Hey, hey, hey... this was a great little ghost story. You've got a big creepy house with interesting rooms to explore. You've got a family trying to rebuild their lives and start over. You've got keys to rooms where magical stuff happens. You've got keys that take you anywhere. You've got a psycho murderer with a rough past. You've got a scary something at the bottom of a well. Yeah, so if this kinda stuff is your jam then you will probably like this book, I mean comic book, I mean graphic novel. Joe Hill is very, very good at creating imaginative, expansive worlds and stories unlike anything else you've read. He takes horror stereotypes, puts them in a blender, and then uses them to create something very different and original. I'm excited to keep reading through these. Hey, you also get the added bonus of saying you read an entire book in one day until someone reminds you it's a graphic novel.

I read this puppy when it first came out a few years ago and really wanted to like it, and didnt. So, now the series is done, I thought Id go back and give it another shot - maybe I was in the wrong frame of mind, or maybe I was just plain wrong, and this time Id love it? Nope - still terrible, unfortunately.Three kids - an older boy, his slightly younger sister, and their youngest sibling, a boy called Bode (and the only one whose name I could remember, purely for being such an odd name!) - have their father taken from them when one of his students comes to his summer home and murders him. The kids and their mum move from west coast to east coast back to the fathers childhood home - a massive, forbidding Lovecraftian mansion in the fictional Massachusetts town of Lovecraft (the thinking seems to be: its a horror comic so lets remind readers of it by heavily referencing horror writer, HP Lovecraft). The Lovecraftian mansion set in Lovecraft is of course haunted with all manner of ghosts and special keys unlock special doors that can warp space and time, even the temporal planes - when Bode walks through one door, his body is left behind and he becomes a ghost. And while the kids get over the trauma of their recent loss, their dads murderer is on the loose - and hes coming to finish the job! Its definitely cool that Joe Hill is following in his dads footsteps and writing his own haunted house story but I have to say hes certainly not as great a writer as Stephen King was when he was a younger man and Locke & Key isnt a patch on The Shining. For one, Hill focuses far too much on the kids difficulty in getting over their dads death which is realistic but not at all compelling to read - I get it, theyre saaaaaaaad! - while failing to make them stand out as characters. The older brother is pure emo, the sister is a flatliner - she literally at one point joins a track team and says that shes running because shes got a lot to run away from - what cheesy writing! - and Bode is your average Disney kid. Cute as a bug, always being clumsy but in a way that advances the story like hes fooling around and then - oh, is that a special key that fell out of that jug I knocked off that shelf? How convenient! And how on earth can this family afford so much? They have a summer home, separate from their regular home, AND a giant mansion on the other side of the country! Their mum doesnt work, their dad was a school administrator, and the uncle is a failed artist. Where the hell is the money coming from!? The story is completely static. The kids mope about - do we like them yet now that weve seen them sob for the millionth time? not even a bit! - while Bode pokes about the mansion and stumbles across the magic doorways and the ghost in the well. Basically the story is, the family moves to the mansion and then spends the whole book waiting for the killer to show up - very boring! I do appreciate the supernatural element and that the keys and doors thing is original, but the book really needs things like a plot and characters you care about in order for it to matter. Bode becomes a ghost, then the older brother - so what? I hate both of these clods! Gabriel Rodriguezs art is fine but I dont think its suited to the horror genre, mostly because its too cartoonish. The characters are a little too anime-esque for Hills over-emotional, horror-leaning script and I cant say I found the villains in the story very menacing in their depiction. The layouts and drawings themselves are fine and definitely suit mainstream comics, but for a comic thats supposed to creep you out, its not a good fit. Ive tried reading one other Joe Hill book, Heart Shaped Box, which I couldnt get past page 50 because it was so badly written, so I guess his work just isnt for me. Locke & Key wants to be a horror comic that mixes the old and new to create something exciting and fresh, but instead its a very tedious book with completely flat characters, a slow and uninvolving plot, and some supernatural elements that dont liven up the paper-thin story in the least.

I think most of my friends on Goodreads have either shelved this book to read or have read it. I had to jump on that bandwagon but I was a bit scared. You see most of them have loved it. Except Erica But she is a hater rebel. Usually books that everyone else loves and fangirl/boys over tend to leave me dry.I actually liked this one!It starts off all violent and shit. This guy is killed by a teenage nut job and the nut job is going for his family also, but they get away from him and he ends up in juvenile prison.The family moves across the country to the Lovecraft mansion. They maybe should have stayed at the Hotel 6. This place is kinda wonky.You have lots of rooms that need certain keys. Including one that makes you into a ghost.Then you have this hag/bitch in the well.That hag/bitch turns out to be something way freaky. I only requested two of these volumes from the library and I think that's probably going to make me mad at myself.Because there is lots of this:And I tend to like that.

I am a newbie to graphic novels. I have read The Sandman, Vol. 1: Preludes and Nocturnes and Through the Woods and while I found them interesting I also found them difficult to understand. I wanted to try at least one more before I gave up for good and Joe Hill's Locke & Key series came so highly recommended I couldn't pass it up.I liked this one! Theres magic and strange supernatural presences that might have once been real life human beings and a kid who has gone completely bonkers. Within the first few pages, the father of the Locke family, Rendell, a high school guidance counselor, is brutally murdered by a student. This sets into motion the rest of the familys move across country from San Francisco to Lovecraft, MA, a quaint town off the coast of Massachusetts where the father grew up in a giant house called Keyhouse. Upon arrival, the youngest Locke, Bode, finds an interesting old key that, when put in a door, causes whoever walks through it to leave their bodies and become ghosts.And thats where the story really starts to get going. Mr. Joe Hill shows that he is a master of pacing early on. He manages to tell a story that is slow going and quiet when it needs to be and then suddenly full blast speed when events need it. The dialogue flows well and each character has their own voice. Somehow in a matter of pages, all three Locke children are their own person through dialogue alone.Many references made early on make absolutely no sense. This is a prime example of being dropped in a story in medias res. Theres a whole other story to be told of events that led up to this brutal murder that is eventually told. As a character late in the book says, [Y]ou cant understand because youre reading the last chapter of something without having read the first chapters. Kids always think theyre coming into a story at the beginning, when usually theyre coming in at the end. Eventually you will learn of the first chapters, the catalyst for the trauma, but not at the beginning.Hill utilizes the occasional flashback and blanks are filled in for those who are patient. Even with the jumps in time, he manages to keep his pacing nice and steady as the story requires. Thats difficult to do. Jumps in time can be jarring to a read, but here, its all one long story being told, just in a slightly jumbled order.Gabriel Rodriguezs art is wonderful! There were a few sequences where details so minute became important, so I had a hard time following and had to go back to study each panel in order to understand the sequence of events. Im not used to having to notice tiny details in the imagery. Hill and Rodriguez fully utilize the comic book medium to put in Easter eggs in panels that you might miss if youre not paying attention.I loved this book. I highly recommend this read for seasoned comic readers and newbies.

When I first started reading Locke & Key a couple years ago, I kinda shrugged and thought to myself, "Yeah. Okay. That's pretty good...." But the story got its hooks into me pretty quickly after that. Unique concept. Great art. Great storytelling. Great characters. I read a blurb somewhere that said something along the lines of, "Locke & Key is this generation's Sandman." I don't know if I'd go that far... but if someone wanted to take that stance around me, I don't think I'd waste much energy arguing against it either. The truth is, this series does have a similar mythic feel to it, though its vibe is more Lovecraftian than folkloric. Simply said: great series. And as an added bonus, it stands entirely on its own. You don't need to know anything about Marvel continuity or folklore to help you understand the story. (Which might give it a leg up on Sandman in some ways.) Highly recommended.