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csnyd24-7
, January 21, 2012
Ramsey Campbell is what you might call "Horror's best kept secret" ['cept, there was never any INTENTION to keep him secret!], or a "horror writer's horror writer" [if you check out the back covers of his books, you find the likes of Clive Barker, Stephen King, and Peter Straub all but falling over themselves, trying to out-do each other in praising him; a phenom. I've only ever encountered elsewhere with Wm. S. Burroughs, whose books feature the likes of Joan Didion & Anthony Burgess, praising HIM to the High Heavens], but: the fact remains, he simply makes most "horror" practitioners NOWADAYS [Eli Roth, are you reading this? CAN you read?] look like the pansy-ass, sadistic little Nazi wanna-bes they truly ARE -- closer to a Mengele-meets-Pavlov frappé than capable of anything Hawthorne, Poe, or Bierce ever came up with.
(Hmm ... I'm digressing a LOT in this review ... better "wrap up" before I lose my audience ...)
This book:
(1.) Is scary as all-git-out;
(2.) Accurately limns the modern-day society we live in (like Stephen King, often credited from bringing the Horror genre from its ghettoization in the realm of "the Catholic" to the realm of "the Protestant"), and PROCEEDS from THERE, rather than trying to back-end or jury-rig a "scary story" that bleeds over into (all-but-inevitable) story-ruining implausibilities;
(3.) Get the "LURE" of such cults (over-organized religions; the Cult of the Nazis; "Satan"-worshippers; etc.) so UNCANNILY right that there isn't a WHOLE lot of reassuring space left in the reader's psyche after you finish the book and return to "daily life" . . .
REMEMBER, KIDS: "It's only a SCARY STORY..."
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