Gothic novels for Halloween, chapter by chapter.

Every strip on this page is a real Books strip from the Huezle app, drawn by the app’s own code. More about Books.

How to read the strips

Each strip is one novel, read start to finish from left to right. Each band is one stretch of the book: a chapter where real chapter headings could be found, otherwise one of 24 equal parts. A band is indigo when that stretch is sombre, warm grey when it is even, and gold when it is bright.

The mood is measured, not judged. Every sentence is scored by VADER, a standard sentiment tool that rates words as positive or negative, and the scores are averaged for each band. It reads vocabulary, not plot, so a polite Victorian chapter about a haunting can score as even, and a happy wedding described in gloomy words can score as dark. No text from any novel is stored or shown here, only the numbers.

The darkest shelf in the library

Huezle’s Books category has six collections and 136 novels. Gothic & mystery, with 16 novels, is the most sombre of them: its typical band scores 0.042, against 0.088 for the English novel and 0.086 for the children’s classics. On the strip that means more slate blue and less amber than any other shelf.

Frankenstein: the long slide

OpeningEnding

• Sombre
• Even
• Bright

Mary Shelley’s novel opens with some of the brightest prose in the collection: its first three bands all score above 0.27. Its first half averages 0.13, its second 0.05, and the low points cluster at the end, where four of the last six bands are below zero. No Gothic novel here has a brighter single band, and with its dark ending that gives Frankenstein the widest range on the shelf.

Jekyll and Hyde: saving the worst for last

OpeningEnding

• Sombre
• Even
• Bright

Stevenson’s novella is the shortest book here, about 26,000 words, and its strip is cut into 24 even parts rather than its chapters. It averages exactly zero, the lowest of the sixteen, and its last band scores −0.23: the most sombre stretch of any Gothic novel here. The ending most readers already know about turns out to be the darkest writing on the shelf.

Dracula: even, all the way through

OpeningEnding

• Sombre
• Even
• Bright

Dracula is the surprise. It runs to about 161,000 words, and only one of its 24 bands scores below −0.07, where the strip turns properly blue. Told in letters and diary entries, its narrators keep writing in a steady, practical voice about terrible things, and a tool that counts words may be hearing that steadiness rather than the horror. Its average, 0.061, is brighter than The Hound of the Baskervilles.

Two more ways to end in the dark

• The Picture of Dorian Gray
• The Hound of the Baskervilles

OpeningEnding

• Sombre
• Even
• Bright

The Picture of Dorian Gray splits in two: its first nine bands all score 0.08 or more, and after that none rises above 0.06, like a portrait darkening in the attic. The Hound of the Baskervilles runs exactly from its brightest band, the first, to its darkest, the last. The other eleven novels on the shelf, some of which break the pattern, are left for you to find in the app.

For the other end of the library, the happiest and saddest classic novels ranks all 136. The same idea, one band per item in order, draws famous directors’ careers and comic book heroes by decade. The Books category has all six collections.

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