The Bookworm: 'Fear Hall: The Beginning'

Fear Hall: The Beginning, by R.L. Stine. 165 pages. Pocket Books. July 1997.

I do this a lot. I find guys in restaurants and movie theaters and stores. And I end up in dark parking lots with them. (p. 139)

This was fun!

I know I wrote that I was done writing about books, about other people’s writing, but I just can’t resist—especially for a Fear Street book.

Fear Hall: The Beginning tells the story of four roommates at Fear Hall, a cursed dorm on the campus of Ivy State University. When one’s jealous boyfriend goes too far, they band together to keep his crime a secret. But it’s harder than they think, especially since he can’t control himself.

There’s not much to say about Beginning. It’s a fun, run-of-the-mill whodunnit, though it becomes painfully obvious what is happening, what the twist is. In fact, I got a little bored once I figured it out. I even got the urge to quit it—a first for the Fear Street series, as far as I can remember. But I kept reading and am glad I did. (There was no way I would have left a Fear Street book unfinished.) It’s full of those moments of unintended hilarity and impossibilities, the kind you roll with because it’s Fear Street and young adult fiction. It was an enjoyable respite from the deep German guilt I’ve been slogging through—and it is only the first part of the series!

Released in July 1997, Beginning takes place in October—a missed opportunity since I love to time my FS books so they match the season. I was both annoyed and jealous to read about fall colors and sweatshirt weather while sweating through the hottest summer ever. However, I’m writing this post while wearing a sweatshirt and feeling cool autumn air coming from in from an open window.

I can’t remember when or how I got Beginning, but it has been in my queue for forever. It departs from the main series in a couple of ways. The Fear Hall books are among the handful of FS spinoffs, some of which I did not know existed until recently. (A Fear Park book is in my queue.) They are a testament to Stine’s voracious productivity and love for horror stories. His bio often says his job is to scare kids, and it is obvious he takes the job seriously.

Beginning does not take place in Shadyside, either. The city is never mentioned, but the connection to Fear Street is that Fear Hall was financed by and named for a Fear. Also, the characters are college students, albeit freshmen—a departure from the high-school teens featured in most FS stories.

Also different (the list just keeps going), it features multiple teases of the sequel and series finale, Fear Hall: The Conclusion: a “terrifying sample” and a short letter from Stine. Samples are not that rare (though I never read them), but the note from Stine is something I don’t remember seeing before.

Though it’s not the best book in the world, or the best FS book (what would that be?), Beginning is a fun read. It pulled me out of a reading funk and even got me to write about it.