Customer Reviews

Amara

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Well-drawn characters, one tense situation after another, a lot of strange sex, and a 6,000 year-old mummy reanimated and on killing spree.
This is one of Laymon's better posthumous novels. I thoroughly enjoyed it. Well...most of it. The ending made me furious. The resolution of one of the characters I thought was terrible. It was lazy writing, or he just didn't know what to do with her. I don't know. But it's the only thing I didn't like.
Richard Laymon didn't flirt with the supernatural too often. Mostly it was crazed murderers and rapists. But once in a while he tackled magic, ghosts, monsters, etc. This time it's an Egyptian curse which sets loose the titular character on a killing spree through L.A. But that's only half of it. The other half involves 2 subplots about people dealing with their own particular brands of hell, one dealing with kidnapping and sexual slavery and the other with people following a trail of death leading them toward the mummy. All of these stories eventually converge, of course.
This was also published under a different title, the name of which escapes me now. If you're into horror, I recommend it.

I am a huge fan of Richard Laymon and have read and loved nearly all of his books so always have big expectations when starting one of his novels - and Amara deffinatly did not dissappoint! It is one of his best, in my opinion.

Although I do think the cover picture and the blurb on the back are slightly misleading as there are many charcaters and several plots (which is actually a good thing because they all weave together VERY well in the end with lots of clever surprises and twists) and so the mummy - Amara - does not play a massive part in the novel until quite a way through. However, the story doesn't not suffer from this at all and is still amazing with the usual addictive reading and very likeable characters from Laymon.

This is actually one of the only books that I have read that I have actually found scarey. Made the mistake of reading it before I went to bed and kept thinking the mummy was in my house...

Another excellent Laymon novel which I would recommend to all (although perhaps not the squeemish).

I love Richard Laymon. With this novel, you have to set back and let it do its thing of being over the top. I couldn't stop reading, but I would criticize Richard--even though he's dead--for investing so much emotion in some characters and then...

Well, I don't want to spoil it.
Yes, I liked it, but a writer should not break the trust of the reader. We like all the good guys to win.

Here are some other Richard Laymon novels that were more satisfying for me.

IslandIsland
Darkness Tell UsDarkness, Tell Us
The Traveling Vampire ShowThe Traveling Vampire Show
Night in Lonesome OctoberNight in the Lonesome October

This is the British edition of "To Wake the Dead".

It's about the resurrection of an Egyptian mummy named Amara.

Richard Laymon is one of my favorite authors. I've read dozens of his books and liked every one.

(Be careful that you don't accidental buy one of Laymon's fastbacks. Each of those contains just one short story. "The Hearse" is an example.)