Bad Things

Rating:
Summary: Not too shabby...
Review: I've read a couple of Thorne's books, and I must say that I wasn't too impressed (I really didn't care for Haunted). Well, thank goodness! I enjoyed Bad Things. Thorne takes some ancient legends, mixes in some common childhood fears, and throws in one heck of a creepy sibling to come up with a fun, enjoyable read.

Rick Piper and his twin brother, Robin, were born in Santo Verde, California. They grow up on on the family's estate with sprawling, lush grounds. There's a good reason for why the landscaping looks so darn good--the greenjacks. These are small creatures that only a few people with "the sight" can see. Normally mischievous and disconcerting (but unable to touch anyone), the greenjacks grow to full power on Halloween and pull together to create a terrifying creature that can maim and kill. Rick is a timid, scared child who sees the greenjacks and witnesses the horrifying events that come to pass one Halloween. His twin is never the same after that. Rick grows up to escape the town, but he returns in order to give his own children a calmer life in the country. Things turn wicked at that point as Rick not only confronts the psychological demons from his childhood, but also the real demons that are determined to destroy him and his family.

Thorne introduces some great characters in this novel. Aunt Jade is a disturbed and disturbing individual with appetites that dare not be mentioned! The stuffed poodles in a variety of lifelike poses are hilarious. Dakota is wickedly funny. Robin...well, let's just say that I kept hearing thumps and bumps in the walls while I was reading this novel. "Icky Ricky" is a sympathetic, reluctant hero who finally discovers his own strengths.

Thorne's dialogue is often stilted--real people don't talk like this! I also think that the book drags a bit with some unnecessary detail. But the story itself is compelling, and I found that I wanted to keep reading to find out what happened next to these characters. This is almost like a chilling campfire story. Yes, suspend disbelief for this one, but isn't that what makes horror so much fun? I almost didn't give this book a chance, but I'm glad I did.

Rating:
Summary: A JOURNEY INTO THE DARKSIDE OF BRITISH FOLKLORE!!!
Review: In BAD THINGS by Tamara Thorne, the author combines the elements of nature folklore, Halloween, dysfunctional families, and a good bit of perverted sex to weave a dark supernatural thriller that centers on two brothers, Rick and Robin Piper (descendants of the Scottish Piper clan that has for centuries been able to see the mythical and mischievous "greenjacks" of British folklore). The story starts out during the early seventies in the Southern California community of Santo Verde where the Pipers have lived for several generations. Though Ricky's just a boy, he's the only one in the family who now has the sight and is able to see the nature spirits known as greenjacks. Not even his deformed, legless twin brother, Robin, is able to see these small, ethereal beings. Each year on All Hallows Eve, the small jacks join together to create the giant, Big Jack, out of broken limps and leaves. This hideous creature attempts to help them take over the body of any Piper child caught defenseless, or near death. Because of a Halloween prank gone terribly wrong, Robin is almost killed by Big Jack as he saves Ricky's life. Instead of dying, however, Robin's body becomes inhabited by one of the greenjacks, and he turns into an evil, manipulative creature whose one desire is to kill his brother. Jump to the present as Rick-who's now a widower with two children-decides to finally leave Las Vegas and return to his old home in California, hoping to offer his kids a better living environment. Rick's parents (supposedly murdered by a burglar) and his brother, Robin, have long been dead. With the help of Carmen and Hector (the housekeeper and gardener for the estate), he will once again face the nightmares of his childhood and have to overcome the fears that have haunted his life for so long. Rick will eventually have to put everything on the line in a final confrontation with Big Jack and with a murderous relative who won't be satisfied until he's finally dead. The power of BAD THINGS lies in the author's ability to make the reader care for Ricky Piper as a young boy and the insurmountable obstacles that he has to face when Robin's body is taken over by a greenjack. Rick's fun-loving brother turns into the purest form of evil, delighting in the misery, misfortune, and death of others. When the children's parents are mysteriously murdered and Aunt Jade moves in with her mean, hard-drinking husband and her sleazy teenage daughter, things grow progressively worse for the young boy. It takes little time for his brother to sexually seduce the older niece, as well as the aunt, impregnating both of them with his sense of evil. To my surprise and pleasure, this is where the author delivers the goods with full force, allowing the darkness within each of us to come out in all of its wicked manifestations. Tamara Thorne never holds back in her description of how evil and perverseness can choose to express itself. The only problem I had with the book was with Rick's character and his inability to face the obvious. I wanted him to have more backbone in order to deal with the situations as they arose. Fortunately, the characters of Carmen and Hector, Rick's pre-opt transsexual friend, Dakota, and Dakota's sister, Audrey, helped to balance out the main character's ineptness at perceiving danger and how to deal with it. I even found myself buying the greenjacks, though I had a hard time picturing "Big Jack" in my mind. Still, some of the scenes at night with Big Jack and the little jacks were scary enough to give me goose bumps. The author has a great way of carrying you right to the edge with anxiety whenever she puts children in danger. BAD THINGS is definitely a novel I would recommend to anyone seeking something to read at night when the blinds are closed, everyone's asleep, and strange noises are emanating from the other side of the house. This is the kind of book that would add greatly to your unease. In fact, I liked this novel so much, that I've already purchased three others (ETERNITY, THE FORGOTTEN & CANDLE BAY) by Tamara Thorne to read in the near future.

Rating:
Summary: Not your average evil twin book
Review: Ricky and Robin are identical twins. Well, they are almost identical. Okay, they are identical except for the fact that Robin doesn't have legs. Now there is another difference as well: Robin has been possessed by a greenjack, a kind of hellish nature-sprite, and he wants Ricky to be possessed also. (Gabba gabba hey!)

Fast forward several years: Rick is all grown up now with children of his own. He moves his family back to the family home and to the greenjacks.

I absolutely loved this book! Tamara Thorne can be one sick (albeit creatively) puppy, and she must really dislike poodles, but this book was a great read. There is a demented humor undercurrent to the book that I enjoyed, and the book is genuinely creepy --- and, at times, disturbing. I'll never look at little old ladies and poodles the same way again, or want to have a house with secret passages and a big yard. Did I mention that I love this book?

Rating:
Summary: Not your average evil twin book
Review: Ricky and Robin are identical twins. Well, they are almost identical. Okay, they are identical except for the fact that Robin doesn't have legs. Now there is another difference as well: Robin has been possessed by a greenjack, a kind of hellish nature-sprite, and he wants Ricky to be possessed also. (Gabba gabba hey!)

Fast forward several years: Rick is all grown up now with children of his own. He moves his family back to the family home and to the greenjacks.

I absolutely loved this book! Tamara Thorne can be one sick (albeit creatively) puppy, and she must really dislike poodles, but this book was a great read. There is a demented humor undercurrent to the book that I enjoyed, and the book is genuinely creepy --- and, at times, disturbing. I'll never look at little old ladies and poodles the same way again, or want to have a house with secret passages and a big yard. Did I mention that I love this book?

Rating:
Summary: Childhood Terrors Reborn
Review: Ricky Piper is returning to his family home with his two children. Unfortunately, most of his memories are not happy. When he was a child he believed he saw eerie spirits that according to family legend were called 'greenjacks' Did these entities exsist? Did they take possession of his deformed brother Robin? Well, this is a 'horror' novel after all. Unravelling the twisted past, both supernatural and psychological, is part of the fun. This novel is somewhat darker and less tongue in cheek than her last book CANDLE BAY, but is still a chilling treat that will be enjoyed by fans of Simon Clark and John Saul.

Rating:
Summary: Murder and Madness and Little Green Men
Review: Some members of the Piper family are capable of seeing the Greenjacks, elemental little men invisible to everyone else. Ricky can see them. They try to trick him into letting one of them take over his body, but he won't let them. Ricky's twin older brother, Robin - identical, except for having been born without legs - likes to tease Ricky about his fear of the Greenjacks, and their more frightening creation, Big Jack, a giant creature of twigs, vines and leaves, who appears only on Halloween night, is visible to anyone, and can affect the material world until the stroke of midnight.

Thirty years ago, on Halloween night, Robin played a little trick on Ricky, and had a little accident - an accident apparently caused by Big Jack. After that night, Robin was never the same. Ricky was afraid of him. He had good reason to be. People died, around Robin - including his and Ricky's parents. Robin very likely was responsible for setting a fire that killed him, and a lot of other people with him.

Now, Ricky has kids of his own. He's inherited the family estate - and whatever still haunts it. Is he crazy? Or are the Greenjacks still there? Were they ever? Was he hallucinating? Ricky very badly wants to know. Because something whispers to his son at night, and has lecherous eyes for his daughter.

This is a beautifully written book, that succeeds on numerous levels. Thorne reveals a supernatural bias too early, but that doesn't diminish her examinations of sibling rivalry, the origins of psychopathy and psychosis, and the burdens of living with mentally ill loved ones. It's reminiscent of The Other by Tom Tryon, and in some ways of Dean Koontz's Twilight Eyes, though it is very much its own tale.

At its core, this is a story about love and redemption. Its only flaw is a slight predictability, but it remains believable throughout. It's a Gothic thriller, set in modern day California, but managing to raise quite a few chills for such a warm, sunny clime.

This is the first book of Thorne's I've read, but I greatly look forward to more.

Rating:
Summary: Wonderful!
Review: Tamara Thorne, Bad Things (Pinnacle, 1994)

I had thought the "classic" horror novel was dead. All the good stuff in the last decade or so has been splatterpunk, ecohorror, the horror of absence, and the like. The fine, atmospheric horror novel with one of the classic buggity-boos has been relegated to the short story, the Ravenloft novel, or (ugh) Anne Rice.

Or so I thought. Then I discovered the novels of Tamara Thorne. Bad Things is one of them. It's a novel about a haunted house, with shades of The Green Man thrown in for good measure. And it's a stunner.

Rick Piper, at the beginning of the story, is a good kid with a bad problem-he had inherited the family curse of being able to see the Greenjacks, little shadow-like creatures whose sole aim in life is to swap themselves with a human soul and inhabit the human's body. Only a few male members of the Piper clan can see them, and Rick is one of them. His twin brother Robin can't, and Robin, though basically another good kid, teases him about them mercifully. On Halloween during their seven-year-old year, Rick is attacked by Big Jack, the physical manifestation of the Greenjacks everyone can see, who can only form on Halloween night. In the process of saving Rick, Robin is knocked unconscious, and when he wakes up, he has become rather a nasty character. Has he been possessed by a greenjack, or did he suffer brain damage in the fall? The answer to this question haunts Rick, who eventually convinces himself (after fleeing the family estate to Las Vegas) that the greenjacks were all in his head, and that his brother was just an evil kid. All well and good until Rick, a widower in his forties with two kids of his own, wants to get his kids away from the easy, loose lifestyle of Vegas, and moves them back to the family estate, where he starts seeing little green men again...

Various pieces of Bad Things remided me, more than anything, of Paula Trachtman's extreme-horror classic Disturb Not the Dream (okay, it was extreme when it came out. Today it'd barely rate a PG if made into a movie. But that's beside the point). Big old haunted house, crazy relatives, secret passages, incest, dead animals (Tamara Thorne must really hate toy poodles, but then, doesn't everyone?), murky ponds, dead kids, ghosties, ghoulies, long-leggetie beasties, it's all here. While Thorne doesn't go to the same lengths Trachtman did, she adds on some wonderful twists, including the crossdressing best friend of the protagonist, Dakota, who plays combination psychotherapist and matchmaker for Rick; the old nanny, who has stayed on as caretaker and is one of the few people who really believes Rick is seeing ghosts; and, most notably, a refreshing absence of the token religious figure who faces the demons and is destroyed. (It's just too easy a cliché these days.) Thorne is one of those authors who can pen a five-hundred-page novel and have the reader turning pages and staying up late in the night to finish it over the course of a long weekend, and Bad Things definitely fits that mold. Thorne is one of the fantastic new voices in horror, and deserves to be heard by many more people than she has thus far. ****

Rating:
Summary: slooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooow
Review: the plot was interesting enough. and the opening was ok, though it could have been better. no problems in writing style, except i couldn't really respect some of the psychological changes. but then, we are taken to "today". and now we are talking little suspence. too little things are happening, T dwelling at some really irrelevant details, or making the plot go too slow. and that is first and foremost what this book is: sloooooooow. i couldn't believe how little was going on. "did i see something spooky?" asked after 60 pages or something, that's slower than any other horror i've read (this is counting from "today").anyway, don't read this if you don't care for slow novels.

Rating:
Summary: I read this under the name Chris Curry...
Review: The premise is interesting and not your typical run of the mill horror novel, but is clearly obvious this is a new author learning her craft on the fly; the plot is original, but moves slowly at times and the dialogue is a bit contrived.

I am a big fan of Tamara Thorne and love her recent work. This was published back in the early 90's along with Thunder Road by Pocket books. Some of her great novels include Moonfall, Haunted, and Candlebay.

Thorne writes with passion and reckless abandon. She is one of the best female's in the field writing horror. There are very few that can keep up with her; including one Anne Rice. Thorne is a contemporary horror writer with an easy style and flow to it. She is the female version of Douglas Clegg; meaning she does not recycle the same old, same old. She comes up with creative, cool, ideas.

The only novel I haven't read is Eternity and I am looking for it. Her new upcoming novel in November, The Forgotten looks awesome.

Keep your eye on this great gal!! Oh and she responds to fan mail. SOME writers don't, writers that are too big for their britches and (hint) they call him the master of horror today and his name rhymes with Ring. I know, I know, he gets a lot if mail, but hey if wasn't for the fans, where would us (yes, I have an upcoming novel to be published at iuniverse.com)writers be?

Rating:
Summary: Love it!!
Review: This is another winner from Tamara Thorne! I was practically eating the pages it was so good! Bad Things has all of what make Tamara a great author. I love the potion of horror and humor that she mixes so well. The characters are expertly drawn out with much appeal. My favorite characters were Dakota, the Vegas drag queen ala Marylin Monroe and Madonna style, and the exxxentric Aunt Jade with her nasty little collection of stuffed dead poodles in various "poses". Lick! Lick! This book made me laugh, scared me senseless and I even dropped a tear at the end! Wonderful from the first page. I highly recommend this book!