Loukko by 
Original title: Jäätävää
Author: A.R.S. Horkka
Published: 2022
Publisher: Tammi
Genres: Fantasy & Science Fiction, Young Adult (13 or 14+)
Pages: 168
Part of a series: Nordic Horror series
Reading material:
Full Finnish and English texts. English series presentation.
First title of the new Nordic Horror series!
When the days are short, the nightmares are long. And your fears take a monstrous shape.
Consider the long, dark winters of the Nordics and the mythologies they breed. Add a dash of mystery, a touch of the supernatural, and a drop of murder. As a finishing touch, layer on frigid mists and a pervasive, creeping eeriness, and you end up with the perfect Nordic Horror series. But if you look more closely, there is also kindness, friendship and romance in the mix!
Nordic Horror is an anthology series. Each novel introduces a new main character with a fast-paced, original, and fun-to-read plot from a different horror subgenre with a Nordic twist. Above all, each story is an honest and emotional study of its protagonists – of the fears that have made them who they are and how they still have to face their biggest fear of all, no matter what monstrous shape it takes.
The first season of seven books has been acquired by Tammi in Finland, and the first book, The Shivering, was published in Spring 2022.
Book 1: THE SHIVERING
I don’t live in the cold, the cold lives in me.
When six-year-old Armas loses his parents in a plane accident, he is sent to a remote orphanage in northern Lapland, where children are called “hot bloods” who need to be “cooled down.”
What people don’t know is that by being “cooled down”, the children are actually losing their emotions to demons. To get his emotions back, Armas, now 16, has to kill each of these demons, including the oldest and most dangerous monster of them all – the demon queen called the Snow Lady.
Book 2: THE STAND-IN
The past haunts me. I haunt the past.
After a brain tumor diagnosis, 18-year-old Taika, an avid member of a historical reenactment group, develops a psychic connection to a medieval noblewoman, a Viking berserker, and a Finnish civil war photographer. Now, Taika must help them with their troubles, and they help her, to the point of curing her cancer. Ultimately, we learn that the ghost that has been haunting her has been herself all along.
Book 3: THE CLOCKWORK WHISPERER
Do clockwork zombies dream of steam sheep?
Two fifteen-year-old steam engineering cadets, Orca and Vapor, each make a death-defying trip to Helsinki, the Lead City, which is teeming with clockwork zombies and enemy soldiers, to retrieve their beloved mentor, Professor Aeris, the Imperial Clockwork Whisperer, and the Fire Stone, a magical object with the ability to heal the plague raging in the empire and end the war with the Blood Army.
Book 4: CHILDREN OF THE MIDNIGHT SUN
A Midsummer Day’s Nightmare – a disturbing classic
As punishment for using ancient forest magic, 16-year-old Dia, who suffers from Tourette syndrome, is sent to spend her summer holiday with her grandmother on a remote island, where she ends up solving a decades-old mystery involving the murder of several children but almost falls victim to a macabre Midsummer’s Eve ritual.
Book 5: THE MURDER BALLADS
Never meet your death metal heroes.
The wannabe guitar slinger/vocalist Krista and her goofy heavy metal band break their idol, the iconic black metal singer and total nutcase Jennifer, out of a mental hospital to get their hands on her notorious demo tapes. But when the murder ballads come to life, Krista must find a way to undo the curse before the monsters kill them all.
Book 6: THE BLACK BEETLE
The Ride of Your Life
Maija is 18 years old, friendless, and seriously ill. When she becomes the owner of a black VW Beetle, a car with an evil mind of its own and infamous for its connections to a series of recent murders, it unlocks her suppressed memories of being a 600-year-old vampire. Now she realizes that she must save her fellow vampires from a ruthless biotech company that is harvesting their blood to mass produce the elixir of youth.
Book 7: WERESONG
Connecting Werewolves
Nooa is a sensitive and quiet art student who is interested in costume design. But that all changes when a mysterious werewolf pelt comes into his possession. Passed down through the ages, it protects him and all of his reincarnations as he uses his newfound powers to fight against a vicious serial killer who wants to avenge his sister’s murder.
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