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Synopsis:
Nahanni National Park is one of last truly wild places on earth. Accessible only by plane, and only when the weather cooperates, it’s the perfect place for estranged brothers Joseph and Oscar to have an adventure following the death of their mother. Gillian, Joseph’s first love, invites herself along in the spirit of friendship. The park is much more than beautiful. It’s mysterious, with legends of giants and hidden, prehistoric animals. And among its few visitors, an outsized number of violent deaths inspire its second, more seductive name. While dreaming of the future, the group finds themselves confronted by the past. Far from home and far from help. In the Valley of the Headless Men.” LP Hernandez is one of the most entertaining and much needed voices in horror fiction’s new vanguard.” – Brian Keene
Review:
Nahanni National Park is one of the last unexplored places in Canada, due to it’s remote location in the Northwest Territories. There is a large oral tradition about that area, stories that involve giants, mammoths, vanishing native tribes, and men found decapitated in the valley. This backdrop lends to the story of In the Valley of the Headless Men by L.P. Hernandez. The story starts with Joseph and his half-brother Oscar cleaning out their mother’s house after their mother’s death. Oscar finds a cache of letters from Joseph’s father. The last of the letters tells Joseph to go to Nahanni National Park because this is where he is. Joseph, Oscar, and Joseph’s ex-love Gillian, set out for this strange valley to find Joseph’s father.
This is not the real reason for the journey. The real reason is that all three of the characters are pulled to this remote valley is because they have something in their lives that they have lost. Joseph is dealing with the loss of his mother and his estranged father. Oscar also has lost his mother but is a recovering addict that starts to show new signs of withdrawal as soon as they enter the forest. Gillian is still thinking about the baby that she and Joseph lost while they were together. In the valley, these lost things become powerful influences, and all three lose their own sense of reality. The cyclical concepts of finding what has been lost while getting lost further and further into the mystery and horror of a place makes all three of them question reality, themselves, and whether they are going to get out alive.
When I first started reading In the Valley of the Headless Men, I thought that this is a pretty simple setup, a grown man finds out his dad might be waiting for him in a remote forest. The truth is Joseph, Oscar, and Gillian are all looking for something deeper, something to console the grief, and it really takes them going to Nahanni National Park and feeling like they are going to die there to make them understand the truth. I did not expect the impact that L.P. Hernandez has in writing this story, the story of exploration, not only of a strange land but of the inner turmoil that has caused all three of them to take the directions in their lives that they have taken. Weird cosmic horror, nature horror, and psychological horror collide in a story that has much more depth than I initially expected. This story and this region will stick with me for longer than I ever anticipated.
Other reviews of books by L.P. Hernandez:
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