WHEN WE DEAD AWAKEN

Rating:
Summary: This is a SCARY tale
Review: Even to the very end, you think you know, and then you don't. That's how this book reads. It is very captivating, a page-turner that you don't want to put down. It is about a family cursed, cursed by sins of the past, and perhaps a fierce soul from the past who just won't die.

Make sure you have a few hours to put into this one before you start. You won't want to stop until you finish! The ending is superb!

Rating:
Summary: This is a SCARY tale
Review: Even to the very end, you think you know, and then you don't. That's how this book reads. It is very captivating, a page-turner that you don't want to put down. It is about a family cursed, cursed by sins of the past, and perhaps a fierce soul from the past who just won't die.

Make sure you have a few hours to put into this one before you start. You won't want to stop until you finish! The ending is superb!

Rating:
Summary: Excellent.
Review: John R. Holt, When We Dead Awaken (Bantam, 1990)

It may be stretching it a bit to stick John Holt's wonderful first novel into my ongoing re-reads of 1980s horror novels, since it was published in 1990. Indulge me for a few minutes, though, because When We Dead Awaken was one of the finest horror novels published during the decade, even if Bantam missed the cutoff by a few months. Holt's novel still has the feel of eighties horror; it's still wrapped up in old legends and ghosties/ghoulies/long-leggetie beasties that go bump in the night instead of taking the decidedly ecological turn that has been the basis of much of the horror fiction of the past fifteen years. It's gloriously awash in excess (without hitting the pitch that splatterpunk would only a year or so later), while the language used to convey it is minimal, almost journalistic. You know, eighties horror fiction. Holt was deserving of being among the decade's great lights with this novel, but for whatever reason you care to blame, it never made a huge splash. Lack of advertising dollar by the publisher is usually a good punching bag. We'll go with that one.

Holt's novel takes another old, almost-forgotten legend revived by the upswing in popularity of Dungeons and Dragons, the revenant, and puts a savage spin on it. By legend, the revenant is the avenging ghost of someone against whom a great wrong was committed, let loose upon the earth to achieve vengeance. Such is the case here, except the great wrong to the ghost in question is all in his mind. What happens when your revenant is insane? Very bad things.

The story centers around a family-owned motorcycle sales and repair shop in Florida. One of the members of the family, Billy, a mechanic in the repair shop, went nuts a year before the story opens and killed his wife and child before dying himself (the story is intentionally vague in the beginning as to whether Billy's death was suicide, accident, or murder; it's revealed later on). Billy, never the nicest person to be around, has gotten a whole lot worse after death. He's had a year to do nothing but lie around and nurture his hatred for those who he thinks wronged him over the years. And when something brings him back to the point where his consciousness can affect things in the living world, there's going to be some trouble.

The plot, the action, and the delivery are nothing special, though Holt throws in a few twists and turns that are unpredictable (layering them, quite cleverly, right under the predictable ones). Those aren't the reason this book deserves to still be around in a hundred years. What really makes this thing tick is the development of the characters and Holt's mastery at revealing the right details at the right times. Why is Billy nuts? And why, when his kid is the only thing in the world he cares about, would he suddenly decide to go on a bloody rampage that specifically targets his own family? Why is there such a love/hate relationship between Billy and is brother? The reader will be asking all the right questions by the end of the first chapter, and Holt knows exactly how long to let them drag on in order not only to heighten the reader's pleasure when the answers are finally revealed, but to highlight the depth and complexity of his own creations.

An excellent book. Hard to find these days, but well worth tracking down for the horror fan. Holt deserves a far wider audience than he's got. ****