Number 76- Ancestral- Ramsey Campbell

 

Another NetGalley read, this time for the latest book by Ramsey Campbell which is due out properly in a few weeks.

Tim Bystone is 8 years old. His parents, Lou Byston (nee Stanton) and Ray, come from two families who hated each other for reasons lost to history. Over the summer, Tim is asked to choose where they should go for their breaks and he takes them to a succession of places that they seem to know despite never having been there. 

But each of these places is strange, and contains somethings that mean harm. Is Tim taking these things home with him inadvertently? Is he in control of whatever it is that is leading him to find them?

In typical Ramsey Campbell fashion, this book is packed with some brilliantly evocative and creepy set pieces. This book may well leave you scared of the dark if you let it. The depictions of what may or may not be lurking in the spaces beyond the torchlight are the stuff of nightmare. Likewise, are those tendrils in the fog really so insubstantial as they might seem to be or is something reaching out to take hold of you?

There were some things that I didn't get on quite so well with though.  Tim has the worst teacher in fiction. I found her an entirely unbelievable character. Tim is 8 and she calls his parents into school because he talks about wizards? Do none of these kids read or watch any Harry Potter or Worst witch or any of the hundreds of books abut magic aimed at that age group? And why would the teacher take minor disagreements between 8 year olds as seriously as she does? 

There were segments where the uncertainty in the prose was wearying rather than atmospheric. There are only so many times that could have, might have , though he had, may have done and the different variants on those phrases can be used in a page, and this exceeded that number a few times.

I think a wider focus than the three members of the family may have benefitted the story.  We hear about the side effects of what's going on in passing on several occasions. I know that Ramsey is subtle, but there were hints at some scenes that I know he could have made truly terrifying, but they were reduced to characters we never met again saying a couple of lines before their service to the plot was served.

This is still an excellent novel that I would recommend to any lovers of quiet horror, but I didn't think this was as good as other Ramsey novels. He's set the standard so high with his other works that even something as good as this is in some of the set pieces...it's not top tier Campbell. Not top tier Campbell though, is still heads and shoulders above many other horror writers.

Number 75- Something Is Killing The Children- Hope is a Knife- James Tynion Iv and Kiersten White

 

This is a Netgalley copy of the first prose novel in the Something Is Killing The Children franchise. 

In this story, Erica rolls up into the town of Badwater where a couple of children have died under violent circumstances.  Oddly, the killings were over a year apart, which is unusual for  monsters. Erica hopes that there's nothing to find here, but, as per the title, hope is a knife.

Her arrival coincides with a spate of supernatural violence that she must get to the centre of before anyone else has to die. The answer to the mystery may mean she has to make a horrific decision.

I actually preferred this to any of the graphic novels. The artwork has always been a bugbear for me and of course, that's not here. Instead we get more inside Erica's head than we ever have done before.

Kiersten White's prose is evocative and damned effective. For the frst third of the book, you could almost be forgiven for thinking that Erica is just a side character. There's a lot of scene setting and introduction of the various inhabitants of the town.  All the more potential victims.

The action scenes are well handled and the monster is depicted suitably nastily. There's a genuine tension in the second half of the book as Erica struggles with the dilemma she finds herself faced with.

This is a good read for all fans of the graphic novels, and a good jumping in point for those who've not had the pleasure.