The Rats, book review. (James Herbert)

Back to my childhood again for this one; James Herbert's The Rats.

Classic British horror with all the gore and lack of plotline you would expect and love from the 1970s and boy does it deliver.

Such is the pace of this novel, the whole thing is over in a flash (I am not a fast reader but read it in about five hours) and it's rather formulaic too, introducing a new character per chapter at the start, before killing most of them off rather gruesomely soon after, and then the school teacher hero (the author was a school teacher himself when he wrote the book) turns up in the right place at the wrong time to save the day - the attack on the school is actually one of the highlights of the book, along with a doomed underground train where most of the people aboard become a meal - but what I couldn't believe (this book was first published in 1974, which isn't an excuse by the way) is how sexist and archaic it felt. I've recently re-read Stephen King's first novel, Carrie, which was also published in '74' and that didn't feel anywhere near as old, but there you are, just a word of warning.
The book is set in London but it's a London I don't recognise. There are derelict areas by the river Thames where we now have luxury apartments and bomb-damaged rubble-strewn swathes of rat-infested land that probably have an Ikea or Costa drive-through today, which again, for me at least, because I know London reasonably well, dates the book even more.

So, the writing is okay - I should point out that when I first cut my teeth on James Herbert's back catalogue (or before I knew any better), all of his books got five stars because, as a teenager, the gorier the book, the more blood that was spilled and the more ingenious the ways in which it was spilled was all that really mattered - and its pace, as I've said, means you'll tear through in no time. The characters do lack depth though, and their backstories mean very little because the character to whom they refer to are in most cases, quickly devoured.

So, the Rats, one of my first love affairs of the literary world, written by one of the first authors that really got me reading for pleasure, is now a mixed bag. I will always have it and its author to thank for leading me down the path I am still on, for helping me fall in love with the world of books, but, and it pains me to write this, overall, now, thirty-odd years later, I can see it for what it is, average.

Brilliant in parts - the scene in the school really is that good - but showing its age in regards to how it portrays women and in the basic way it is written.

Three stars then for James Herbert's The Rats, but I'll never forget where it all started.

Dracula, book review. (Bram Stoker)

Dracula, one of the best and most influential books I have ever read!

Quite a statement that, so let’s look at it in a little more detail.

The book is written as a series of diary and journal entries in the first person, and from several different perspectives. The characters are both male and female, one being a solicitor, one, a Doctor who runs a lunatic Asylum, and then there's Dr Val Helsing from Amsterdam.

Mina Murray and Lucy Westenra's diary entries, add both intrigue and passion, we have the somewhat delicious English language, (as it was in late Victorian England), a love quadrangle, rather than a love triangle, desperation, sadness and remorse, but above all, we have Count Dracula.

We all know the story of course, or do we?

I first read this book over twenty years ago and in that time I'd forgotten most it, remembering just the bare bones.

I had a vague recollection of Renfield and the asylum, the predicament in which Johnathan Harker found himself in, in the depth of the unforgiving Carpathian mountains, but I'd forgotten the pace of the book, the shear depth of fear the poor souls experienced, as they battled their way to Carfax Abbey, and then across Europe, to confront what must be, one of literature's most revered villains.

And let us not forget one of the all-time best chapters in literary history, chapter 7, where the description of the storm and the landing of the Demeter, (Dracula's ship), at Whitby Harbour, is told as a news article in a local newspaper.

Reading this book again, got me thinking about how many stories, films, television programs, cartoons, and comics there must be out there, that have been influenced by this book? Hundred, thousands maybe, who knows! From the obvious like, Salam's Lot and the Twilight saga, through Richard Matheson's sublime, I am Legend, to Justin Cronin's less obvious but equally exquisite, The Passage, to count (pun intended) but a few. (My own short story, Lycanthrope, would never have materialised without this book).

So, a solid five stars for Bram Stoker's Dracula then, and what a better time to start reading it, than on All Hallows’ Eve.

Enjoy my fiendish friend, read deep.

Doctor Sleep by Stephen King.

Well, well well. 

According to the author, people have been asking him about what happen to Daniel 'Doc' Torrance after that fateful night at the Overlook hotel, (that was the climax of one of his best books, The Shinning, in case you didn't know), for a while now.

And now we know. Or do we?

I have a sneaky suspicion that Daniel Torrance and his new companion, Abra, will appear in a few more of his books before to long, particularly Abra, and I can't wait.

What a great character. We first meet her when she's a baby and as the book moves on and Dan Torrance's sobriety lengthens, Abra's strength grows, and then they finally meet. 

The baddies are a little less convincing in what they are, (a sort of vampiric sect living of the essence of dead kids with the shinning) but there character development is just as good as the others, insomuch as you hate the ones your supposed to hate and sympathise little as they meet their individual demise. 

I love this book, but having gone off of the supernatural element a bit recently, I didn't think is was as good as 11.23.63, which was simply sublime, so I'm going to give Doctor Sleep a four and a half star rating. 

One of his best.