Review: Pumpkinhead

Pumpkinhead by Cullen Bunn
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Disclaimer: I received a free ecopy via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Pumpkinhead seemed like the perfect book to read going into Halloween. It's a horror tale featuring a demon of vengeance. It started out okay with a nice intro about a group of witches. The most prominent is Haggis, who ends up controlling Pumpkinhead. I'll start by saying I wanted to see more about these characters. This intro shows them as young women just coming into their power and then the story jumps ahead roughly 60 years and there is nothing about the interim period.

The switch from the witches brings us to a Hillbilly revenge story. It actually picks up after the event that causes the whole mess that goes on in this book. So there are the two families that have a feud going on, and then there is the sheriff investigating everything. Amongst all these characters, I didn't find any that were particularly interesting. The story does pick up again once the witches reappear to cause havoc.

So the best part of this book for me is the mythology. The structure behind the relationship between the witches and the demons seems pretty strong, although we only really get to see glimpses of it. It goes on to incorporate the seven deadly sins, which I thought was a nice touch. The bonus story at the end does a better job showing why only Pumpkinhead has been brought to our world over the years. The art is okay. I can't say anything bad about it, but it didn't stand out or excite me in any way.

I found this book to be underdeveloped despite an interesting idea.

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