Ghoul by Brian Keene Summary and Reviews
|
List Price: Our Price: $3.20 You Save: $4.79 (60%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Buy Used: from $0.66 (click here) Category: Book See more book details and other editions |
|---|
Book Reviews of Ghoul
Book Review: Disappointing
Summary: 3 Stars
This is better than the zombie novels Keene wrote, but I was expecting it to be more on the level of Dark Hollow. The characters seem more like adults than children and I think too much filler was put in (Seriously Katie had nothing to do with the story take her out and like forty pages go with her). The gore is good, there could have been more, but what was there entertained. If your new to Keene I'd recommend trying Dark Hollow instead of this, Ghoul is too linear. The plots predictable and the moment of realization is ridiculous, though this still kept me reading. 2.5 stars.Book Review: Enjoyable Throwback to the 1980s
Summary: 3 Stars
Brian Keene is considered one of the rising stars of the horror genre, and I personally believe he has a lot of talent. GHOUL is his most recent novel, and I thought it was a decent, albeit unspectacular effort.
GHOUL takes place in the past, in 1984. The plot essentially deals with three 12-year old friends and their encounter with a monster that is lurking within a nearby cemetery. The most enjoyable aspect of this novel is Keene's vivid recreation of childhood in 1980s -- Saturday morning cartoons, Star Wars action figures, the whole deal. This is the childhood of my generation, and it's nice to see an author set a book during this underrated era (which Keene plainly has a lot of fondness for).
My problem with GHOUL is that it's not very scary or fast paced. This is one of those types of books where the readers knows exactly what is going on, and is always one step ahead of the characters. As a result, I found it pretty easy to predict what would happen. There also isn't a great deal of action or suspense in this novel until the last half.
Keene is quite skilled at characterization, but I thought he dropped the ball a little bit on the adult characters in GHOUL. Two of the parents, in particular, are portrayed as absolutely horrendous individuals with no redeemable characteristics whatsoever. In the end, they seemed more like cartoons than flesh-and-blood people. I felt this hurt the overall believability of the story, which partially centers around the long-term consequences of family abuse.
That being said, Keene does a good job with the children characters and the climax of this book is genuinely exciting because you care about how they end up. GHOUL is therefore a very decent read, but not the spectacular breakout book that I believe Keene is capable of producing.
If you've never read Keene before, my advice is to try his debut novel, THE RISING, before moving on to this one.
Book Review: Fast Paced Book
Summary: 4 Stars
Warning-Please don't read further if you don't want to know book specifics.
This was fast read book which I enjoyed. At least 2 out of 3 of the boys survived unlike the City of the Dead. The author got it wrong eliminating the fat kid, Doug, and letting Barry live. Barry just grows up and beats the crap out of his own child like his father did to him after he swore he would never be like his father. Barry even ends up working in the same cemetery as his father. Doug was sexually abused by his mother but I like to think there was hope for him as he was always kind and Barry was already showing a mean streak.
This author likes sexual themes and this book is no different. The ghoul kidnaps young women to take to his underground lair to have children with them.
Book Review: Fun read yet forgettable
Summary: 3 Stars
Looking for a new horror book to read, I picked this one up since the title, though one word, was about a subject not seen much in modern horror novels. Ghouls and graveyards have been somewhat overlooked recently and taking up a ghoul as the antagonist caught my attention.
The book is supposed to be a coming-of-age story from the early 80's, and the author doesn't let you forget this with all his references to that time. It is about three young boys not quite teenagers and their exploits one summer when a ghoul, a flesh eating monster, comes to the local churchyard across the road. The novel is well written and the main characters are developed fully, the book reads and flows easily and there are no spots that drag. Though the list of music band or albums of the era (at points the author lists dozens at a time) are a bit too much and simply throw away sentences, it is otherwise well written, especially the horrors perpetrated by abusive adults.
The problem with this story is the plot itself. Secondary characters are not developed at all. They appear just to be victims of the ghoul, foils for the protagonists, or just simply there. The ghoul itself is never truly explained why it exists, and the exposition by the local Lutheran minister was a bit contrived. The way the main protagonist suddenly comes to the conclusion that a ghoul is in the graveyard is so manufactured that it rings untrue. The whole chapter with the minister's youngest daughter was a bit too fairy tale that it seems the author threw it all in because he almost forgot he was writing a coming-of-age novel. The main protagonists quick and easy conclusion that adults or the children themselves (i.e. people in general) are the real monsters seems too preachy. And the author seems to take the last redeeming adults (the parents of the main protagonist) and tries to make the readers hate them too which for me was pretty weak and almost pathetic, especially when the father was still coping with the sudden natural death of the his own father, making the whole chapter seem so subjective and ludicrous.
Another issue I had with the plot was that the last chapter takes place in the present day and yet feels so out of place I wish it never had been added to the story. First, after the climatic last chapters, rather than detailing what happened in the aftermath (which truly amazes me it was all left out), we are brought to the present. And what was stated in this chapter seemed so false. All the importance of the minister's daughter was gone and the reader wonders what happened to the dog, one of the victims, and all the families. Also one of the three boys lived next door to the parents of the main protagonist but they hadn't seen each other for 20 years (pretty unbelievable, especially when the main protagonist didn't even know details about his old friend). The whole chapter was unfortunate especially when it wasn't bookended with an opening chapter in the present.
Though this is a minor issue I had with the story, it was bizarre to see English, Welsh, Irish, and Scottish names as members of a Lutheran church. Especially in Pennsylvania where they'd be all German (with some Scandinavian). Though no big deal, it was something that irked me a bit since I want my fiction to be at least factually correct.
So would I not recommend this book? No, I actually would. Though flawed and really nothing more than a B-movie in book form, it was a quick and easy read. And entertaining too. I enjoyed it even if it failed as a coming-of-age horror novel and was not what I had hoped for.
Book Review: Ghoul- A Great Brian Keene Book!
Summary: 5 Stars
Ghoul is a great book that is eerie and has a great story about childhood friends that have problems in their family lives and with the ghoul. I love Brian Keene books and I havent been disappointed with one yet.