriented. The language is clean, there’s no sex. This is PG-13 at its best.
Who’s it for?
Anyone who’s looking for something that’s big on action but squeamish about bloodcurdling horror should check this out, in addition to any Sleepy Hollow fans out there. Bradley’s done his homework, and treats the literary legacy and history of the region and the book with the respect it deserves.
Why read it?
Once summer is on the wane, I tend to drop my going TBR pile and indulge in some more supernatural offerings that start out light and fun, and descend into darkness that matches the waning safety and warmth of the sunlight. If light and fun is your thing, with absolute heaps of atmosphere and character, this is your book.