Orpheus Process

Rating:
Summary: Lotta potential, but....
Review: Gross, disappointing, cliched... Daniel Gower's THE ORPHEUS PROCESS is 1 of the weakest horror novels I've ever finished (the other is Mary Hanner's RAPID GROWTH, also part of Dell's Abyss horror line, home of the brilliant Kathe Koja), but I DID finish it.... The main character is a doctor/researcher who tries 2 bring his murdered daughter back 2 life -- but B4 that happens U'll B fed up with the cliches, the Frankenstein's-laboratory-style reanimating equipment, the stupid story developments. Sorry, not even the obvious gross-outs woke me up....

Rating:
Summary: Yay for the skinless monkeys
Review: I was very disappointed with this book for the first two-thirds of it. I didn't like the main character and the characterization of the secondary characters seemed cliche. The daughter and her punk friends were just sort of there and Dr. Helmond was just being dopy. The reanimation material provided some tension but it took forever for things to happen.

Then the skinless monkeys ate the lab assistant. Things were fun from then on. Sure the prose was just as awkward and you didn't like or believe Dr. Helmond any more than before but the sheer amount of gross zombie stuff was great. And when the one child gets eaten it does take some shock effect.

This book isn't up to the other books published by Abyss (Tanith Lee and Poppy Z. Brite being the stars of that lamented publishing house) but it's still pretty good as far as gross horror is concerned. If it had been written 30 years ago it would have been a cherished classic.

Rating:
Summary: the best low budget zombie movie never made!
Review: Ok, I've read the Orpheus Process three times now, and I'm always highly amused and entertained by this book. Its great stuff! More to the point, its great precisely because of all the horror cliches it touches upon, its the stuff of fabulous campy zombie films. Which isn't to say its a great piece of work, its certainly got some problems, but that doesn't stop it from being a supremely fun read. I'm a fan of low budget zombie horror, and so I read this book the same way I watch a movie like that-- with a great sense of humor and the knowledge that the living dead can simply not be taken seriously. That being said, I wish Daniel Gower had continued to put out books past his second, because he's a very fun author to read. Give it a shot! Don't look for serious scientific reasoning, look for a good time and you'll surely find yourself entertained by this book!