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Summary: Take your money and burn it!
Review: It will be more entertaining than this book.
Rating:
Summary: Incredibly Boring
Review: One definition of "prose" is: tedious speech or conversation. That defines this book. If you like the Clive Barker/Stephen King brand of horror, save your money. A bore.
Rating:
Summary: I COULDN'T WAIT TO FINISH THIS BOOK.......
Review: So I could get rid of it! It fails on every single level, as a horror novel, as a suspense novel, as a character-driven novel, as a plot-driven novel. The characters are horrible and the story is boring. A boring horror novel - not a good thing. I had to force myself to finish this book and promptly left it in a hospital waiting room for some other unsuspecting victim. Sorry!
Rating:
Summary: It stinks!
Review: That's the nicest thing I could think of to say about it.
Rating: 
Summary: Incubus:Proof you shouldn't write in a genre you don't like
Review: The Incubus is an example of what happens when a person who's never read horror tries to write horror. The only horror novel Ann Arensberg admits reading is Dracula, which is about as scary as a rerun of Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman. It shows. The Incubus doesn't work as a horror novel because Arensberg ignores the rules of the genre. Passive characters; lack of suspense and mounting tension; a garbled, confusing climax (what happened?); worst of all, an unsatisfying ending. What were the creatures that invaded Dry Falls? What attracted them? Why did they leave? We never find out, and that's a major let-down. Why does the author think we've read 300+ pages? People who call The Incubus a classic horror story probably don't like horror, and thus haven't read much in that genre. This is really literary fiction, disguised. It's not Ann Arensberg's fault the book is being marketed as a horror novel. If you read literary fiction, give The Incubus a try. If you read horror, save your money.
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Summary: Want to cure Insomnia? Buy this book.
Review: The preface introduces the reader to the viewpoint character and displays her as a humble human being and a part time writer. This proved to be a warm introduction, but by the half-way point I wanted prose written by an author not an amateur. If you read this book you won't respect yourself in the morning. Incubus promises taboo sex from page one, and this raises the excitement level. But, when you realize you flipped pages for sex and not plot you feel a little cheap. Yawn... good night.
Rating:
Summary: Nice story buried by pretentions
Review: There are moments in Incubus that will have you rivited. The problem is these moments are few and seperated by a whole lot of uninteresting self indulgence.
While Arensberg can obviously write (there are three great, creepy scenes) her book is bogged down by an over all feeling of "I'm better than this genre". Her best scenes are the ones dealing directly with the demon/supernatural, yet she seems to be trying her hardest to rise above this. By avoiding sensationalizing, she had robbed her story of narrative power.
One last note: Would it [hurt]Arensberg to give us one likable character? If given the choice, I would stay in a room with the Incubus rather than spend any more time with any character in this novel.
Rating:
Summary: This book is awful
Review: There should be an option for zero stars. BOMC called Ann Arensberg the female version of Stephen King. Don't believe it! I was highly disappointed with this book, in fact, I was angry when I finished it, for wasting the time and money, and for being duped in to thinking it would be entertaining. The premise was good, and the actual physical product was good, but the story was awful. I tore into the book thinking it would have frightening, yet titillating, parts, but Arensberg writes like a college professor. All wording, especially the descriptions of supposedly horrific events, is cold and clinical. The "climactic" ending is so poorly described, it leaves you wondering what happened, even after you read it again. The main character, Cora, is devoid of any emotion, regardless of the subject matter. Whether she's talking about her relationships with her mother and sister or her sexless marriage, she seems hard and unaffected. Her pastor husband seems to have little faith. At times the sentences do not flow well, and quotations are confusing; it is difficult to decipher which character said what. Too much emphasis is placed on the author's knowledge of plants, and not enough on the plot. I only kept reading with the hope that it would get better. It didn't. I've read some bad books in my life, and I have to say this has been the worst. It makes me wish I had a fireplace.
Rating:
Summary: This was not a good book.
Review: This book has a really pretty cover, and that is the best thing I can say about it. There was virtually no suspense, and the characters were not very likeable. I'm sorry I spent the money to buy this book.
Rating:
Summary: Beautiful Prose, Signifying Nothing
Review: This book has ambitions to surpass its genre, like "The Sparrow," (which is another work of speculative fiction by a female author I would highly recommend to anyone also disappointed in this book). And the author writes evocative prose, knows her small-town Maine setting, and draws the literate reader into her spell from the early pages. Unfortunately, the core story is simply undeveloped, the central characters (Rev. Lieber and his wife Cora, our narrator) are curiously underdeveloped compared to lesser players in this story, and the climax of the book just does not work. It is possible that our author was going for a veiled message of sexual politics, a kind of Stepford Wives of the millenium, and if so she's failed at this, too. Some great descriptive prose and character study in the service of a story that never gets off the ground and finally just crashes. Keep this writer away from the supernatural in the future. That's my advice. She's on surer ground with relationships, small-town life, and the natural world. PKL
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