Strieber's horror novels often rework classic occult themes (Unholy Fire: possession; The Hunger: vampirism, etc). Now, in an unusually spooky—and splattery—offering, the author updates the monstrous mythos of H.P. Lovecraft, to whom he dedicates the book. The eerie doings pile on quickly, beginning with physicist Brian Kelly hearing screams emanating from a mound in his hometown of Oscola, New York. Years back, Brian's first wife and child died in a fire, and ever since he's been a wreck, abandoning his time- travel experiments and cringing at the screams he still can hear- -and so Brian wonders whether he's imagining this scream, until his new and pregnant Vietnamese wife, Loi, also hears it. A dig, however, reveals only dirt. But later that night, newspaperwoman Ellen Maas visits the dig and is swarmed by a horde of huge lightning bugs that nearly suffocates her, while Brian, also returning to the mound, is mesmerized by purple lights that crackle with sexual energy. The next day, screaming is heard at another site, and this time digging reveals the corpse of a woman, every bone in her body pulverized—but her left eye still glimmering with evil intent. Ellen and Brian team up to investigate, evoking Loi's jealousy—but when the menace fully reveals itself in the form of further animate corpses bursting open to loose further swarms of lightning bugs, the corpses then mutating into gigantic tentacled creatures that ferociously shred the town and its inhabitants—it's Loi who leads the fight. But can she combat this superintelligent creature, freed from a parallel universe by Brian's old experiments, before it destroys her—as well as her baby, squirming to be born? Genuinely scary, with plenty of scattered body parts for gorehounds—but subtle it is not, and the Providence recluse was scarier still, by saying less and implying far more.
Pub Date: July 8, 1993
ISBN: 0-525-93683-1
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 1993
At their best, Laymon's cackling horrors (The Stake, 1991; Night Visions 7, 1989) are the nastiest around—sleek, black- humored, skirting (if not slipping over) the edge of pornoviolence. Here, though, he injects them into a floundering picaresque historical about Jack the Ripper—set partly in the Old West- -resulting in his only seriously dull book yet. Even Laymon's usual thrumming prose is missing here, replaced by a faux-plucky narration (``It wasn't a job I could walk away from''; ``Right then I vowed to save her'') by 15-year-old Londoner Trevor Bentley, who, one dark-and-stormy night in 1988, goes searching for a bobby to corral the lout who's beaten his mom. Wandering the streets, Trevor is attacked by thugs who strip him; seeking clothes, he breaks into an apartment but hides under the bed when the occupant returns—a whore accompanied by none other than the Ripper, who mutilates the woman while the boy cowers inches below: a wicked beginning that Laymon soon squanders. Trevor follows ``the fiend'' only to be shanghaied—along with luscious young Trudy Armitage—aboard the Armitage family yacht, which the Ripper has pirated, aiming to sail to the fresh killing-ground of America. Sundry tortures, mostly of Trudy, make the voyage pass quickly; arriving in the US, the Ripper rips Trudy and escapes, trailed by Trevor, who loses his prey but is taken in by a retired general and his daughter, who tutors the boy in sex. Long months later, reading of savage murders in Tombstone, Trevor rides the rails west, where he takes up with outlaws, dallies with yet another pretty girl, and, at last, confronts the Ripper in a blood- spouting finale. Laymon dedicates this meandering mistake to his agent, who, he says, suggested ``an English setting...so this book is your fault.'' Okay—but Laymon himself should have known better. And next time, with luck, will.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-312-10537-1
Page Count: 352
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1993
A slight, intentionally naïve, over-extended parable with some of the simplicity, charm and oddness of a fairy tale.
A whimsical British first novel blends issues of adolescence, bereavement and mixed-race ancestry.
Nwokedi’s debut is set in Wistful, an imaginary South England town, in the recent and nostalgic past flavored by references to “Ironside” and Engelbert Humperdinck. Although 13-year-old Fitzgerald’s father is killed by a truck on page one, this is a story light on events and stronger on atmosphere and personalities, revolving around well-meaning oddballs who try to help the boy and his mother, Pauline, cope with the loss of their part-English, part-Nigerian father and husband. This much-loved figure, with his huge hands and passions for carpentry and dictionary definitions, supplies the benign if tragic heart of the story and perfumes it with odors of sawdust and tobacco. Fitzgerald, struggling with sexuality as well as recent loss and new responsibility, was always urged by his father to “Be proud to be African, son,” which is why he leaves, accompanied by boiled-candy-sucking Hyacinth—possibly an angel—on a mission to scatter his father’s ashes in Nigeria. The trip is funded by local friends and relatives like melancholic, cigarette-card-collecting Mr. Plucker, and Uncle Albie, a plumber with a passion for ghost-hunting. The African scenes are pungent, less quirky and brief, almost sketch-like. Back in Wistful, a late revelation about his father teaches Fitzgerald about alienation, shame and heritage, but he will emerge from this rite of passage as an individual, with woodworking gifts of his own and a less-burdened identity.
A slight, intentionally naïve, over-extended parable with some of the simplicity, charm and oddness of a fairy tale.Pub Date: May 15, 2006
ISBN: 0-224-07343-5
Page Count: 246
Publisher: Jonathan Cape/Trafalgar
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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