Updated 21/08/2014
Kim Newman’s Glastonbury set tale of a year 2000 millenium apocalypse may have passed its sell by date (without incident) yet still offers a gorily fun interpretation of The Book of Revelations for horror fans who enjoy the likes of Stephen King, Clive Barker, James Herbert and Brian Lumley.
There is a comfortable soap-opera quality to the slow-burn character-building of colourful locals and visitors but, in the final act, as chaos descends, the diversity of their living nightmares causes a loss of focus.
Some of the sexual-horror is just plain nasty and there is a missed opportunity to explore the dynamics of cult religions with more intelligent depth.
As an entry into the sub-genre of supernaturals versus psychic spies it makes a sufficiently fun but hardly a life-changing read.
Newman can do better.
Click the smiley to find out where 🙂
This is a succinct and well-balanced review, thank you (especially for pointing out a missed opportunity – those tend to disappointment me the most). And thanks for suggesting “Anno Dracula” – I admit I am unfamiliar with Newman, but I’m working on diversifying my reading lists and “Anno Dracula” has made it onto the “to read” pile. With more books than there is time to read them in, I appreciate good book reviews.
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Thanks for your encouraging comments 🙂 I’m sure you’ll enjoy Anno Dracula – if you don’t let me know and I promise I’ll eat my hardback copy 😉
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Hah! I’ll let you know, though I’d rather you got your fiber from a tastier source 🙂
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