I'm about 150 pages into Duma Key, Stephen King's new novel. I'm really enjoying it.
I've avoided reviews and descriptions and I didn't even read the dust jacket, so I don't know where it's going. So far, we have a man in his 40's who has lost an arm in an accident. He paints pictures. There's something weird about the pictures.
Good stuff, so far.
I just picked up Duma Key yesterday! I will not be starting it as of yet...too many books that come before!! lol
Auntie, I've always wondered if Duma Key was any good, because I read somwhere in an official review that it was simlar to Lisey's Story. Now I haven't read Lisey's Story, but I am rather leery of it as it received rather horrible reviews from readers from what I heard.
Zsinj, I can't say. I only made it about 60 pages into Lisey's Story -- the silly words got on my last nerve.
If anything, it reminds me of Bag of Bones. Not the same plot, but the same feel. But I like it better than Bag of Bones.
If it helps, I liked Cell and Blaze -- I thought both books had their faults, but they were quite readable. Lisey's Story wasn't. Maybe someday I'll take a black pen and mark out all the smucking and the silly talk and try again.
Originally Posted by AuntiePam
What exactly do you mean by silly words?
Mostly Lisey and the "smucking". Drove me nuts. If she's too much of a lady to say f***ing, that's fine. If smucking isn't a replacement for the stronger word but instead meant something else, that's okay too, but smucking and f***ing are too similar. So every time I saw "smucking" I replaced it with "f***ing" and I wanted to grab Lisey around the throat and tell her to "Just say the damned word! You're not fooling anybody! It isn't cute!!"
It just sounded phony and silly, and whenever she said "smucking" it took me right out of the story. I'm told there were some other cutesy words and phrases used quite often later in the story. I figured that'd just tick me off too, so I put the book back on the shelf.
***********
I've finished Duma Key. I think a lot of people will be calling it "vintage King" or "old King". I think it's better than that. It's not just a ripping good supernatural tale, it has a lot of heart, and humor, it's very well written. And it's scary as heck.
I can't think of a single thing to nitpick, and for a cranky old broad, that's sayin' something.
Last edited by AuntiePam; January 24th, 2008 at 11:43 PM. Reason: finished the book
Right now I'm reading The Influence by Ramsey Campbell. It's a good, fun read, nothing really spectacular or mind-blowing. While Campbell is certainly by no means a bad author, I wonder why he's been dubbed "The Grand Master of Horror". Granted, I haven't read that many Campbell works, in fact the only other one I've read is "Ancient Images", which I thought was very good, but the ending was just terrible and supremely dissapointing. Maybe I haven't read him enough to be right on this sort of opinion, but I don't see his work as being as great as, say, Lovecraft, King, Herbert, or Simmons. And speaking of King, how's your reading of Duma Key going, AuntiePam? I've heard some pretty good reviews of the book.
I'm also currently reading The Silmarillion by J.R.R. Tolkien.
Campbell made his early reputation mainly through short stories. I've read a couple I didn't care for, but most of those I've read are powerful. By all accounts his novels are mostly good, and some excellent (Midnight Sun and Nazareth Hill are titles often mentioned as excellent), but I wonder if his true strength isn't in the short story form, though.
Randy M.
I would definitely agree. For me Campbell - along with Ligotti and Aickman - is one of the true masters of the horror story in the second half of the twentieth century. However his novels (at least the ones I've read, which only amount to 5-6) have always left me kind of indifferent. They weren't bad by any means, but they lacked the punch of his short fiction. Campbell excels at creating a mood of disquiet and menace, but such an atmosphere is much, much harder to maintain over the course of a novel than a short story.
A little bit more on topic, I'm currently finishing up Laird Barron's The Imago Sequence and Other Stories and loving it. One of the best collections I've read in quite some time.
That reminds me, I totally forgot that I read a short story by Campbell a little while back that's in the short story anthology "The Mammoth Book of Vampires" by Stephen Jones. The name of it escapes me, and I'm too lazy to look it up right now, but it was an excellent tale and the ending scared me so bad I nearly pissed my pants!
Alone With the Horrors is a large-ish retrospective of Campbell's work in the short story from early in his career until the early '90s. TOR published the mass market edition, I believe, and from what I've read in it, it would be worth tracking down.
Randy M.
Just finished reading 'Bloodstone' by Nate Kenyon. While it suffers (slightly) from being a little too 'Stephen King' for comfort it's a genuinely scary read (for me anyway) that built up my expectations and then knocked them straight down again. Well worth a look (imho) if you see a copy.
I'm now well into Kelley Armstrong's 'No Humans Involved'...
Finishing up two very good - if very different - collections: Terry Lamsley'sConference With the Dead and David J. Schow's Havoc Swims Jaded.
Schow is a writer whose stories I've encountered occasionally in the past in various anthologies, but this is the first full collection of him I've read, but it definitely will not be the last. He is credited with inventing the term splatterpunk, but it would be unfair to dismiss him as merely blood and guts. He's savage, funny, and has great range.
Lamsley' fiction, while more "quiet" and reserved, is also excellent. You can see influences such as Ramsey Campbell and M.R. James in his work, but he brings his own distinctive voice to the classic British ghost story.
I also recently read Mark Samuel's The White Hands and Other Weird Stories, a book which has received high praise from some quarters but which I found highly disappointing. When Thomas Ligotti calls something "a treasure and a genuine contribution to the real history of weird fiction", I sit up and pay attention. Unfortunately, I found it amateurish and derivative instead.
I just started 'Salem's Lot by Stephen King. I'm only about a quater of the way through, I am moving slow, but it is beginning to get interesting. I anticipate my reading rate to jump soon as I am on spring break next week.
I just finished up Stephen King's 'Salem's Lot. I gotta say I was pretty disappointed. For a vampire novel it wasn't nearly badass enough for me. I guess I expected more, but didn't get it. The characters were kind of lame, and the Vampire Barlowe wasn't very scary. Overall the book wasn't very scary and for a vampire novel wasn't anything special.
I really thought that King would do more with the Vampire motif, but in the end it was a pretty pedestrian effort, and not that unique or interesting. Hopefully my next horror foray will be better.
Posting Permissions
Reply With Quote
Bookmarks