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Gumbywan

Randolph "Dilda" Carter

A rant about books, horror, and the weird.  I sometimes take on my love/hate relationship with goodreads and Amazon.

Currently reading

Perchance to Dream: Selected Stories
Ray Bradbury, Charles Beaumont, William Shatner
Progress: 140/336 pages
Pavane
Keith Roberts

Horror Candy

The Dark - James Herbert

It's pure candy.  We know it's not good for us but we crave it anyway.  This book is pure horror candy.  Monsters and zombies.  Mediums and ghosts.  A post apocalyptic world.  A cliffhanger at the end of every chapter like the old penny dreadfuls and the deus ex machina riding in the back seat to keep it all going.  Herbert is a master at gore and he lays it on thick here along with plenty of unnatural sex acts.

 

In the end it was like fudge, the first bite is great, the second and third just okay, and by the tenth you want to throw the thing away, but you have to finish it.  In other words, fun but overlong.  The ending was like, "I've written enough now."

 

This edition from Centipede Press also had a story, a Hallowe'en spooker that was good and an interview where Herbert wishes he would be remembered best for a book about a dog, which he won't.  Centipede does a nice job with the graphics, a Klimt cover and the original paperback cover.