Face

Rating:
Summary: Lebbon ¿ Face
Review: I'm not a discriminating reader. I'll read anything and I rarely put anything down unfinished. This is one of the few exceptions in the last few years.

Face is tedious at best. And I don't particularly mind tedious if there's some decent writing behind it. Sadly, Face wasn't compelling enough for me to finish. Its quite obvious that Lebbon has talent. He's got enough praise and awards to make me think he's definitely got some talent going for him. But sadly, Face doesn't display any of it. Sure, his characters are decent but I had a hard time liking or empathizing with any of them. Brand, our intrepid bad guy, is just a mystery. He's not well developed enough to hate or even to scare the reader.

I've got a copy of The Nature of Balance by Lebbon on my "to read" shelf. Its been there awhile. Having attempted Face, it might just be there for a while longer.

Rating:
Summary: boring, tedious, with characters no one could relate to
Review: I'm not sure how this book got any good reviews. This is by far the worst book I have ever read. It's tedious (it's so mind numbingly boring that it took me 2 months to read), it's boring, and the characters are so strange and abnormal, you don't care what happens to them in the end.

The book starts out with a snowstorm and a trip home from holiday...the mother and father, and their daughter. They stop for a man on the side of the road who 'wants a moment of their time,' he says...but he acts weird to the point that they kick him out of the car.

He comes back and haunts them throughout the book. But, as I said, the characters are so weird that no one could relate to these people (dan, the wimp his entire life, megan who has turned into a religious fanatic, and their daughter who is obsessed with the thought of sex with the scary stranger they kicked out of their car.) The characters to things that no normal person would do, and the entire cast of sub-characters seems just as odd.

The family keeps seeing Brand, and there's really very little horror whatsoever until the very end of the book...but, by that time, you can't stand this weird family anymore and I was actually praying someone would take them out to end the book.

Brand's character...Lebbon keeps going on and on about this guys scars for some odd reason, and we never really find out who he is or WHAT he is or why on earth he does the things he does. Nothing his character does makes any sense either. This story is just pointless, and it feels like work actually reading it- I wanted to throw it down and never read another page, but I can't stop reading a book without finishing it. This book might make me change that policy!

Lebbon, as an author, sort of scares me. He seems to be obsessed with talking about 17 year old Mikki in vulgar sexual terms...he mentions her "groin" at least 10 times in the final chapters alone. He uses vulgar terms for body parts and everytime he talks about Nikki, he seems to have to throw in some perverse, over-the-top statement, or put her in yet another sadistic sexual scene. I think he way overdid the sex thing with this character...and at points, I kept feeling sick that a grown man could even write so much sex about such a young girl- not only that he wrote about it, but the words and phrases he used and all.

Face is a poorly written book that goes on WAY too long...the story is, in the end, very pointless and it's not one bit entertaining to me. After this, I will probably never read another book by Lebbon again. That's my opinion of the book, and I had to write a review for this one, because I thought it was SO bad...but others might not agree (of course.)

Rating:
Summary: Why us?
Review: In comparative religion there is a concept joking referred to as the "theodicy trilemma," meaning an irreconcilable triangle of three ideas which all seem true: (a) that there is a supreme being or force, (b) that it is essentially benevolant and (c) the fact that we suffer and die. Religion, philosophy all attempt to grapple with these points in various ways. British genius Tim Lebbon takes his shot here. This is an even more interesting work than his "The Nature of Balance," which is saying something. Yes, it owes a bit to the John D. MacDonald classic generally known as "Cape Fear," but it takes off on its own in no time. I love the whole spectrum of horror, from Harry Shannon's powerful 'pulp fiction' entry "Night of the Beast" to the literate sensibilities of Doug Clegg and "Hour Before Dark." Tim Lebbon falls in the middle, leaning toward the more literate, Ramsey Campbell school. He is a gifted man and I am really looking forward to more mass-market editions of his stuff, ... . Oh, and Lebbons answer to 'why us'? "Why NOT you. Bad things happen."

Rating:
Summary: Powerfully Chilling
Review: The plot is not really about the hitchhiker, the constant danger, or even the bloodshed. Those are all secondary. It's really about the family and the cracks that have developed within. Cutting a piece into this family's life, Lebbon takes us through the infestation of their lies, and makes us watch as the disease destroys them. The story, while not original, is innovative and powerfully chilling. The climax of this family's collision with the hitchhiker is explosive and the ending - enigmatic!

The pace in the story is slow, but with intention and will. Lebbon's pace proves that the best thrill is the one that's earned, and earn you shall. His style of writing is crisp, concise, and psychologically intense. Although it's clear from the first page that the author is British, it's easy to eventually disregard as you join him on his journey. The atmosphere is claustrophobic, sucking the air from your lungs word by word. Moving through each chapter this world seems to get a little tighter, a little smaller, and a lot more compact. Brilliant!

Now here is where Lebbon truly shines - his players. The characters are each affected individually and their reactions are both sound and unpredictable. Breathing life into each player, Lebbon keeps it real and allows each of them their own distinctive personality and depth. I even liked the antagonist, much to my dismay and shame.

My only problem with the book in its entirety is the editing. Thanks to Rageaholics I didn't pound my head against the wall screaming obscenities - but I wanted to. I'm sure the editor was just as excited about this book as I was, but next time let's give it a second look - please.

Rating:
Summary: Not his best, to say the least
Review: Tim Lebbon, Face (Leisure, 2001)

I rather enjoyed The Nature of Balance, the last Lebbon novel I picked up. However, I enjoyed it in a kind of "enjoyed-with-reservations" way; it always seemed like it was teetering on the brink of either completely coming apart or just falling into crashing boredom. Face, unfortunately, is not able to straddle that line.

The premise of the book is relatively simple; a family stops to pick up a hitchhiker on their way home from a vacation. The hitchhiker is a very odd duck, to say the least; from the very beginning of the novel, we're introduced to his ability to do things like throw his voice and unsettle Christians (Megan, the mother of the family, is of the zealous born-again variety, for reasons that become obvious later on). The hitchhiker, who calls himself Brand, disturbs the family to the point where Megan throws him out of the car in the middle of a snowstorm. Bad idea, as he begins stalking them. But this is no ordinary hitch-hiker. He likes manipulating people and situations for, it would seem, his own amusement, and right now, this family and their friends are his amusement.

The actual identity of Brand (never explicitly stated, but should be obvious to most readers by page fifty, if not by the description above) is rather obvious early enough on in the book to not offer any tension whatsoever, and a combination of Brand's acts simply sounding like high-school pranks and Lebbon's lack of editorial guidance in the opening chapters ("opening chapters" here equates to, roughly, "first two hundred pages") conspire to make the first two-thirds of this novel just this side of too-boring-to-keep-reading. It does pick up at the end, slightly, going from the snail setting on the blender to the sloth setting. But even that great leap in mastery of pace doesn't help, by that time.

If you're going to read Lebbon, I rather suggest starting with The Nature of Balance and leaving this on the shelf. But why bother, when you've got authors like Tom Piccirilli, Simon Clark, etc., writing in the same general vein of not-quite-psychological-but-not-gross-out horror who do it that much better? Piccirilli's The Night Class or Clark's Blood Crazy would be a far more satisfying, and compelling, read than this one. **

Rating:
Summary: Ehhhhh
Review: To go with the saying never judge a book by it's cover that's what I did with this, I saw the creepy cover and read the back of the plot and immidiately said to myself "I have to get this! It looks so good!". Well I was half right, first off it took me a long time to read this book, probably about 4 months. I am a fast reader, that is if I'm interested in the book. I can't say that for this. Face starts off well, I liked the concept of a lone hitch hiker on the road in the middle of the blizzard creepy. He's going to make this family's life hell. So like I said, the first half is good, as soon as I reached the middle I started losing interest. I didn't care about Dan or Megan, I thought they were both quite stupid actually. I was interested in the Brand/Nikki storyline however, she becomes obsessed with Brand, and he plays on her emotions. She wants to have sex with him, Brand is basically playing her like a damn fiddle. I am disturbed by Lebbon's fascination with Nikki's lower regions. He makes several suggestions and continiously, yes I spelled that wrong, puts her in explicit sexual situations. Especially the conclusion, she is raped a lot. It's obvious Lebbon has talent but his writing becomes repititive and boring. I actually skipped quite a few pages because a lot of what he put in was unecessary rubbish. And I don't like that Brand was never explained, what the hell was he? Human? Demon? Corporeal spirit of some kind? Lebbon never says, I did have a fondness of Brand, but there's no reason as to why he's torturing the family and how he's doing these things. In the end, Face is a decent read, I hate the ending though, it was so out of place and forced. But whatever, I'd reccomend getting this at a library or something, not worth the price.

Rating:
Summary: Interesting
Review: Weird book, I can tell by it that Tim Lebbon doesn't like cats too much.

Rating:
Summary: Suspenseful Tour de Force
Review: When Dan and his family pick up a stranger during a snow storm and invite him into their car, never did he think that his life would take a turn for the worse. The stranger is tall, dark, covered in scars and asks them for "A moment of their time." Freaked out by the man's oddness, they kick him out of their car, hoping that it will be the last of him. Which, of course, it isn't.

Because the very next day, Brand is back to promise Dan that he will make his life a living hell. First, he makes Dan's wife go insane. Then, he turns on Dan's daughter, wanting a lot more out of her than a mere scare. But who - or what - is Brand? And what will it take to put a stop to the nightmare he is inflicting on them?

Tim Lebbon knows how to create great thrilling suspense. This supernatural Cape Fear never has a dull moment. Filled with twists and turns and compelling characters, Lebbon has created a suspenseful tour de force that will leave you breathless and on the edge of your seat.

Lebbon writes with the skill of Dickens, but his style of suspense and brand of supernatural horror is completely his own. Face is a great novel with many scares that proves once and for all that Lebbon is the new voice to watch in dark fiction.