Blood Games

Rating:
Summary: A Great Escape
Review: "Blood Games" is a fun, fast-paced novel about a group of college graduates who decide to reunite for one week every year and engage in an adventure. This time it's Helen's turn to choose an adventure...as the book says, "bad choice." This is great entertainment. If you enjoyed the film "Wrong Turn" or "Deliverence," this book is for you. I wouldn't be surprised if this novel influenced the scriptwriter of "Wrong Turn." Batty is an extremely interesting character...kind of freaked me out. I recommend this book, especially if you like to read at night and/or if you like late 70's-80's slasher flick plots.

Rating:
Summary: A Great Escape
Review: "Blood Games" is a fun, fast-paced novel about a group of college graduates who decide to reunite for one week every year and engage in an adventure. This time it's Helen's turn to choose an adventure...as the book says, "bad choice." This is great entertainment. If you enjoyed the film "Wrong Turn" or "Deliverence," this book is for you. I wouldn't be surprised if this novel influenced the scriptwriter of "Wrong Turn." Batty is an extremely interesting character...kind of freaked me out. I recommend this book, especially if you like to read at night and/or if you like late 70's-80's slasher flick plots.

Rating:
Summary: A Great Escape
Review: "Blood Games" is a fun, fast-paced novel about a group of college graduates who decide to reunite for one week every year and engage in an adventure. This time it's Helen's turn to choose an adventure...as the book says, "bad choice." This is great entertainment. If you enjoyed the film "Wrong Turn" or "Deliverence," this book is for you. I wouldn't be surprised if this novel influenced the scriptwriter of "Wrong Turn." Batty is an extremely interesting character...kind of freaked me out. I recommend this book, especially if you like to read at night and/or if you like late 70's-80's slasher flick plots.

Rating:
Summary: Don't waste your money...
Review: Blood Games is, quite possibly, one of the most disappointing books I've ever read. The premise is that five womem, who met in college and subsequently became best friends, meet for one week every year to carry on the "escapades" they began in college. The five friends take turns deciding where they will go for the time they're together, and this year the trip they take is to an abandoned resort as one of the women has a fondeness for the macabre. The real story is that the resort is haunted due to a previous tragedy, and that the evil that perpetrated said tragedy is still lurking about. The only real tragedy is the writing. As far as suspense goes, there isn't any. The plot is obvious and shallow. The author flashes back to the events and escapades of their college days, which, while somewhat creative, have absolutely no bearing on the current events. The flashbacks also show the five women to be cruel, vengeful, and two-dimensional; traits which follow them into the present story. The author also has an obvious obsession with female anatonmy, especially from the waist up. The women spend most of their time either nude, partially nude, thinking about becoming nude, or thinking about their friends being nude. The nudity has no bearing whatsoever on the plot. In essence, the book is a pathetic B-grade late-1970's style hacker movie, with gratuitous nudity thrown in the mix in an attempt to keep the movie in the theatre for more than one weekend. If you want good suspense, try a different author.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent Book
Review: Blood Games was the first Laymon book I'd ever read, and fortunately it won't be the last! Overall I thought it was a rather interesting and at times thrilling novel. A group of women reunite each year at a different location. Unfortunately this year they choose an deserted resort with a bloody past...A good plot, very interesting characters with different personalities. I enjoyed the brief flashblacks the characters had throughout the book also. Thumbs up!!

Rating:
Summary: Blood Games
Review: Blood Games,
Richard Laymon is a well respected author, known in many parts of the world with the exception of his native country "America'.
His books can be rather hard to find in the U.S.A, thanks to Leisure books and Cemetery Dance; the U.S is now able to find some of Mr. Laymon's work among the shelves at their local bookstores.

Blood Games is not among my favorite books from Mr. Laymon. This is due to the fact that I became increasingly tired of camping and hiking in the woods. This is a repeated theme that Mr. Laymon turns to often.

I never write reviews that give away story bits or plot, so I'll continue with my mere opinion of the book over-all.

The characters can be fun, the story was good but the flash backs were a bit tiresome. I also noticed a character that seemed to be a repeated character from Laymon's previous works. The ending wasn't very strong, although it did combine some good action with gore. I just wasn't fooled for a second; I knew the outcome the entire time I was reading.

Over all I enjoyed the book. I wouldn't recommend it, as a first read to would be Laymon fans. I feel Mr. Laymon has better work on the shelves.


Rating:
Summary: Just when horror couldn't get any campier...
Review: Didn't think Laymon was able to write a slow paced, boring book until I read Blood Games. Nothing happens for the longest time, and I ended up skipping most of the flashbacks. Don't waste your times with this one, when Laymon's written so many fun, creepy, and fast paced novels such as Island, Bite, and In the Dark.

Rating:
Summary: Booooring
Review: Didn't think Laymon was able to write a slow paced, boring book until I read Blood Games. Nothing happens for the longest time, and I ended up skipping most of the flashbacks. Don't waste your times with this one, when Laymon's written so many fun, creepy, and fast paced novels such as Island, Bite, and In the Dark.

Rating:
Summary: Literary Garbage
Review: I'll never understand the accolades that some readers give this writer. There is a simple formula at work here and through the rest of Laymon's novels: combine a ludicrous premise, sprinkled with gratutitous violence and sex. Forget about character development, solid story-telling, or convincing dialogue. Laymon is more concerned with pandering to a readership that finds literary exploitation-trash to be a work of literary merit.
It's this type of so-called horror fiction that gives the genre a bad name.

Rating:
Summary: Just when horror couldn't get any campier...
Review: No, that's an innacurate description. True horror is far from campy. Richard Laymon might be highly acclaimed overseas, but I doubt he'll receive that reception here. This is, by far, the WORST book I have ever read. Someone mentioned that it was fast paced..what??!! The only fast thing about this story is the speed in which all five females remove their clothing. The way Laymon describes the constant nudity is more sickening than any of the gory scenes in the book - which are humorous at best. B movie fodder. The dialogue is totally unrealistic, the relationships are unrealistic, the flashbacks (all 8 million of them) are just plain ANNOYING and not even worth reading. This book is not worth the $6.99 cover price. Had I already read it, I wouldn't have accepted it for free!! Sorry all you Laymon fans, but if this is the kind of writing we have to look forward to, I think I'd rather take my chances in the woods with the likes of Jason or Leatherface...