The Hallowed Ones (review)

Just before seventeen-year-old Katie is to taste the freedom of rumspringa, the elders close the gates of her small Amish community in reaction to a terrible disaster that has taken hold of the Outside world. Determined to discover what has happened, Katie daringly ventures Outside to find true horror: vampires have decimated a small nearby town and apparently much of the world's population. The creatures are currently unable to cross onto the holy land of the Plain Folk, but Katie is convinced that the monsters will find a way in, especially when the village elders refuse to take the proper precautions against them. Her situation is further complicated when she rescues Alex, a handsome Outsider who may or may not be a carrier of the contagion that seemingly caused the vampirism epidemic. Bickle's studious details of Amish life lend scenes of Katie's daily routine a sense of bucolic peace, making the eventual invasion of bloodthirsty vampires even more shattering. Unfortunately, this attention to the quotidian often slows down the pace, and the story stalls even further when Katie and Alex, sparing time from their sometimes steamy romance, engage in a series of rather didactic debates of religion. Readers, however, may very well appreciate Katie's struggles to understand the nature of evil, while horror fans just looking for a gore fix will have their appetites sated when the vampires begin tearing the Plain folk limb from limb. Katie's an original character, and her thoughtful rebellion makes her an interesting addition to supernatural fiction's gallery of strong heroines.