If you like Wendig’s horror fiction, you should get a kick out of this. The only other book I’ve read by Wendig is “The Book of Accidents,” and I liked Staircase more. It’s shorter for one (which is always a positive), so it’s a tighter, more intimate story. It’s not necessarily restrained; I never felt that Wendig was holding back, but there isn’t the throw-lots-of-stuff-at-the-wall-to-see-what-will-stick-quality of The Book of Accidents that burderned that novel.

Like The Black Orb, the title is the story. Five teens in the late 90s find a staircase to nowhere in the woods of Buck County. One of the teens rushes up the stairs, gets to the top and… vanishes. Skip a few decades, and the four remaining friends, Owen, Lauren (Lore), Hamish and Nick, have drifted apart. But when Nick informs the group that he has pancreatic cancer, Owen, Lore, and Hamish feel obliged to make the trip to New Hampshire to be with their friend one last time. Nick’s idea of a party is to take his friends to the woods, where he has discovered another staircase to nowhere…

I won’t tell you what’s on the other side of the staircase other than to say it ain’t friendly. Wendig puts his cast through the wringer, and there’s enough gore to make splatterhounds like me happy. I found that the characters lacked depth—they fit too easily into well-worn stereotypes. However, as a novel about how friendship can wither on the vine, Wendig does a good job, reminding me of Stephen King’s IT minus Pennywise and an additional 700 pages.

My Locus review, out in March, discusses the themes in more detail. The novel will be published in April.