Heartbeast

Rating:
Summary: "Season of the Beast"
Review: "Heart-Beast" is one of the few Tanith Lee books published under Dell's short-lived, yet terribly missed, Abyss horror imprint. ("Dark Dance" was another, a book I liked a lot better than this one.) It's about a man named Daniel Vehmund who comes into possession of a powerful diamond that metamorphosizes him into a werewolf during the full moon. It also leads him back to England where his life is intertwined with that of a young country woman's, Laura Wheelwright.

By anyone else, "Heart-Beast" could very well have turned into a "cheap thrills" werewolf story--not that that's a bad thing; I've read some really good lupine slashers--but coming from Tanith Lee, you know the plot's going to be well thought out and twisted. "Heart-Beast" is all that, but the book does drag in more than a few places. Although it's not worthy of a "5" (I had a hard time remembering the story; albeit I was in high school when I read it, I read several other Lee books then too, and most of them were memorable and worthy of five stars), it's not too terrible to deserve a "3" or lower.

In summary: good for Tanith Lee fans, but it's not one of her finest horror novels.

Rating:
Summary: Stunning
Review: Lee's prose is, as usual, clipped to perfection. She doesn't so much as dwell over every detail of gore as deliver it in a decidedly nonchalant manner, which somehow manages to make this tale even more disturbing. And of course, Lee loves to disturb us.

Rating:
Summary: Great up until the end.
Review: This book hooked me and kept me reading until the end. Although it was well written, intelligent and insightful I found the ending to be a real downer. It was just too depressing for my tastes.