Wildwood

Rating:
Summary: Wildwood
Review: This book did not win me over completely, but it does manage to save itself--and pack a wallop--with the last hundred pages.

The premise is that something is very wrong in Wildwood, of the Great Smokey Mountains. A legacy left over from 1916, when sorcery went horribly amok at a lavish chateau, has caused strange creatures to inhabit the woods, and has cloaked the mountain called Tormentil with a sinister aura. Enter Whit and his son Terry; Whit visits the woods to find an old army buddy who may have gone insane (local gossip)--but the old buddy's obssession with halfhuman beasts that he wants to target with his rifle is only the tip of the iceberg. It turns out that Whit has some unfinished business in the woods, which he didn't know he had!

Scenes throughout the book take us back to 1909-16, to shed light on what really happened to let loose what could be demons, to reveal what thrust the chateau into a nether-realm on a night of revelry, and to link the characters of 1958 with those of decades past.

Part William Sloane potboiler (there's an evil genius behind all the science-and-sorcery experimentation), part Harry Potter scenario (austere centaurs and rambunctious faeries in a magic wood, helping out a young boy, Terry, when he's in trouble), the book may also appeal to fans of Robert Holdstock's Mythago Wood.

A few complaints:

About 80 pages into the book, the first of the flashbacks to 1909ish occur, but the first few examples are in diary form. It's already late in the book to suddenly start running a parallel narrative, but that's okay. The strange thing is, all other flashbacks take the form of actual scenes--no diary headings introducing them or anything. This bumpy, unpredictable approach to the 1909-16 sections still strikes me as odd. Perhaps the little diary portions could have been modified to be scenes, or that bitty bit of info in them could have shown up as expository stuff in present-time scenes (ie. someone reminisces, a fragment of a diary is found in 1958, etc.).

Other than that, I guess it might be fair to say that a lot of the 1958 scenes at the start of the book--specifically the ones that establish a quietly sexual relationship between Terry and Cherokee beauty Faren--seem to become meaningless when everything starts to converge at the chateau, in both 1958 and 1916. Terry meets butterfly lady Josie, and hasn't got another thought for Faren. Meanwhile, Arn starts out as a harsh, unfriendly lout (this is Whit's old army pal), but by the end he almost acts like a different person. As he walks off into the sunset, I'm not sure I can forgive him for his earlier transgressions (and I'm not sure I'd let him adopt a baby!). As for the villains, neither the evil sorcerer nor the demonic serpent quite ascend to the level of memorable evildoers; they simply get crowded off the stage for most of the book, and then we're out of pages and it's time for the finale.

But, the book does pull everything together towards the home-stretch. As a time-travel buff, I liked it when the two eras intersected...past and present characters intermixing, even meeting themselves. The last hundred pages are very intense, very revealing (thank goodness), and quite satisfying.

Rating:
Summary: A great mix of fantasy and truly scary horror.
Review: This book is well worth the time and trouble that it might take to track it down. John Farris is one of the few authors in the horror genre who continually tries new things and can be counted on to deliver from one book to the next.

In _Wildwood_, he offers a truly involving mixture of fantasy (at times, this reminded me strongly of Robert Holdstock's _Mythago Wood_) and frightening, cosmic horror. In a relatively short time, Mr. Farris has become one of my favorite authors and I haven't been disappointed yet in any of the books I've read by him, many of which have involved some rather lengthy searching through the musty, dim stacks of used bookstores. Highly recommended!

Rating:
Summary: A great mix of fantasy and truly scary horror.
Review: This book is well worth the time and trouble that it might take to track it down. John Farris is one of the few authors in the horror genre who continually tries new things and can be counted on to deliver from one book to the next.

In _Wildwood_, he offers a truly involving mixture of fantasy (at times, this reminded me strongly of Robert Holdstock's _Mythago Wood_) and frightening, cosmic horror. In a relatively short time, Mr. Farris has become one of my favorite authors and I haven't been disappointed yet in any of the books I've read by him, many of which have involved some rather lengthy searching through the musty, dim stacks of used bookstores. Highly recommended!

Rating:
Summary: Brilliant and magical.
Review: This is one of those rare novels that made such an impression on me that I have actually dreamed about it on several occassions. It is the story of a parcel of densely wooded land near the Smoky Mountains called Wildwood. It is a place where twisted creatures, part animal and part man, roam; both beautiful and terrifying. And where a rich mogul, Mad Edgar Langford's chateau seems to blink in and out of existence after disappearing during a masquerade ball in the 1900's. Farris' writing style has depth and emotion that goes beyond most modern authors. His ideas are richly realized and wildly original and his characters are as close to real as the printed word allows. This is a horror/fantasy blend that seduces with dark and wondrous magic. Highest recommendation.