Biggest disappointment you've had in a horror book ?

[ravenus]

OK, 'bear' is too much of an generic term, but that huge thing which goes wrecking the countryside and which Whately is trying to disperse with his incantations.

 

[Jayaprakash Satyamurthy]

Yes, I realised that was what you meant. I disagree with you about its impact: what makes it so horrible is that this vast, monstrous thing still contains in it the rudiments of a human form and identity. It is Wilbur Whately's twin, but it resembles their father more than Wilbur did. There's also a certain parallel to the Biblical story of Christ and in some ways, it has been suggested, to Lovecraft's own life.

 

[Jayaprakash Satyamurthy]

Having said all that; I don't expect to change your mind or anything. (Ravenus and I share similar tastes in horror entertainment while often having wildly disparate reactions to individual works).

 

[GOLLUM]

Ravenus and I share similar tastes in horror entertainment while often having wildly disparate reactions to individual works.

Which would undoubtedly have made for some rather interesting meetings I daresay....

 

[j d worthington]

OK, 'bear' is too much of an generic term, but that huge thing which goes wrecking the countryside and which Whately is trying to disperse with his incantations.

Again... "disperse"? Actually, Wilbur isn't trying to do anything to his brother, but rather his brother (if the incantations were used properly) would serve as a tool of the Old Ones once the portal was opened. The reason Wilbur is becoming so anxious toward the end there is that his brother's growth is increasing so rapidly that it (he?) might, in his grandfather's words, bust "quarters or gits aout afore ye opens to Yog-Sothoth, it's all over an' no use. Only them from beyont kin make it multiply an' work... Only them, the old uns as wants to come back..." And, of course, with Wilbur's death, this is precisely what happens, making it a localised horror rather than global. And, of course, the nature of what might have happened had things gone as planned is never fully specified, but only hinted at....

As J. P. says, I don't expect to change your mind, but it seems to me that perhaps you have misread portions of the tale in this case....

 

[ravenus]

Damn again. Not Wilbur Whately but professor whatchamacallit from the university and his 2 friends. My only excuse is, I read this almost a decade ago and never went to it again :embarassed:

 

[Fried Egg]

My biggest disappointment of the genre I suppose would have to be "The Mist" by Stephen King. It was OK I suppose, just I was led to have high expectations about this from other people's ravings. Mainly because I found his prose just too wooden for my tastes.

 

[Nesacat]

I think my biggest disappointments have been endings or how a book is as it goes along rather than entire books. Heart Shaped Box is one such. It started well and then fizzled out. I thought Hill might be better at short stories. It felt as if he was struggling to fill pages because it was necessary to hit a certain length for a novel.

Stephen King sometimes leaves me with the same feeling. I love his shorts though but he sometimes does odd things at the end of novels. There'll be a huge spider as the explanation for all the terror for instance.

Even in the older Gothic novels I have a similar problem. Mrs. Radcliffe for example would build up the horror and suspense and then dash it all by offering very mundane explanations for every single thing.

 

[Lobolover]

I take it that was sort of a given with Radcliffe . She did have one generaly supernatural novel though , but it was her least sucessfull and published posthumously , Gaston de Blondville I think it was called .

 

[j d worthington]

Agreed. Certainly worth reading, but it isn't as well-developed as her other novels, so the atmosphere isn't as convincing. Initially I had the same reaction to her books, but -- perhaps due to reading so many Gothics and the works which influenced them -- now I don't think any other ending would fit what they were trying to do....

 

[HoopyFrood]

Short story -- Pit and Pendulum. One of my favourite stories, but I remember ranting to my English teacher the first time I read it because of the ending. All that amazing suspense and then it ends so quickly and suddenly with his being saved. My teacher said that being written in first person meant that the main dude wasn't going to die at the end. I disagreed, still do, I reckon first persons can die in stories (done it a couple of times myself) but it's not even that, just the fact of how sudden the ending was. Love the story as a whole, though.

 

[Connavar]

Short story -- Pit and Pendulum. One of my favourite stories, but I remember ranting to my English teacher the first time I read it because of the ending. All that amazing suspense and then it ends so quickly and suddenly with his being saved. My teacher said that being written in first person meant that the main dude wasn't going to die at the end. I disagreed, still do, I reckon first persons can die in stories (done it a couple of times myself) but it's not even that, just the fact of how sudden the ending was. Love the story as a whole, though.

First person POV meaning the character wont die ? What kind of teacher was that heh. I have read many stories first person that ended with death for the one telling the story. There is no logic that says he/she must survive,it would make many stories instantly predictable otherwise.

Pit and Pendulum is one of my fav stories of his. I felt like the guy the story was about, felt the horrific death vividly,slowly coming down.

The abrupt ending,save was a bit of surprise cause of the bleak athmosphere the story was built around. It felt a bit cheap that he survived but doesnt hurt the story overall imo.

 

[Lobolover]

Well first person POV is kind of weird when it ends with death , because it makes it prety much impossible for the narrator to narrate his narration . Amongst the most logicaly troublesome are those where the narrator describes his own death .

And if you want to talk about Poe : have you ever tried reading his Golden Bug without the begining and end , just the part where they look for the gold ? It was what was presented to me in my textbook and what got me into Poe to begin with . But then I found out that this story , whose middle part works well as a weird tale of it's own , has a mundane begining and a mediocre crypto puzzle ending .

 

[Connavar]

If the story,writer is good enough its very easy to overlook the weird how does the narrator tell the story in first person when he is dead thing.


They did the same with me as a kid in school, alot of talk about The Raven but not any of his stories. Made me believe Poe was some famous poet,not an important writer of short stories,creator of a genre.. Why it took me almost ten years to read him on my own.

 

[rai]

funny, I was reading about Moby Dick where his first version left off the epilogue:

"And I only am escaped alone to tell thee. JOB"

Moby Dick Study Guide : About Moby Dick | GradeSaver

The British publisher of the novel, Richard Bentley, inadvertently left out the Epilogue to the novel, leading many critics to wonder how the tale could be told in the first person by Ishmael, when the final chapter witnesses the sinking of the Pequod with presumably no survivors.

The epilogue of the novel serves as a necessary explanatory note, showing how Ishmael could narrate the story even after the final chapter essentially states that none of the crew of the Pequod survived the attack by Moby Dick

 

[w h pugmire esq]

The Bog, by Michael Talbot. His vampire novel, The Delicate Dependency, was so good, but The Bog was, in my memory, an uninspired story with the most boring characters I've encountered in fiction. I may have judged it too harshly because reading it shocked me, as I was expecting something fine. Perhaps I need to give it another try.

 

[J Riff]

Anything by King past Salems lot. All Barker.
And yea, The Delicate Dependency was terrific, but then Anne Rice did pretty much the same thing and it was forgotten for some reason. Same as every King book seems like rehash to me.

 

[Pedro Del Mar]

The Tommyknockers by Stephen King - what on earth was going on in that book? By far one of the most disappointing novels I've had the misfortune to read. I have a strange recollection of some sort of killer coke can dispensing machine terrorising the town - it was a long while since I read it but come on .... a killer coke machine?

 

[A_J_Lath]

Anything by King past Salems lot. All Barker.
And yea, The Delicate Dependency was terrific, but then Anne Rice did pretty much the same thing and it was forgotten for some reason. Same as every King book seems like rehash to me.

I like Barker - possibly to the extent of outrightright fanboyism - but I have to confess that 'Mister B Gone' was just ... well, not right.

 

[Pedro Del Mar]

Agree with you A J Lath - Mister B Gone was just wierd