Title: Nightmare in the Limbo of Halloween
Author: Behzad Almasi
Publisher: Authorhouse
ISBN: 978-1-50493-484-8
Pages: 246
Genre: Fiction

Reviewed by: Dan MacIntosh

Hollywood Book Review

Behzad Almasi’s fantastic book, Nightmare in the Limbo of Halloween, was said to have taken eight years to write. It certainly does have an epic feel to the book. It’s much like an Albert Camus philosophical story, in that our main character is thrown into a world where much does not make sense and little is fair. The absurdity of it all is an observation that our main man makes again and again. We never learn our protagonist’s name. In fact, we don’t learn anybody’s name in this story. Instead, we’re told various character’s roles and relationships – particularly to this protagonist. Although we’re not given coordinates on this unusual land where our poor soul arrives, we do eventually learn that it is a kind of purgatory; a place where a person can make final reservations for either heaven or hell.

While Almasi’s work is a deeply religious one, we’re also not provided a specific religious view. We are, however, presented with the trials and tribulations of the human condition. If this tale is to be believed, perhaps the biggest evils of man are greed and pride. Our unwilling traveler is granted the opportunity to spend lavishly on material possessions, and then directed to parade his bling before his otherworldly neighbors. What he doesn’t realize until it’s almost too late, though, is that he must pay with his very life for these various luxuries.

This book’s primary relationship is between the main character and his servant. His servant is there to meet his every need. The reader can see right through this servant, though. He might present himself as his master’s best friend, but he’s evil to the core, in truth. He leads his master through a series of activities, which may appear benign on the surface, but are, in fact, serious tests of character. The master has a revelation at one point that if he’s ever going to get through this nightmare (many times cannot tell if he’s dreaming or living out these various scary situations), he’s going to need to pray to God. However, when he asks his servant to find a church of some kind in this city, the servant has no idea what he’s talking about and reveals there aren’t any places of worship in this dystopia.

One of the big pushes in this scenario is for unexpecting residents to conform to this negative culture. The servant is constantly coaching his master on how to observe proper etiquette. The analogy can be made that this is also how Madison Avenue attempts to steer the lives of Americans via its enticing advertisements. If a person wants a happy life, he or she needs to spend all his or her money on all the products paraded before their eyes. Everybody else is doing this, we’re told, and so also should you. What Madison Avenue fails to tell us — just as Satan the tempter conveniently leaves out of the equation — are the dire consequences. ‘You can have it all,’ we’re told. ‘You should strive to have it all,’ we’re constantly reminded. But there is no small print to remind you that you can never conceivably obtain it all and even if you had everything, you’d still be left unsatisfied. (Oh, and you’re also never told that the ultimate cost for this spending spree lifestyle is your eternal soul).

Almasi does a wonderful job of sucking the reader in and getting him hooked on this crazy world. The reader is constantly trying to make sense of it all, just as is our protagonist. It certainly seems as though Almasi wants us to examine our own lives and motives while reading his story. This is not just an action-packed story, though; it is, most importantly, a novel-length morality tale. Unlike the Halloween all the kiddies celebrate each October 31st, all the scary people wandering these streets are real. ” Nightmare in the Limbo of Halloween ” by Behzad Almasi is very well written, the characters are intriguing, and the story is spellbinding.