Once, so good i read it twice ! (Once - James Herbert)

Member Name: 666disturbed

Product:	Once - James Herbert
Date:	02/08/02 (170 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Herbert is for me the undisputed English horror writer

Disadvantages: I need to find more authors like him

Ah, not wrote any book reviews yet, this my first but not my last, I’ll review the more bizarre and twisted at a later date but for now……

Once…………James Herbert

Just finished reading this after starting it 3 months ago and then moving house and losing the book.

It’s another JH special with all the things that make Herbert a brilliant author included, the classic English rural setting, the mysterious buildings, the eerie atmospheres and the odd characters.

The story starts with the introduction to the main character Thom, he is an English man who was brought up on a country estate in a manor house on the grounds of a castle named Bracken.

Thom hasn’t had it so good, although he is young (28ish), he has suffered a stroke and is in need of some serious rest in his life.
He is invited to stay back at the lodge where he was brought up as a boy by the owner of castle Bracken or more specifically the owners son, Hugo, who was his childhood friend.

Thom has a physiotherapist called Katy who comes to see him from time to time to help him exercise his debilitated muscles.
All goes well initially as Thom regains some of his strength and begins to re-explore the castle grounds he loved as a child.
Herbert describes the woodland and the grounds of the castle with nostalgic, dreamy and awesomely vivid writing which makes him one of my favourite authors.

Thom visits the castle to pay his respects to the now terminally ill owner and meets his full time carer who was hired by his son, Nell Quick.
Nell is described wonderfully as the Irish darling with flowing black hair and “olde worlde” clothes and ways, she cares for Castle Brackens old boy with her potions and brews.

All pretty tame so far! Strange things begin to happen soon after when Thom starts hearing odd noises in the night, scraping and shuffling and such. Things get ev
en weirder when he starts exploring the surrounding woods with more frequency, the beautiful begins to turn sinister and trees that he loved as a child seem somehow wicked.
Herbert builds the story in a way that I could only dream of writing and introductions to the “faeriefolke” are superbly done and kept mysterious for a long time in the book with more and more odd events taking place that Thom refuses to believe are real.

After her initial meeting with Thom, Nell becomes quite friendly, overly friendly in fact. She makes several passes at Thom and is rather over keen to get him into bed. Nell quickly begins to turn into the character that always draws me to Herberts books, it turns out she’s a witch. I’m not giving the story away and so much has happened by this point in the book that the reader can be dizzied by it all. Suffice to say Katy the physiotherapist has a nasty accident and Thom’s old pal Hugo is not what he initially appears to be !?

Now, this is after a all described as “A fairy tale for adults”, and yet at first some of the descriptions of fairies and the like are very childish, but that apparently is the point, Herbert brings the child world and the adult world together perfectly and seems to answer every question I would have put to him about the book as it is read.

Enter Jeanette the fairy, a hard-core porno couldn’t be any more descriptive as we are introduced to Jeanette as she masturbates gleefully under a tree with many much smaller sprites all get off on watching!!! Great stuff which is definitely adult only literature. Jeanette turns out to be Thoms guide and ultimately his saving grace as well as being a bit of a babe !

The battle between good and evil begins and it is riveting as the reader pieces together the story and quite often looks up from the book and goes “aaaaaahhhhhhh, I get it now”. The plot thickens and roots of the battle are r
evealed.

I just can’t tell you anymore without ruining the superb crescendo that ultimately climaxes in a Herbert classic, well there is one more thing………

………..The jar! This part of the story sent my flesh crawling. A seemingly innocent jar full of what looks like twigs is left at Thom’s door, he brings it into the house and opens it,……………… If your not a lover of spiders this where you’d throw the book, I’ve never read anything like it and was paranoid for hours afterwards.

So, what are you doing reading this op still ? Get out there and read this book, it’s James Herbert at his creative best.
I’d recommend it to any one who can handle a writer of this calibre and quality.

10/10 from me !

:O) the disturbed one !

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