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ashleyjapan's review
2.0
When reading this book, I found myself feeling more and more disappointed as I went along. While the story was interesting, it was not the eerie ghost story that I had been hoping for. Instead of the paranormal, I got black magic. So my review is a little biased in that we were not off to a good start.
I found the writing to be quite evocative without being wordy, but I felt like the book started off really slow. The promising aspects of haunting and ghosts became increasingly incidental to the plot, and I thought that the story would have been better if it had left that out completely and focused on the antagonistic presence of the woods to begin with. Similarly, I didn't get why it was so important to focus on the Samhain/Beltane aspect of things, when we don't have any other Irish connections for 90% of the book. I guess a lot of the things that happen seemed contrived, and just got put in for the scare factor. Unfortunately, it wasn't scary. Gross yes, but scary, no.
On the other hand, the story does roll well enough along. It was interesting enough, and once I realized what I was reading I got on board and went along for the ride. However, this book didn't really satisfy what I was looking for, so I can only give it the "it was ok" rating of two stars.
I would recommend this book for people interested in stories about dark magic and familiars, not for those looking for a creepy ghost story like I was!
I found the writing to be quite evocative without being wordy, but I felt like the book started off really slow. The promising aspects of haunting and ghosts became increasingly incidental to the plot, and I thought that the story would have been better if it had left that out completely and focused on the antagonistic presence of the woods to begin with. Similarly, I didn't get why it was so important to focus on the Samhain/Beltane aspect of things, when we don't have any other Irish connections for 90% of the book. I guess a lot of the things that happen seemed contrived, and just got put in for the scare factor. Unfortunately, it wasn't scary. Gross yes, but scary, no.
On the other hand, the story does roll well enough along. It was interesting enough, and once I realized what I was reading I got on board and went along for the ride. However, this book didn't really satisfy what I was looking for, so I can only give it the "it was ok" rating of two stars.
I would recommend this book for people interested in stories about dark magic and familiars, not for those looking for a creepy ghost story like I was!
xterminal's review
4.0
Stephen M. Irwin, The Dead Path (Doubleday, 2010)
Full disclosure: this book was provided to me free of charge by Amazon Vine.
I finished The Dead Path on June 10, 2011. I swear up and down on a stack of Vine books that I reviewed it a couple of days afterwards, but I can find neither hide nor hair of said review in my drafts document, and Amazon still has it listed as unreviewed, so I must have dreamed writing it. (I should have kept going and dreamed y'all gave me three hundred helpful votes, or something.) But here we are on September 21, 2011, and I'm trying to get back to the headspace where I was just after finishing the book. I did like it, at times I liked it a great deal, though I think the comparisons are wrong; Mr. Irwin reminded me a great deal more of Ramsey Campbell than he did Stephen King, because Mr. Irwin is a more atmospheric writer, and has a that whole reverence-for-the-old-wives'-tales thing going on (the crucified-dead-animals thing could be straight out of a seventeenth-century folktale. Or Malleus Maleficarum, for that matter).
Plot: Nicholas Close was involved in a motorcycle accident. While injured, he attempted to call his wife, which resulted in another accident that caused her death. Another result of the accident: his head injury now allows him to see ghosts. Revenants, actually: spirits that continuously re-enact the final few moments of their lives. As you might be able to guess, this is a pretty nasty affliction for an antiques dealer to have, so he retires and heads back to the ancestral pile, a suburban house in Tallong, where he hopes to get away from the ghosts. That, however, would make for a very short novel. You see, Close has been haunted most of his life by the disappearance of his best childhood friend... and sure enough, that particular ghost is right where he left it. With only a skeptical sister (who's got her own problems at home) and a wayward teen who, like Close when he was younger, narrowly escaped the clutches of the Thing in the Woods(TM), Close has to set things right before the old powers, that harbor a grudge against Close for getting away all those years ago, set the balance right.
You'll hear a lot of talk about this being derivative, blah blah blah. Come on, folks, there's nothing new in horror except the way the old tales are retold. (And the not-so-old tales. You seriously didn't catch the Blacula references in 'Salem's Lot?) You don't read a horror novel for originality, you read it for the author's style, his timing, his pacing, his ability to build solid characters, place them into believable situations, and thus to scare the living shit out of you. Though I will only own up to actually being scared by two horror novels in the past thirty years. (No, I won't tell you which, but I will tell you that one of them is fast approaching that expiration date.) This was not one of them, but I don't take points off for that. I much more appreciate that Irwin is a solid writer than I am disappointed that the book didn't scare me. All the right cues are in all the right places. I'm just not easily scared.
[except by clowns.]
So instead of heralding Stephen Irwin as the Next Big Thing in horror, publishers, maybe you should have marketed him in the same way you marketed other amazing horror writers who have recently found themselves successfully trading old paths like Thomas Ligotti or Dale Bailey. Wait, you've never heard of those guys? Okay, point taken. But you should've done your research, because we, the horror-devouring public, have, and we revere them, and while Irwin is not in the same category yet, a bit more maturation of his talent and he will be. *** ½
Full disclosure: this book was provided to me free of charge by Amazon Vine.
I finished The Dead Path on June 10, 2011. I swear up and down on a stack of Vine books that I reviewed it a couple of days afterwards, but I can find neither hide nor hair of said review in my drafts document, and Amazon still has it listed as unreviewed, so I must have dreamed writing it. (I should have kept going and dreamed y'all gave me three hundred helpful votes, or something.) But here we are on September 21, 2011, and I'm trying to get back to the headspace where I was just after finishing the book. I did like it, at times I liked it a great deal, though I think the comparisons are wrong; Mr. Irwin reminded me a great deal more of Ramsey Campbell than he did Stephen King, because Mr. Irwin is a more atmospheric writer, and has a that whole reverence-for-the-old-wives'-tales thing going on (the crucified-dead-animals thing could be straight out of a seventeenth-century folktale. Or Malleus Maleficarum, for that matter).
Plot: Nicholas Close was involved in a motorcycle accident. While injured, he attempted to call his wife, which resulted in another accident that caused her death. Another result of the accident: his head injury now allows him to see ghosts. Revenants, actually: spirits that continuously re-enact the final few moments of their lives. As you might be able to guess, this is a pretty nasty affliction for an antiques dealer to have, so he retires and heads back to the ancestral pile, a suburban house in Tallong, where he hopes to get away from the ghosts. That, however, would make for a very short novel. You see, Close has been haunted most of his life by the disappearance of his best childhood friend... and sure enough, that particular ghost is right where he left it. With only a skeptical sister (who's got her own problems at home) and a wayward teen who, like Close when he was younger, narrowly escaped the clutches of the Thing in the Woods(TM), Close has to set things right before the old powers, that harbor a grudge against Close for getting away all those years ago, set the balance right.
You'll hear a lot of talk about this being derivative, blah blah blah. Come on, folks, there's nothing new in horror except the way the old tales are retold. (And the not-so-old tales. You seriously didn't catch the Blacula references in 'Salem's Lot?) You don't read a horror novel for originality, you read it for the author's style, his timing, his pacing, his ability to build solid characters, place them into believable situations, and thus to scare the living shit out of you. Though I will only own up to actually being scared by two horror novels in the past thirty years. (No, I won't tell you which, but I will tell you that one of them is fast approaching that expiration date.) This was not one of them, but I don't take points off for that. I much more appreciate that Irwin is a solid writer than I am disappointed that the book didn't scare me. All the right cues are in all the right places. I'm just not easily scared.
[except by clowns.]
So instead of heralding Stephen Irwin as the Next Big Thing in horror, publishers, maybe you should have marketed him in the same way you marketed other amazing horror writers who have recently found themselves successfully trading old paths like Thomas Ligotti or Dale Bailey. Wait, you've never heard of those guys? Okay, point taken. But you should've done your research, because we, the horror-devouring public, have, and we revere them, and while Irwin is not in the same category yet, a bit more maturation of his talent and he will be. *** ½
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