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Post by bushwick on Dec 15, 2008 18:21:04 GMT
SPOILERS I GUESS, THOUGH IT WILL PROBABLY NOT MARR YOUR ENJOYMENT OF THIS BOOK...
Reading this at the moment. I've nearly finished, and I'd say it's good fun but not one of his best. This is about a failed priest who's wife and kids leave him, so he moves to Wales. He soon meets a new lass. Unfortunately, an old mine is cursed by some evil force from back in the day, and people get trapped and/or die/disappear down there, so our well-spoken friend Simon Rankin must use his skills as an exorcist (did I say he was also an exorcist?) and rid the mine of evil, discover the secrets of an ancient evil, etc, whilst protecting his loved ones from PSYCHIC ATTACKS.
I'm reckoning Guy used some of his Sabat research for this one, as he too is an exorcist (albeit a darker, more dastardly and thoroughly written one than this feller), and this book's from 1982, so it fits the timeline. It's not very gruesome so far. Similar tropes to the last book I read, Farson's 'Curse', in that it deals with suspicious local yokels hiding a shameful secret and not welcoming outsiders. Which are pretty standard horror themes, I guess. There's also a good traditional GNS village idiot kid, who runs about pretending to be a cowboy, masturbates whilst peeping into girls' windows, and is almost 'mongoloid' in appearance, natch.
This is a GNS by numbers, in my view, though even that's obviously ten times better than most poncy books. However, this does really redeem itself by making me literally 'LOL' on the bus, twice, when describing some sexual shenanigans. Simon's bird gets psychically 'raped' by an evil spirit in the form of a hunky chap. Here we go:
"Then she found she could move her head, jerked it down, her curiosity getting the better of her. She saw, partly managed to stifle a scream that was half excitement, half terror. Oh God, no man had a right to anything like that; no woman deserved to have to submit to it! Awful or wonderful, whichever way you looked at it. Her brain had gone numb, but her body was responding, fingers reaching out, trying to encircle that terrible shaft of sheer lust, scrambling after it with pouted lips."
Brilliant. This happens to me all the time, it's why I don't go out very much anymore. Also, when describing the aftermath of this tryst:
"There was a slight odour in the room, one that only a keen nose would detect. It took him several seconds to recognise it...the unmistakable aroma of male sperm."
She's stepped outside of the chalk pentagram drawn on the floor for her protection, and has thus put herself at risk from a stealthy psychic attack. See, I know not to do that from reading Sabat books (also that demons can get into your foreskin on a speck of dirt). Whilst being exorcised, she calls Simon a "dirty fucking sky-pirate"!
Actually, thinking about it, this is brilliant...but for Guy, it's business as usual!
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Post by dem bones on Dec 16, 2008 12:11:51 GMT
Say what you will about GNS but he never fails to bring out the best in our reviewers. Ten extra bonus points for reading it on the bus! That's something you don't see enough of these days, especially on the tube. There was a time when any self-respecting Englishman wouldn't leave home without a copy of Rex Miller's Slob or some equally hideous paperback to brandish at the passengers opposite. Now it's all Harry Potter, The Da Vinci Code or - if your lucks really out - Geri bloody Halliwell's latest hagiography.
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Post by bushwick on Dec 16, 2008 15:55:03 GMT
Hahaha...I'm always reading dubious paperbacks on the bus, but unfortunately, I'm censoring myself somewhat. I really want to start tackling 'The Specialist' by 'Jasper Smith'. I have the copy with this cover: I'm going to have to read it at home, ain't I?
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Post by bushwick on Dec 16, 2008 18:39:34 GMT
PROPER SPOILERS IN THIS PART THAT PROBABLY WOULD RUIN IT A BIT
Finished. The ending is quite good, kinda what you expect but handled pretty well. Good sacrifice and satanic orgy scenes that are straight out of Sabat.
Gets a bit confusing towards the end regarding what is done on the psychic plane and what is actually real - turns out some of the characters are actually piles of bones trapped in a mine, and what we see of them are just 'astral projections of their mortal souls'. I wrongly assumed that when his kids get sacrificed earlier in the book, it had been some astral put-on by the evil forces to fuck with his head, like when his lass gets impregnated by the devil man earlier. Turns out they have actually died though.
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Post by dem bones on Dec 16, 2008 18:39:49 GMT
I really want to start tackling 'The Specialist' by 'Jasper Smith'. I have the copy with this cover: I'm going to have to read it at home, ain't I? Dear God, but is that tacky! Another day, another addition to the never-ending wants list .....
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