I finished The Horror Club by Mark Morris. It was an enjoyable read. I would put it in my top twenty horror novels (#17 actually, I like to rank the ones on my bookshelf in the order that I liked them when I finish one). Mr. Morris is Brittish so a few parts of the book are reflective of the cultural differences between there and the US. For instance, the main characters are in highschool, but are able to drink alcohol around adults. This threw me for a loop, because I thought all the adults that allowed it would end up getting caught and thrown in jail for contributting to the deliquency of a minor. A freind of mine told me that drinking age restrictions are much more lenient there though, so that explaines it.
In the story four outcast teenage kids have formed a club that focuses on horror movies and books, not much time is spent on what the club does before the threat appears, which I was a little disappointed in. I was kind of interested to see a little of the clubs meetings before everything happens, but at least the book starts quickly. The kids are bullied by some larger, violent peers. The Horror Club kids end up preforming a seance in a delapitated, abandoned house that the last family that owned it fled from due to a horible haunting that occured there. The seance summons a powerful entity that can assume any form it wishes and often chooses extreamely bizarre and hideous appearances. The creature is very evil and voilent and starts killing people almost as soon as it comes forth. It is cunning however, and uses this to try and get those involved in the seance to willing do things for it as it seems unable to outright slay those involved in its summoning.
The book kept my interest with both the supernatural parts of the plot as well as those involving the characters regular lives. In one section there is a stabbing that kept me really wanting to keep reading to see if a fringe character survived or not. Nothing supernatural in that part but it was riveting nonetheless. I liked a part near the end of the book where some of the characters end up in what can only be described as another dimention. It is a twisted, horrific fantasy world with corpse-flesh type trees and marauding gargoles that seek 'pinks' (humans) to use as slaves. I wish that more time had been spent in this realm because it was so strange and intriguing.
The end seemed rater abrupt, despit the fact that the book was 519 pages long, and its overall resolution seemed a little too easy, considering everything that the characters had gone through up to that point. It didn't detract too much from it being a fun read, though. Personally, I would recomend it, but there are other books that I would recomend higher.
If my review sucks, don't come down too hard on me as it is the first time that I have ever written a book review for anybody.

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http://www.markjustice.blogspot.com

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Ken

Will do.

Let me put on my review hat, here, Matt. I'm saying this as a guy who gets paid to write reviews, so I hope that gives some type of currency. What's good about your review is that you're honest, and your opinion is clearly an honest one. You are concerning your self mostly with your review subject, and as such you're not glorifying yourself at the expense of what you're writing about.

I have this idea that 70% of reviews floating around are pure self indulgent garbage. You know, where the reviewer raises themselves on onto a godlike pedestal, and the resulting review essay is more of a discussion of how the critic is actually a far superior human being and writer then the god awful drek that the had force their high and mighty feet to sludge through.

You've successfully avoided that. what's good is that you're trying to be informative. I'd say the trick to good review writing, though, is that you don't have to be a completist when it comes to everything in the kitchen sink. If you can ferret out an overiding theme, make that your focus. But then again, there are many different ways to write a good review. I'd say, like anything, pick out a good critic that you like, and read for inspiration and nuts and bolts, like you would a peice of fiction.

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