Horror Reader 13

The first chapter wastes no time setting up the situation and introducing the characters seamlessly. By the second chapter, the creep factor is already seeping in and escalates from there.

A group of people are stranded on an island after their ship sinks followed by getting thrown out of their life raft by a big wave against a reef from a second storm. They have to survive but not everyone got on the island ok.

It could use an edit for occasional awkward language or wrong form of words (bare instead of bear) but it's mostly well written. Gotta wonder where writers get character names sometimes. Dallas and Quinn? Really?

Despite the occasional hiccups, it's an engrossing story and kept my attention. The personalities of the characters develop along the way and only a couple of them border on the cliche, but basically they encourage sympathy and there were a few I hoped would survive.

There's a transition that I thought happened a little too suddenly where the title earns its name and some supernatural elements, but mainly it's a story about people who get some things right and some things wrong in their efforts to survive. There's some intense action at the end and an outcome that fits the story.

Overall I thought it was a good read for the genre.

This was pretty weird and kept me guessing for a long time. Was the protagonist really able to sense shape shifting goblins or was he psychotic and killing people because of a hallucination?

It is set mostly in a carnival and the author seems to have done some research into carny slang and lifestyle, but occasionally slips up and has things like elephants that you would only see in a circus. The side show seems a little elaborate for a carnival too but I just suspended my disbelief and read further.

I'm glad I did. There are some high action moments and toward the end the tensions get high. I can see why this is one of Koontz's most popular stories. There are plenty of surprises in the twists and turns of plot and I honestly couldn't predict exactly how it would end or whether any of the leading characters would make it through.

Definitely recommended.

Reading this book was like watching a bad B-movie. A cliché selection of people are driven to stop at a motel to get out of a storm, including an actress and a writer. Each of them has their own background and secrets. Hallucinations and other strange phenomena begin to happen and each of the guests gets told by some form of ghostly figure of someone they know that they must "Confess!"

The rest is mostly a jumble of confusing acts of violence for no discernable reason and the end has a tie to 'the next book' (yawn!)

I can't say that my time was well spent on reading this one, but at least in finishing it I know I didn't miss any exciting twists or explanations. All told a fairly dull read.

Had some good suspense and supernatural goings on, though sometimes too much detail in between. I'd like to see what this author could do with a longer story and more character development.

I got this out of the Horror section but until late in the story I didn't know if it was going to turn out to be supernatural or human monsters. That would be telling though. Part of the fun is trying to work out that point.

The story had a lot of action once it got going. The first half is basically character development before things heat up. There was some foreshadowing that never really went anywhere and a few things didn't quite fit together, but I enjoyed the read. The only real niggle was one of the explanations near the end that was the reverse of known science. Let's just say that inbreeding tends to produce mutations and that's one of those everybody knows that facts.

There was also too little explanation of how the guardians managed to get close to the family without ever being seen. I was a little disappointed by the ending, but at least it tied everything up. The writing itself was good and made it hard to stop in the later chapters. I guess sometimes you just have to enjoy a read for what it is and not worry about realism.

I love a good monster story and this one definitely qualifies. A local legend about a winged beast that sounds part goat, part bat and a few other things makes the woods a spooky and desolate place, yet occasional campers and the odd person hiding a body brave the solitude of the trees. Some don't make it back.

As monster stories go this was better than many, but it still lacked something. I think some more of the folklore on the Jersey Devil would have added to the feeling of horror.

It was still a good story. Plenty of blood and gore and suspence about when they're going to attack, kind of like in The Birds.

This was an ok book, but no better. Too much teenage silliness and lack of common sense. The action happens mostly near the end, but even then it was a little flat.

The page count on this book was something I found daunting, but I kept hearing that it was one of King's best, so eventually I took the plunge. It started out slower than I expected. Just a quick introduction to Derry and what happened there in 1958 followed by some individual stories of people in 1985 when they each get a call, asking them to come back and fulfil a pledge. I guess you would say it's a slow reveal of what actually happened.

For a while there are short glimpses of 1985, but the story of what happened in 1958 unravels at what I thought was a slow pace. There are enough weird happenings to keep interest, but basically it's the story of a group of boys and a girl, growing up in a small town, but with child murders and a few other frightening occurrences. For a while I was beginning to compare it to Mark Twain's Tom Sawyer with the exploits of the children dominating the narrative, but eventually the supernatural happenings increase and the story starts to really get going.

Just before halfway, it switches back to 1985 and the reunion of the gang. King shows his special talent for describing changes in a small town over time and how the memories of an adult who grew up in the town's earlier version can be superimposed over the place it has become. I get the feeling that King reminiscences his own childhood a lot in some of his books.

The appearances of Pennywise, the clown they call "It", becomes more of a regular feature and the Horror aspect of the book finally unfolds fully while the group go their separate ways in Derry to try to remember exactly what happened when they were kids and how they made it stop. I don't want to drop spoilers so that's all I'll say about the plot.

What I will say is that I found the whole book long and drawn out and didn't feel the payoff warrented the time it took to read it, though I'm glad I did so at least now I know.

The rest I have to say does contain spoilers so don't read beyond here if you are thinking of reading the book for the first time.

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SPOILERS BEYOND THIS POINT

One thread left untied really bothers me. What happened about Henry's body in the hotel room? Surely a hotel maid would have come in to clean before the flood happened? If this was a recent release, I would accuse Mr. King of starting to lose it.

And, after making we read a thousand pages of build up, a spider? That's the best you got Stephen, a f-ing giant spider?!? I expected something really scary, scarier than an evil clown.

Then there was the thing about the children having sex. I can get what he was trying to do there, but it felt shoehorned in. Like something he was planning to include and just had to find a place to put it. It didn't feel either natural or realistic. A girl that age having sex for the first time wouldn't be likely to have her first orgasm with an inexperienced boy either, no matter how big his dick is, not to mention two. King needs to talk to his wife more.

I found the last few chapters a slog. I'd rather be gripped and unable to stop reading, but I was counting off pages and feeling relief that it was almost finished so I could get on and read something else.

I appreciate that a lot of people really liked this book, but we'll just have to agree to disagree. I love King, I really do. But I'm going t be wary of his longer books after this. They're just not for me.

The Cankerworm of Memphis

by Clinton A. Seeber

I needed to read something that would have a quick conclusion, so got this short one and its sequels while they were up for free.

Doctor John Benoit is a French Canadian archaeologist who visits the Sphinx in Egypt with his assistant from Alabama, Suzanne Bridges. They have a permit to study the site, but sneak in after hours and unsupervised, which in real life would get them deported.

The writing was decent, but fell into beginner traps like giving a laundry list of what the characters wore right at the beginning. There were a couple of typos that slipped through, even in just these ten pages.

It was still interesting enough to go on to the second part. It's the start of a five part series, but reads more like a first chapter. It's just enough to start to get to know the characters and have one weird thing happen to grab interest.