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3.66 AVERAGE
3.66 AVERAGE
An English country house is haunted by restless spirits lost during flooding during WWII. In modern times, in moves a family trying to escape another tragedy. Then the two hauntings collide...
I had two issues here. One, it's not the book for me, but for the kind of folks who actually insist ghosts are real and there really is a mysterious purpose to all our lives. This is essentially the story of a believer who gets to modestly avoid telling a skeptic "I told you so," and, well, I'm a skeptic. If you're a believer of stuff (you know who you are!), this has got to be just about perfect as far as plot goes, because it's well done in that aspect.
But, issue number two, this was paced soooo sloooooowly that I can't recommend it. Six hundred pages for a 300-page plot. I skimmed.
Some nice ironies here, but overall I found it laboriously slow.
I had two issues here. One, it's not the book for me, but for the kind of folks who actually insist ghosts are real and there really is a mysterious purpose to all our lives. This is essentially the story of a believer who gets to modestly avoid telling a skeptic "I told you so," and, well, I'm a skeptic. If you're a believer of stuff (you know who you are!), this has got to be just about perfect as far as plot goes, because it's well done in that aspect.
But, issue number two, this was paced soooo sloooooowly that I can't recommend it. Six hundred pages for a 300-page plot. I skimmed.
Some nice ironies here, but overall I found it laboriously slow.
This was one of the best book I ever read,I couldn't stop reading until I finished it.
A pesar de que la empecé un poco escéptica al final ha acabado gustándome mucho. Es la primera novela de James Herbert que cae en mis manos y creo que no tiene mucho más publicado en español, pero voy a animarme a leer algo en inglés porque la aventura en Crickley Hall me ha convencido. Ya sabía yo que había algo cuando se me cayó encima en la biblioteca, y me alegro de haberle dado la oportunidad
2019 Pop Sugar Reading Challenge-A Ghost story
This was suspenseful without being too scary. There was great backstory. There was a lot of downtime between incidents so you didn't feel overwhelmed, or have to fear having a heart attack.
This was suspenseful without being too scary. There was great backstory. There was a lot of downtime between incidents so you didn't feel overwhelmed, or have to fear having a heart attack.
This is why I read James Herbert.. Brilliantly executed ghost tale... Not giving anything away. BUT read with the lights on....
The story of Gabe and Eve is an incredible ghostly tale...
Highly recommended.
The story of Gabe and Eve is an incredible ghostly tale...
Highly recommended.
A fun, old-fashioned spooky tale. What I love about Herbert is that he doesn't pretend to be a great writer. But what he does, he does very well. The epitome of a "fun" read.
When you read James Herbert's The Rats, The Fog, and The Survivor as an impressionable young teen who loves horror films, you are marked for life. I am one such and I can't thank him enough for having given me those thrills. But, sadly, it seems more or less impossible to revisit the synchronicity of a startling scare and the innocence to enjoy it. I'm an old man now trying to relive moments of teen frisson with an author who doesn't seem to have kept up with the times all that well, or whose poor writing I just didn't notice when I was a teen. I've tried twice now in recent years to get a chill out of one of his later books and have been rather disappointed both times. This one was better than the other, and, honestly, this isn't a terrible (just pretty ordinary therefore standard and unsurprising) ghost story, but the overwriting certainly gets in the way of the telling. EVERYTHING is telegraphed, often long after the astute reader has figured out one of the unraveling plot's many mysteries, and then we are told, in expository fashion, that same fact at least three times to make sure we haven't missed it. It's a tad annoying, then condescending, and then annoying as hell as one plods through the repetitions to get on with it. And, yes, I will probably still try to find a good scare in the other Herbert books I pirated on my kindle a while back, hoping beyond hope to recapture my lost youth and a great scare from a good, raunchy pulp horror novel--the guiltiest of all guilty pleasures.
This is a classic haunted house story that hits all the right notes as far as creep factor. It's unapologetically standard in its setup: A likeable family suffering from a recent tragedy rents a house in the country to "get away" for a while. The house is spookier than expected, things start going bump in the night (literally, in one case), and then OH SH*T GHOSTS. It's got plenty of horror clichés, including the dog that refuses to go in the house, the power being prone to failure, and the kindly old man dropping by every now and then to provide exposition. Despite this predictability, the atmosphere is spot-on and the shivers are plentiful and effective.
The gloomy atmosphere of the house comes out superbly through the text, and the scare scenes are well-placed and frightening (I do think there could have been more, but I also say that about every horror novel I read, so you can take that as you will). The backstory to the ghosts is suitably disturbing, and the "Big Bad", as it were, is definitely someone to give you the creeps. There are also several nice little moments that aren't scary, per se, but that give you a little shiver to remind you that all is not well. This will often happen at chapter endings, e.g. from Chapter 26: "There were no incidents that night, no rappings, no sounds of running feet, no 'whimpering' from closed closets. Nothing untoward occurred during that night and the Caleigh family slept peacefully....All was still and silent in Crickley Hall, save for the creaking of the cellar door as it opened a few inches."
My one complaint is that the author does ramble from time to time, and frequently sounds as though he's swallowed a thesaurus. While I didn't have much problem with the writing style in general, there were definitely points where a great deal of plot-irrelelvant detail was given about, for example, the husband's work project, and I occasionally found myself skimming and thinking, "Okay, get back to the story." This didn't happen frequently, but it was irritating when it did. And although I understand there are only so many ways you can say a place is "shadowy", maybe when you find yourself using words like "umbrageous" and "tenebrous", that might be sign you're harping a little too heavily on the shadows; maybe pick another feature to describe. That said, it's not often I find myself learning new words these days, and I did enjoy the opportunity, but some people might find the excessive wordiness off-putting; a little sharper editing probably could have cut a hundred pages or so out without sacrificing anything terribly important. Overall though, I definitely enjoyed it and would recommend to anyone looking for a creepy way to spend a dark and stormy night.
The gloomy atmosphere of the house comes out superbly through the text, and the scare scenes are well-placed and frightening (I do think there could have been more, but I also say that about every horror novel I read, so you can take that as you will). The backstory to the ghosts is suitably disturbing, and the "Big Bad", as it were, is definitely someone to give you the creeps. There are also several nice little moments that aren't scary, per se, but that give you a little shiver to remind you that all is not well. This will often happen at chapter endings, e.g. from Chapter 26: "There were no incidents that night, no rappings, no sounds of running feet, no 'whimpering' from closed closets. Nothing untoward occurred during that night and the Caleigh family slept peacefully....All was still and silent in Crickley Hall, save for the creaking of the cellar door as it opened a few inches."
My one complaint is that the author does ramble from time to time, and frequently sounds as though he's swallowed a thesaurus. While I didn't have much problem with the writing style in general, there were definitely points where a great deal of plot-irrelelvant detail was given about, for example, the husband's work project, and I occasionally found myself skimming and thinking, "Okay, get back to the story." This didn't happen frequently, but it was irritating when it did. And although I understand there are only so many ways you can say a place is "shadowy", maybe when you find yourself using words like "umbrageous" and "tenebrous", that might be sign you're harping a little too heavily on the shadows; maybe pick another feature to describe. That said, it's not often I find myself learning new words these days, and I did enjoy the opportunity, but some people might find the excessive wordiness off-putting; a little sharper editing probably could have cut a hundred pages or so out without sacrificing anything terribly important. Overall though, I definitely enjoyed it and would recommend to anyone looking for a creepy way to spend a dark and stormy night.
dark
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
Content Warnings
Graphic: Child abuse