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.
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