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
The already converted may consider a sermon interleaved with brief slivers of story acceptable; others will be bored rather...
U.S. Marshal Anita Blake, of the Preternatural Branch, faces down a zombie horde, a curiously elusive and powerful vampire, and a flood of prejudice in this far-too-talky installment of a seminal urban fantasy series (Kiss the Dead, 2012, etc.).
The estranged father of Micah, Anita’s wereleopard lover, is dying from a mysterious attack that left him with a rotting disease. So, Anita, her other wereleopard lover, Nathaniel, and a host of lycanthropic guards and lovers travel to Boulder to visit Micah’s father, Rush, and determine the perpetrators of the attack. Her initial investigation is hampered by local law enforcement, many of whom object to her associations with shape-shifters and vampires as well as her busy love life. Hamilton/Anita make a valid point—it’s unfair that it’s more socially acceptable for a man to have many lovers than for a woman to do so; however, it seems unnecessary for the author to keep preaching to the choir that has followed Anita to Book 22. It’s also understandable that Anita would be so defensive, given just how hostile Hamilton writes her adversaries, but that hostility feels contrived, as if the author was playing a chess game against herself. Plus, so much time is spent explaining, justifying and angst-ing about Anita’s complex relationships that there’s barely any room left over for plot. We’re a third of the way into the book before there are any (admittedly excellent) action scenes and further still before there are any (steamy, but far too brief) sex scenes. There’s so much telling instead of showing that the book’s ultimately not much of an effective advertisement for polyamory.
The already converted may consider a sermon interleaved with brief slivers of story acceptable; others will be bored rather than outraged.Pub Date: July 2, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-425-25570-4
Page Count: 576
Publisher: Berkley
Review Posted Online: July 6, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2013
Readers who prefer clueless heroines, pointless gore and evil mumbo jumbo will find a veritable feast in Littlewood’s debut.
Littlewood’s debut novel takes a young widow and her son back to a town she knew in her childhood.
Cass and Ben are finding the going tough in the little town of Darnshaw, where Cass spent part of her youth with her mother and uncompromising father. Although her memories of the town are mostly black, she has inexplicably returned there to give Ben a new perspective on life following the death of his father, Pete, who was killed in Afghanistan. Ben doesn’t want to be there, and he makes it clear, particularly when they discover that the mill, which has been converted to apartments, appears to be deserted except for the two of them. And when the pair are snowed in and must walk to the small local school, they find themselves becoming more and more isolated from both the outside world and each other. Soon, Ben has made some new friends, but his behavior becomes outrageous. Cass chalks it all up to his being upset about his father and the move, and she doesn’t do anything about his increasingly bizarre actions until a lack of phone service interferes with her business efforts. After losing what appears to be the one genuine friend she might be making in that town, she drags Ben away and tries to walk to another town, only to find that Ben refuses to leave. Later, a series of strange and grisly discoveries confirms that nothing in Darnshaw is as it appears to be. Cass proves improbably slow on the uptake, shrugging off sinister incidents and ignoring her own instincts to the point where it becomes hard, if not impossible, to sympathize with her. Impatient readers will have figured out long before Cass finally connects the dots that she should have snatched the kid and run.
Readers who prefer clueless heroines, pointless gore and evil mumbo jumbo will find a veritable feast in Littlewood’s debut.Pub Date: Sept. 24, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-62365-022-3
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Jo Fletcher/Quercus
Review Posted Online: July 6, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2013
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