No Sanctuary

Rating:
Summary: Underrated author!
Review: I think Richard Laymon is slightly underrated. Why are there so little reviews (maybe it's because this book just came out).
Peace

Bri

Rating:
Summary: Sorry, I couldn't finish it...
Review: I thought I would really like this book. It started out really intriguing. Scary, in fact. A girl in bed, alone...the sound of breaking glass...an intruder in the house...and so it began. I've read Stephen King for years, Koontz too. I had never read Laymon before. This, my first one, lost me about half way through. I'd have to say this story turns out more like a campy '70's scary movie...where you hear yourself screaming, "Don't go in there, that's where the killer is!" It just became awful. I began to hate the characters, not caring anymore if they were indeed murdered. "If you're too stupid to get OUT of the woods, you deserve to die!" and so, at page 287, I gave up.

I haven't attempted to read any others by him, although the Traveling Vampire show looks interesting.

Rating:
Summary: Decent!
Review: Not many people know Richard Laymon. He is obviously not as well known as, lets say, Stephen King or Dean R. Koontz. But in my opinion he is OK. It seems like he is just starting to come out from underground. But he is really not. He has had some other New York Times Bestsellers I think. This book is a good mixture of a horror and thriller. I thought it was good and I liked it. It is even reccommended by Koontz and King.

Rating:
Summary: No Sanctuary
Review: So much promise--and it's creepy throughout--but it really needed to be oozing towards a better ending. It just sort of busts apart in the last section, while trying to stay glued together.

We have Rick and Bert out in the wilderness, for vacation, despite Rick's intense trepidation over this sort of holiday getaway, thanks to a traumatic experience out while out on an extended hiking trip with his pa and stepmother, way back when he was just a tyke. But Bert has talked him into it. They trek into the wild, and every sort of bad thing happens, mostly related to other unanticipated trailblazers with various types of bad attitude. Meanwhile, we also have Gillian. in a displaced subplot, who likes to break into wealthy strangers' homes (pool prefered, please), when she finds her own homestead a bit drab. This time, Gillian lolls about in the home of Frederick...and since she can't leave his things alone, it's only a matter of time before she realizes that Frederick may be a dangerous sexual predator.

Honestly, I thought Laymon was running a clever uber-plot, consisting of exciting subplotoids that would get nicely tied together. Instead--right around the awkward arrival of a totally unexpected character named Mad Angus--the book almost seems to abandon any idea of a cohesive wrap-up--and simply goes for scattershot thrills. I had been playing Hercule Poirot, and it turned out to be totally unnecessary.

Not great, especially when it unravels in the late-going.

Rating:
Summary: Good Book, Not that great
Review: The first half of this book is probably the most suspenseful I've ever experienced in a horror novel. The rating would have been 5 stars, but the second half of the book had a lot of uncharacteric developments and random events that brought it down to 4 stars. Still, it's another classic Laymon that won't disappoint fans. Enjoy!

Rating:
Summary: Painfully Suspenseful
Review: The first half of this book is probably the most suspenseful I've ever experienced in a horror novel. The rating would have been 5 stars, but the second half of the book had a lot of uncharacteric developments and random events that brought it down to 4 stars. Still, it's another classic Laymon that won't disappoint fans. Enjoy!

Rating:
Summary: Lost in the wilderness
Review: The plot in a nutshell: Rick and Bert go camping in the wilderness. Bad things happen (eventually). Gillian breaks into someone's home and vacations there while the owner is away. Bad things happen (eventually). The two stories come crashing together rather suddenly (as we, of course, have by then figured out they must). The end.
Don't get me wrong, this book was basically well-written and was pretty much a page-turner throughout, but it's not one that is going to stay with me for very long. The characters had little depth or motivation for their actions, the ending was just too neat and tied up, and the book was just too slick. I thought it worth reading, but not really a keeper.

Rating:
Summary: Lost in the wilderness
Review: The plot in a nutshell: Rick and Bert go camping in the wilderness. Bad things happen (eventually). Gillian breaks into someone's home and vacations there while the owner is away. Bad things happen (eventually). The two stories come crashing together rather suddenly (as we, of course, have by then figured out they must). The end.
Don't get me wrong, this book was basically well-written and was pretty much a page-turner throughout, but it's not one that is going to stay with me for very long. The characters had little depth or motivation for their actions, the ending was just too neat and tied up, and the book was just too slick. I thought it worth reading, but not really a keeper.

Rating:
Summary: Good Book, Not that great
Review: Usually I stick with fiction romance, but thought I'd take a chance with Laymon's "No Sancutary". I have read Dean Koontz in the past and enjoyed his work so thought Laymon would be just as good (since Koontz recommends him). I'm not saying the story line was horrible, I'm simply saying that this book was not scary nor suspenseful (except maybe the last 20 pages). I feel like the majority of the book was leading up to something that never came. I feel like Laymon took his time getting to the climax and than rushed through the ending leaving me disappointed.

Yesterday I started reading "Don't Tell" by Karen Rose and after only 15 pages, her book proves more terryifying and suspeneful than Laymons claims to be. I would like to try another of Laymon's book in the futre. I've heard "No Sanctuary" was not his best work.

Rating:
Summary: Laymon at what he does best: scaring ... us!
Review: When he was forteen, Rick Wainwright had an experience on a camping trip that left him terrified of the mountains.

He's about to have the damndest feeling of deja vu!

Rick and his girlfriend Bert head into the woods for a camping trip, meeting up with three horny teenage boys (who they instantly dislike) and two teenage girls (whom they like). Do those boys mean them trouble? What about the local wildlife, lik the cougars? Or the shadowy figure that seems to be dogging their every move?

Then there is Gillian. She is a unique housebreaker--she goes into people's homes and lives there while they're on vacation. (For those of you who read "Night in the Lonesome October", you might wonder if Laymon had a fetish for this type of thing.) However, Gillian chose the wrong house. For one thing, she is getting too involved with the mysterious next door neighbor. For another, the house's occupant seems to have a few odd hobbies...like murder...

Richard Laymon manages to do what only a select few authors (say, J. N. Williamson and Rick Hautala, for example) can do: take a cheap, cliche horror story, loaded with gore and sex and violence, and turn it into a suspensful romp of terror. If anybody else had written this novel, I wouldn't have even bothered to review it. But Laymon's skill is evident here: this cheesy horror tale is elevated to a new level.

If you don't buy that philisophical [stuff], try this: "No Sanctuary" is a damn good read! This one is for horror fans who are tired of fake heroes and weak endings. "No Sanctuary" delivers the horror goods!