For his 17th horror novel, Herbert goes back to Haunted (1989) to recover his footing after some weaker tries to scare the reader. Returning is alcoholic psychic investigator David Ash, who suffered a nervous breakdown following his stay at the crumbling Edbrook mansion. Here, Ash is still haunted by Edbrook's ghosts as he investigates a new uprising of the paranormal at the hidden village of Sleath. Even readers who scoff at gooseflesh may get the creepy-crawlies as Herbert lets out all stops but keeps his ghostland hyperbole to a midrange level. Ellen Preddle sees her 11- year-old son, Simon, who drowned in the bathtub, still lurking about the house. Why? Well, in part, as Ash discovers, because Simon's father, who abused him sexually and died a year before him in a strange haystack fire, is also still aroundthough now black and crumbling from his incinerationand won't let Simon move on to the next world. Ash finds that Sleath is spiritually dominated by the Lockwood clan, whose evil goes back to the Crusades, black arts imported from Egypt, and whose members more recently gave birth to the Hellfire Club. Ash falls for Grace Lockwood, a sometime psychic like himself, who can read his haunted mind when they make love. But Grace too is haunted at a genetic level by her ghastly family, and uncovering Grace's past becomes the novel's pivot. Meanwhile, Sleath itself is invaded by many more horrors, one of the neatest of which is two sets of floating body parts trying to reassemble themselves so they can couple in midair. Other bloody eruptions follow, including an especially grisly bit about a poacher who falls on one of his own arrows and...well, you'll find out. Familiar stuff, working toward Sleath's invasion by a flesh- mist, but page by page Herbert grips by anchoring us into his skeptical psychic investigator.
Pub Date: Aug. 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-06-105210-8
Page Count: 336
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 1995
Fans of smart horror will sink their teeth into this one.
Things are about to get bloody for a group of Charleston housewives.
In 1988, the scariest thing in former nurse Patricia Campbell’s life is showing up to book club, since she hasn’t read the book. It’s hard to get any reading done between raising two kids, Blue and Korey, picking up after her husband, Carter, a psychiatrist, and taking care of her live-in mother-in-law, Miss Mary, who seems to have dementia. It doesn’t help that the books chosen by the Literary Guild of Mt. Pleasant are just plain boring. But when fellow book-club member Kitty gives Patricia a gloriously trashy true-crime novel, Patricia is instantly hooked, and soon she’s attending a very different kind of book club with Kitty and her friends Grace, Slick, and Maryellen. She has a full plate at home, but Patricia values her new friendships and still longs for a bit of excitement. When James Harris moves in down the street, the women are intrigued. Who is this handsome night owl, and why does Miss Mary insist that she knows him? A series of horrific events stretches Patricia’s nerves and her Southern civility to the breaking point. (A skin-crawling scene involving a horde of rats is a standout.) She just knows James is up to no good, but getting anyone to believe her is a Sisyphean feat. After all, she’s just a housewife. Hendrix juxtaposes the hypnotic mundanity of suburbia (which has a few dark underpinnings of its own) against an insidious evil that has taken root in Patricia’s insular neighborhood. It’s gratifying to see her grow from someone who apologizes for apologizing to a fiercely brave woman determined to do the right thing—hopefully with the help of her friends. Hendrix (We Sold Our Souls, 2018, etc.) cleverly sprinkles in nods to well-established vampire lore, and the fact that he’s a master at conjuring heady 1990s nostalgia is just the icing on what is his best book yet.
Fans of smart horror will sink their teeth into this one.Pub Date: April 7, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-68369-143-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Quirk Books
Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
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A charming and persuasive entry that will leave readers impatiently awaiting the concluding volume.
Book 2 of Hearne's latest fantasy trilogy, The Seven Kennings (A Plague of Giants, 2017), set in a multiracial world thrust into turmoil by an invasion of peculiar giants.
In this world, most races have their own particular magical endowment, or “kenning,” though there are downsides to trying to gain the magic (an excellent chance of being killed instead) and using it (rapid aging and death). Most recently discovered is the sixth kenning, whose beneficiaries can talk to and command animals. The story canters along, although with multiple first-person narrators, it's confusing at times. Some characters are familiar, others are new, most of them with their own problems to solve, all somehow caught up in the grand design. To escape her overbearing father and the unreasoning violence his kind represents, fire-giant Olet Kanek leads her followers into the far north, hoping to found a new city where the races and kennings can peacefully coexist. Joining Olet are young Abhinava Khose, discoverer of the sixth kenning, and, later, Koesha Gansu (kenning: air), captain of an all-female crew shipwrecked by deep-sea monsters. Elsewhere, Hanima, who commands hive insects, struggles to free her city from the iron grip of wealthy, callous merchant monarchists. Other threads focus on the Bone Giants, relentless invaders seeking the still-unknown seventh kenning, whose confidence that this can defeat the other six is deeply disturbing. Under Hearne's light touch, these elements mesh perfectly, presenting an inventive, eye-filling panorama; satisfying (and, where appropriate, well-resolved) plotlines; and tensions between the races and their kennings to supply much of the drama.
A charming and persuasive entry that will leave readers impatiently awaiting the concluding volume.Pub Date: Feb. 4, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-345-54857-3
Page Count: 592
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Nov. 24, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
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