Thursday 28 June 2007

The Horror...

I recently read a horror story. I was struck by how familiar it all seemed. The plot, the characters, the inevitable conspiracy, and the violence. Especially the violence, which has an off-the-shelf feel to it. Am I alone in being disappointed by horror, as a genre? I'd like to know what people who read more widely think of the field these days.

3 comments:

strantzas said...

I think horror, like everything else, suffers from Sturgeon's Law. The good stuff is out there, but it's mixed in with a lot of bad.

I've a few times found myself reading "great" books, only to find them barely mediocre. And at least once I managed to read enough of them in a row to wonder whether I was done with the genre as a whole.

It only takes one good one to reel one back in, though. Was that too many "ones"?

valdemar said...

Yes, you're right of course - I think Steamy Ted said 95 (or 99) per cent of everything is crud. Can you (or anyone) recommend a really superb horror novel/collection that's been published in the last, say, five years?

strantzas said...

I really enjoyed both Joel Lane's "The Lost District, and Reggie Oliver's "Complete Symphonies of Adolf Hitler", both being my first real introduction to these authors. (Obviously, I came in late.)

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