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Post by dem bones on Mar 2, 2015 16:58:13 GMT
Now this is interesting. This chapter opens straight into a newspaper article called Monsters Among Us by Gloria Weston(Dave's other half), and it's notable for me in that it actually brought a bit of a lump to my throat when I read it. I could easily imagine this article being cut and pasted directly from a real newspaper, it's very poignant. I actually feel a little guilty now. It's an article about how the real problem in Boleta Bay isn't the homeless, but the gangs of youths attacking them. It gives us some examples in Harrison Bentley otherwise known as Bents who was stripped and bound to the tracks of the roller coaster, or Mad Mary who was stripped and handcuffed to a railing, beaten and painted green all over, or Biff who was painted with red and yellow stripes and Lucy whose buttocks were glued to a bench and her little plastic bowl glued to her face. The article reminds us(or at least the residents of Boleta Bay) that they only guilty of one thing. Being homeless. Ouch...! And that the only disease they spread is one of guilt. And just to really rub it in, it goes on to point out that they were all children once. All someone's daughters and sons, all with hopes and dreams similar to ours. It's quite hard hitting really, and caught me a little off guard. It also puts paid to those nay-sayers I think that suggest Mr Laymon wasn't up to much. The newspaper article is indeed an important shift, and shows Great Big Billy Goat Gruff for what they are, the children of the affluent beating up on the weakest and most socially isolated of the derelicts. Depressingly, a very similar case occurred in Cardiff last summer. Not all the "trolls" in Funland are benign, and at least one of the kids has cause to despise them. Gads, but that Kindle cover is grim.
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Post by doomovertheworld on Mar 2, 2015 18:52:51 GMT
Gads, but that Kindle cover is grim. Totally agree. Part of what attracted me to horror when I was a child was the splendidly lurid book covers of Richard Laymon et al. I suspect that it would have been half as a attractive vs surely it is no contest?
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Post by ohthehorror on Mar 2, 2015 20:47:43 GMT
Yes, the Ed wood eBook I bought in kindle format recently, 'Blood Splatters Quickly' was very much the same, if not worse. It was basically just a white cover with the title in plain black lettering, no real cover image to speak of at all. Not sure why that is. Seems to be the way of it with some of the ebooks (though not all of course, the Lisa Tuttle anthology I bought on kindle has the original cover).
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Post by dem bones on Mar 3, 2015 9:45:27 GMT
It can only be copyright issues that prevent the publishers from using the original cover artwork, but that's still no excuse for some the travesties we see, be they physical or ebook. Honourable exception: Mr. Dragan Vujic. He never lets you down. Funland fact: A schoolgirl was cyber-bullied by members of a teen suicide cult in Silent Witness double-episode, Supernova, written by Paul Farrell and broadcast in the autumn of 2006. One of these trolls (the irony) posted under the user-name 'Great Big Billy Goat Gruff,' There's a snippet about it here amongst Lemmy's Cult TV Shows.
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Post by Jojo Lapin X on Mar 3, 2015 10:39:55 GMT
That cover seems stylistically similar to the covers of the Richard Laymon Collection, a set of printed books from Headline. (I am the proud owner of all of them.)
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Post by dem bones on Mar 3, 2015 12:45:38 GMT
That's what I've been meaning to ask. Anyone read Laymon's posthumously published mummy novel, Amara/ aka To Wake The Dead (Headline, 2003)?
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Post by Jojo Lapin X on Mar 3, 2015 12:53:28 GMT
That's what I've been meaning to ask. Anyone read Laymon's posthumously published mummy novel, Amara/ aka To Wake The Dead (Headline, 2003)? Yes, sure. It is good! If you like Laymon, that is. I would not recommend it to the uninitiated.
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Post by franklinmarsh on Mar 3, 2015 16:05:33 GMT
That's what I've been meaning to ask. Anyone read Laymon's posthumously published mummy novel, Amara/ aka To Wake The Dead (Headline, 2003)? Yes, sure. It is good! If you like Laymon, that is. I would not recommend it to the uninitiated. Yes, I read Amara too - one of my many ex-library (oh no!) hardbacks, now sadly long gone. This isn't the one involving a young man being held prisoner, and a sharpened piece of wood, is it? An outrageous (but wildly successful ) piece of misdirection by Mr Laymon.
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Post by Jojo Lapin X on Mar 3, 2015 16:27:24 GMT
Yes, sure. It is good! If you like Laymon, that is. I would not recommend it to the uninitiated. Yes, I read Amara too - one of my many ex-library (oh no!) hardbacks, now sadly long gone. This isn't the one involving a young man being held prisoner, and a sharpened piece of wood, is it? An outrageous (but wildly successful ) piece of misdirection by Mr Laymon. As I remember it, there is a young woman held captive, and the sharpened piece of wood does not ring a bell. But it has been a while since I last read it.
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Post by ohthehorror on Mar 3, 2015 17:27:56 GMT
That cover seems stylistically similar to the covers of the Richard Laymon Collection, a set of printed books from Headline. (I am the proud owner of all of them.) I didn't realise those existed. My version's also by Headline. I seem to have omitted that from the cover shot. I'll edit it in.
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Post by dem bones on Mar 3, 2015 17:46:22 GMT
Yes, I read Amara too - one of my many ex-library (oh no!) hardbacks, now sadly long gone. This isn't the one involving a young man being held prisoner, and a sharpened piece of wood, is it? An outrageous (but wildly successful ) piece of misdirection by Mr Laymon. As I remember it, there is a young woman held captive, and the sharpened piece of wood does not ring a bell. But it has been a while since I last read it. Thanks for the endorsements, gents. To best of my knowledge Amara is the one Laymon horror novel to elude me, time to step up the search. Stating the bleeding obvious, but "a sharpened piece of wood" is pivitol to the "is it a vampire?" novel, The Stake, one of very few of the books I didn't much care for. Far as I remember, there were two women in peril from the obligatory psycho on that occasion.
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Post by ohthehorror on Mar 7, 2015 9:59:32 GMT
I'm getting distracted again. But back to it... Heh heh! I love it when a couple of new characters pop up out of nowhere. Baxter and Kim are feeling amorous, and Kim being a 'bit of a one' decides she'd like to go down to the beach and have a little fun with her man. Nothing wrong with that of course. I admire her sense of adventure. If only she'd known what was lurking there in the darkness, under the boardwalk, and on it as it turns out. Surfice to say it doesn't go at all well and they both get jumped by dark, shadowy creatures who I'm pretty sure are just trolls laying in wait. We've already seen the graffiti on the wall under there, behind a hidden door. Satan was mentioned as I recall. I'm hoping it's going to be something a little more than just plain old trolls playing at snatching and sacrificing. I'm really hoping for an actual slobbering creature from the dungeon dimensions, and the trolls are feeding it kids just because. I'd really like that. Anyway, Kim gets leapt on by a troll from above and the rest of them pile in on top while Baxter, who's been a bit slow to come to her aid I feel, finally rushes into the fray. We don't actually know if they survive or are fed to a slobbering beast, because the chapter ends there and we're left to wonder. We also meet Poppinsack, who I quite liked at first in a 'god, you're an annoying but strangely fascinating little man aren't you?', kind of a way. He grated on me pretty quickly though and I was back to rooting for the trolls again when they nabbed him, stripped him and cuffed him to the Ferris wheel. It all goes horribly wrong though when they set it going and he falls from the very top and ends up very, very dead moments later. Not to worry though, Nate has a surf board so they're good to go. A quick trip offshore and, splash! All's well that ends well then. Of course before all this happens, Poppinsack pee'd me off even more by steeling Robin's money(the $20s) and replacing them with $1 bills. Very amusing Mr Poppinsack, I'm sure. How are you enjoying the fishes? I really like Robin. She's a great character and I feel I know her quite well at this stage, so when a toadie like Poppinsack screws her over I'm not going to be happy about it. I'm glad they got him. I'm glad he's dead. There, I said it. And I don't feel at all guilty about it this time either. Jeremy and Cowboy get into a fight outside Jasper's Oddities. He seems to be willing to do anything to impress the trolls, and has found himself a young lady too called 'Shiner' who seems quite nice from the little we've seen of her. A couple of the girls that were also involved in the fight escape the attentions of the 'cops' and end up hiding out for a while under the boardwalk. Mr Laymon treats us again here since one of the girls has lost her top and is now, well, topless. It's a pleasant enough distraction until they discover the little secret door and crawl in to keep warm. Jingles pulls the door shut and swiftly feels 'hands all over her'. And it's not the good kind of 'hands all over her' either. Joan pops round at this juncture to see how Dave is after the fight. She's come armed with two bottles of champagne and a nice little white denim number with a zip up the front that isn't actually zipped all the way up but leaves a V-shape of flesh visible at the top. I like it Joan. It's nice. It isn't long before the two of them are chatting away and slurping champers, and of course, Joan, being the little vixen she clearly is, dribbles some down her chin, and Dave watches eagerly as it trickles down her kneck and arms and onto her skirt and thighs. Ah well, in for a penny, in for a pound. Here you go then, Heh. Little tease... There's a kiss now, but they're interrupted by Gloria turning up. Damn it Gloria. Bad timing girl. After the fight, because of course there's a fight, Gloria storms out and it's all looking pretty final for the two of them, especially since Gloria's parting shot is to call him a Pig. I shouldn't imagine it's easy to backtrack after a row like that. So, I'm about 40% in at this point and it all seems to be coming together nicely. I'm still pretty sure it's going to end up being about sacrificing kids to Satan with the trolls being kind of like his servants or minions or something. I would much rather see my great big slobbering creature hold up in that secret area under the boardwalk though. I'd like that. Well, there's still a chance at this point of course. No matter how slim that chance, it's still alive and kicking in my imagination for the moment. ...to be continued!
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Post by erebus on Mar 7, 2015 16:56:34 GMT
Am I the only one who felt a lot let down by Funland ? I love the writer and have all his books but Funland for me seemed like a good idea that left me redundant after I read it. That being said I didn't like SAVAGE either and that ones seems to be the most popular book he has written. Recommend AMARA Dem, certainly worth picking up.
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Post by ohthehorror on Mar 8, 2015 20:30:36 GMT
I remember enjoying The Cellar more than this one, and if I recall correctly I was quite taken with The Woods Are Dark at the time too. I'm enjoying this one too but I'm not sure I'd rank it as highly as The Cellar. When I catch up with myself a bit more I'm going to get the The Beast House Trilogy and treat myself to a good ol' re-read to see if they're as good as I seem to remember them being.
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Post by ohthehorror on Mar 21, 2015 17:39:36 GMT
Well that took me longer than I expected to finish. Don't know why. It was a good read when all's said and done. I think someone else here mentioned the ending being a little disappointing, and was that ever the truth, but apart from that I enjoyed it a lot.
The things I liked,
I'm a great fan of our Mr Laymon's penchant for detailed description of various bits of young lady's anatomy. There's a lot to be said for it, and in the end, who can truly say they don't enjoy a bit of a perv when they get the chance. Not me that's for sure. Perv away I say. So thank you Richard. Thanks ever so...
I absolutely fell in love with Robin, the sweet young banjo player that had everyone raving over her performance of Puff the Magic Dragon. I remember my brother having the 7" single when we were kids. It had one of those really high quality, thick, glossy sleeves too as I remember. It was a bit of a surprise as I recall when the rumour went round that it was actually about Opium smoking. So I suppose that makes Robin's rendition that bit more cool. Anyway, Robin is strictly speaking homeless, and earns money singing and playing her banjo. She's a very sweet, but fiesty little thing that's well able to handle herself when she has to. I was over the moon when she hooked up with Nate since as far as I could tell it meant that her chances of survival had just increased dramatically. And she wasn't even wearing Red Gym Shorts either. Shame really. If there's one image I wouldn't say no to it's Robin in a pair of Red Gym Shorts. Nate turned out to be quite charming too. They make a great couple.
Shiner was another favourite of mine, and I admit to being taken completely by surprise when it turns out she's Joan's sister. I'm pleased about that too since Joan was another one I really liked, and once again Mr Laymon doesn't let us down on the female anatomy descriptions, but takes almost every possible opportunity to describe Joan's bits and bobs in loving detail. She hooks up with Dave, her partner, of course which as you can imagine displeases Gloria. It's pretty much shrugged off quite quickly though and Gloria spends a lot of her time dressing as a Troll and attempting to get their side of the story.
Tanya isn't so easy to like, but then she's pretty well broken, due to the horrendous and brutal gang rape she endured at the hands of the Trolls, which left her with a massive scar running the length of her torso and down her groin. It's quite shocking and very affective. There was a lump in my throat on a number of occasions when I thought about what she'd endured, and her little scar-touching, blood-letting initiation thingy with each of the gang went a long way to making us realise just how terrible it must have been for her. We're left without a shadow of a doubt as to why she has such a drive to hunt out and reek her vengeance on these Trolls.
As for the Trolls themselves, they were handled quite well in that a lot of the time they're lurking in shadows or full up in your face with their hand out demanding money. It doesn't take much to imagine them in the service of some heinous villain or strange, otherworldly creature. And as it turns out...
Poppinsack annoyed me immensely. I swear I emitted an audible growl and clenched my fists when Robin realises he's robbed her, and all the while being nice to her and serving her tea. What a nasty little man. Glad he died the way he did. Wish it was me that killed him, but hey, you can't have everything.
The things I didn't like,
Well, not a lot really. But the spider's web with it's cocoons just didn't do it for me I'm afraid, and as if to rub salt into the wound, in comes Jasper riding on the back of a giant spider complete with top hat like some naff, half-arsed goth or something. I know I originally wanted a nice big old creature to be at the bottom of it, but really now, a spider!?? No, just a bit of a let-down in the end I'm afraid.
Still, it was good overall, even given the disappointing end. And now of course I'm in the mood for a bit of pervy, sexiness. Mr Laymon has a knack of drawing out that side of me I'm afraid. In fact I've just been eyeing up the next Gor novel, God forgive me! How did I ever get to book no. 10, Tribesman of Gor? And don't even get me started on no. 11, Slave Girl of Gor. I'll have to read no.10 soon if only so that I can get to no.11 as soon as possible.
Anyway, I liked it and recommend it. I don't think it's going to be my favourite Richard Laymon, but it certainly won't be my worst either.
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