You go on a hike with your mates by means of the woods, because the timber clear you discover a staircase. No partitions, no ceiling. Simply stairs. You’d be curious and perhaps ascend these stairs. When a bunch of teenaged pals (Owen, Laura (Lore), Hamish, Nick, and Matty) who’ve dubbed themselves “The Covenant” involves this odd phenomena within the late Nineties, one among them (Matty) climbs these stairs. He’s by no means seen once more.
5 highschool pals are bonded by an oath to guard each other it doesn’t matter what.
Then, on a tenting journey in the midst of the forest, they discover one thing a mysterious staircase to nowhere.
One pal walks up—and by no means comes again down. Then the staircase disappears.
Twenty years later, the staircase has reappeared. Now the group returns to search out the misplaced boy—and what lies past the staircase within the woods. . . . Quick ahead twenty years and the tightly knit group of pals have largely gone their very own methods, lived their lives. Owen is leaving on one thing of a threadbare existence, Lore is working in video video games, Hamish has a household and is dying of most cancers. That’s what the remaining members of the Covenant be taught when Nick sends all of them an electronic mail inviting them to his funeral.
The funeral is … not precisely what the previous pals predict. Nick takes them to not a funeral dwelling, however to the woods the place they’re greeted with one other staircase that results in seemingly nowhere. To say these pals climb the steps at this level isn’t a spoiler.
Chuck Wendig has been capable of play on feelings, nostalgia, and terror in equal elements in his earlier horror novels and right here in The Staircase within the Woods. The novel is instructed throughout two timelines, when these pals are in highschool and their friendship as at its top and the twenty years later as they’re adults attempting to reconcile their lives.
The late 90s is a time I bear in mind fairly nicely, even when a number of years separate me from these characters (I used to be largely in school round this time versus highschool). I look right now with nostalgia, I take a look at my later years in highschool with fondness with some uncomfortable reminiscences. Chuck captures that so very nicely. The significance of friendship, individuals who really feel equally bullied and bond over that, discover energy in distress, and forge a robust bond.
The bonds solid in youth can generally waiver. When Owen, Lore, Hamish, and Nick arrive at this “new” staircase their bonds are examined as they climb the steps and discover themselves … not within the woods they had been in moments in the past. I gained’t go into extra element besides to say that what these characters expertise is sudden, terrifying, and emotionally harrowing. There are horrific scenes that felt considerably catered to every of the characters, the story felt much more private and intimate with every new horror these characters skilled.
The pacing is frenetic, the chapters are pretty quick making it simple to get by means of them shortly and say “I can get by means of one other chapter” after which swiftly, extra time has elapsed than I anticipated and I’m by means of three extra sections/chapters.
The stress within the “flashback” scenes are practically as excessive as they’re within the horrific 20 years later scenes with these characters as adults. This pressure permits for an equal mixing of revelation and dread throughout all the novel. There’s such an intimate private contact to this whole story and Chuck does a very nice job of the sort of revelations solely adults can have when viewing the previous actions of their pals. It might spotlight a horror which will have been hidden and lurking beneath the floor. As these pals, this “Covenant” journeys past the staircase, the horrific visions they expertise power them to reexamine who they’re and what their two-plus decade friendship really means. What they discover trying inwardly is sort of as horrific as what their sight relays to their brains. The pacing and emotion are at a excessive all through all the novel and whereas the story involves a strong conclusion for the surviving pals, there’s an enormous trace that perhaps one thing extra awaits these pals.
I’ve gotten this far with out making the apparent comparability to Stephen King, particularly It. Whereas King is called the grasp of horror, what he’s maybe greatest at conveying is childhood friendships, how these bonds carry over to maturity and friendship on the whole. Chuck Wendig has captured that very same magic and it’s on full show right here in The Staircase within the Woods. One other factor that King has performed with a lot of his fiction is to tie all of it collectively in a “shared universe,” generally blatantly, different instances tenuously by means of Derry and Fort Rock, Maine. Chuck is doing one thing very related together with his fiction and the Bucks County area of Pennsylvania and its borders of New Jersey and Pennsylvania. There are hints and connections to his different horrific novels and one that may stand out fairly potently in the direction of the tip of the novel.
Over the previous half-decade or so, Chuck Wendig has risen to the very high of my must-buy, favourite horror writers (not that he writes solely horror, however most of his stuff has no less than a darkish undercurrent to it). The Staircase within the Woods helps to cement his writing close to or on the high of that listing and is a pleasant, emotional, resonant, terrifying novel.
Highest suggestion.
© 2025 Rob H. Bedford
Writer: Del Rey Books | April 2025
Hardcover 381 pages
Excerpt:
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