Customer Reviews

Berserk

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(9)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Ten years after his son is accidentally killed during practice maneuvers on Salisbury Plain, Tom and his wife plan to visit the area as a tribute. But just before leaving Tom hears some strange rumors that monsters were kept there. He pushes for answers and plays the pity card. Eventually he learns that things may not have happened the way the military claimed.

Now while they are near where their sone died, Tom sneaks away to learn the truth and find his son's real body. But the search does not uncover his son. Instead it uncovers many who died that day but also the corpse of a young girl. A corpse that is not completely dead. It seems to be able to speak to him. It knows about his son. Tom, in his fragile state, is seduced by the corpse and begins to do as it says, starting with fighting off the military officer who originally buried her. The chase ensues and the action builds.

A bit different than I was expecting but quite interesting. The berserkers and their history was a nice twist on familiar folk monsters. One can really understand what Tom is going through and what is pushing him on. The plot twists are such that you can't predict just where the action is going to take things but it is a fun journey and the destination makes sense. If you like original horror, this one is for you.

I fancy that Berserk is what you get when you mash zombies with werewolves and throw in just shade of vampire. Berserker is made even creepier by giving it a child's face and a traditional family grounding. Yes...this story is set up for success and while it largely pays off, there are some drawbacks. In this story we are initially introduced to Tom a grieving father who has never been able to shake off the pain he feels, nor the doubts he has about the story the military told him relating to the circumstances leading to his boy's demise. His son is an ever present fixture one that drives him to the pub more nights than not and that's why Tom's ears perk up when he hears the words "Porton Down", at that same pup in a whispered conversation between two men a few tables over.

As it turns out, these words are uttered by a distraught ex-soldier but when Tom approaches the pair, they blow him off. Days later, Tom comes upon the man who spoke those fateful words sitting alone in the same bar. Feeling a need to unburden himself, the man tells Tom the truth about Steven's death, and about a mass grave where Steven's body is likely to be buried. Tom, out of his mind with grief and harboring the hope that he'll finally learn the truth about his son, Tom travels to Porton Down and locates the grave. As he starts to dig, uncovering several bodies, he becomes convinced that something very wrong happened here and that his son is not among the dead. On the verge of total mental and physical collapse, he thinks he's gone mad when one of the corpses, that of a little girl, reaches out and grabs his arm.

This contact is the beginning of a long, strange trip for Tom and the little girl, Natasha. As the story progresses, we learn that she is but one of a race of savage creatures called Berserkers and Natasha convinces Tom that she might be able to help him locate his missing son if he will help reunite her with others of her kind. Their journey is complicated by the single minded pursuit of the other bloke from the pub, who seems driven at all costs to destroy Natasha and she seems equally driven to taunt and drive him on and encourage his dogged pursuit of the pair as they travel across the county to meet the other Berserkers.

At some point in the book it changes from being a horrific look into one man's decent into a new maddening life into a rather farcical, never ending car chase scene and the story seems from this point on to deteriorate into boring and somewhat unbelievable and Natasha goes from being horrific and creepy to pathetic and never makes it back to horrific or creepy. I loved the bit about the Berserker history/origin story and how that all panned out. Overall, it's ok, but not great, the second half of the book just didn't really live up to the initial build up. I'd have much preferred something more genuinely horrific instead of an extended car chase with horror elements. I give it a B-, it's good but not great and it definitely leave me wanting to read more from this author.

I've had issues with most of Tim Lebbon's past novels, although I do enjoy his novellas -- which is where I think his strength lies (the shorter format). However, Beserk has showed a solid improvement in his skills. He's brought together a tight story using only a few characters and really got inside their head. Lebbon planted just enough seeds throughout the book to keep the suspense building at a steady pace. I enjoyed this original story and found the ending to be particularly strong. If this is any indication of the new Tim Lebbon, I'll be looking forward to more of his work. Great writing. Recommended.

The cover did it: the ghastly image of a young child grinning, her luminous green eyes glowing maniacally; it caught my eye. The blurbs on the back cover promised even more gleefully dark, awful things to be found within the pages of Tim Lebbon's latest creation, Berserk. Well, once again, covers can be deceiving.

Lebbon's idea is rather nifty -- a grieving father by the name of Tom, is unable to mourn for his dead son Steven - a soldier, killed during combat maneuvers, whose coffin was sent home, mysteriously empty. One day, Tom overhears a whispered conversation in a neighborhood pub, and after a reluctant confession given by a skittish ex-soldier, Tom sets out on a search for the reason why. What he finds is a mass grave - the decomposing bodies of several soldiers... and something else: the withered remains of a young girl who isn't quite dead, and who immediately begins to take control of Tom's mind. The vampiric, dessicated corpse-thing says her name is Natasha, and she knows where Tom's son is. Maybe, maybe not. She offers to be Tom's guide, and thanks to their new rapport, shows Tom the horrible things done to her and her family - and the terrible things they did in turn - in order to persuade him to help her.

Unfortunately, after a blistering start, Lebbon can't quite keep up with his ghoulish premise and he -er, sorry - kills Berserk with the execution of a blatantly underdeveloped story. Other than a few nauseatingly descriptive scenes strewn here and there, nothing terribly 'horrific' or even INTERESTING happens. Once Tom finds Natasha, they are attacked by one of the soldiers who participated in a bizarre governmental cover-up, now determined to right those wrongs by whatever means necessary; and the book takes a long, unfortunate turn into an endless road trip/chase scene, with Tom and Natasha always just a step ahead of their hunter. Instead of building on the creepy atmosphere he's created, Lebbon layers on heaps of uninteresting dialog instead of providing any real action or suspense.

Lebbon presents his protagonist Tom as a broken, obsessed man, who is completely susceptible to Natasha's prying, claw-like mind; having lost his only son, Tom should be sympathetic to the reader, but he just comes across as pathetic, especially after the harsh, bloody death of his wife. Unable to relate to Tom and after the first few chapters of lame exposition, I was bored to tears and quickly found myself skimming page after page instead of reading, all the way to an ending that's as satisfying as a bowlful of soggy noodles.

Maybe it's just me. I admit that I'm jaded. But really, after years of horror movies depicting vampires and zombies and the like, does anybody really find stuff like this scary anymore? In the end, Berserk is little more than a rehash of all that's come down the horror genre drain before, without any new twists on some rather shopworn material. Sorry Tim - you seem a nice enough guy, who's trying hard; but all I can muster for this 337 pages of graphic blech is a measly two stars.

Although it's been ten years since his son died, Tom has never been able to shake off the pain he feels, nor the doubts he has about the story the military told him relating to the circumstances leading to his boy's demise. Steven is always on his mind; that's why Tom's ears perk up when he hears the words "Porton Down", that being the name of the town where Steven died.

The words are uttered by a distraught ex-soldier, who is speaking in hushed tones to a colleague. When Tom approaches the pair, they shrug him off. But, days later, Tom comes upon the man who spoke those fateful words sitting alone in the same bar. Feeling a need to unburden himself, the man tells Tom the truth about Steven's death, and about a mass grave where Steven's body is likely to be buried.

Out of his mind with grief and harboring the hope that he'll finally learn the truth about Steven, Tom travels to Porton Down and locates the grave. Obsessing, he starts to dig, uncovering several bodies. On the verge of total mental and physical collapse, he thinks he's gone mad when one of the corpses, that of a little girl, reaches out and grabs his leg. That contact signals the beginning of a long, strange trip for Tom and the little girl, who calls herself Natasha. One of a race of savage creatures called Berserkers (think of a combination of werewolf and vampire), Natasha convinces Tom that she might be able- to help him locate Steven if he will help reunite her with others of her kind. Their journey is complicated by the fact that the military is anxious to keep her existence a secret, and are willing to kill to do so.

Fast paced, exciting, intelligent and horrific, Berserk is a terrific novel, one that cements Lebbon's reputation as one of the most able and inventive writers in the horror genre today. Chock full of non-stop action, mayhem, and offbeat humor, it's a perfect example of a how a chase novel should be executed, constantly upping the ante in terms of danger and surprise, building to a bloody crescendo that will come as a relief to its exhausted audience. Well crafted and well written, it's a book that's easy to recommend.

Not bad. Not good either. Other people have written extensivley about the plot of this book, so I'll forgoe that and simply tell you what I liked and disliked about it. What I liked is the interesting beginning of the book (the mystery of which kept me interested), and the descriptions of top secret military experimentation (it being set in the UK was a plus for me- something different. Most of these books involve Area 51, and I had never heard of Porton Down before). What I disliked were the characters. The ex-soldier who pursues them, for instance-- why exactly does he feel so strongly that he needs to kill the main character when all he needs to do is shoot the girl's corpse in the head to solve all his werewolf-vampire (or whatever they are) problems? It doesn't make sense. The girl's motives don't feel real to me. You could make the argument that she's just insane, but it still doesn't make her motives much more compelling. Also, the end sucks.

*SPOILER ALERT*

I hated how he destroyed the quite interesting myth about the monsters' origin that was set forth in the beginning of the book. Also, in the end there's no resolution whatsoever. The main character turns into a werepire... and then? Is Mr. Lebbon going to write a sequel? If so, this is excusable, but normally you should advertise the sequel at the same time you publish the first one so that people know why the book ends without resolution.

No question, Tim Lebbon writes fine quality prose, with good plotting and all. But a good reader wants more than a good read; he wants an experience. BERSERK provides that experience. If you are a good reader I recommend this book whole-heartedly.

The editorial reviews give a good picture of what the book is about. A son lost in an accident that wasn't an accident, a father mourning for ten years, and a night of drinking that allows him to overhear two soldiers stationed close to the site of his son's demise saying "they kept monsters there." Probing deeper he finds a letter on his windshield with an X marked in red, a mass gravesite where bodies have been so hastily dumped that the soldiers still have their dogtags on, and a mummified little girl that speaks to a father's mind and says that she will tell everything "if only."

I personally hoped when I began this book and, in places, I found myself happily cringing because of the horrible things that the book brought to bear. There were the parts that introducted the terrible little secret stuck in the ground for a decade, the creepy notion of a body that had been buried for ten years communicating with a person in dire need of closure, and other horror elements that Lebbon is known for when he brings a story to the table. There was also the human element, the drive to understand what had happened to a son that had been lost for no real reason, and the fact that a family had been left behind with questions that found no answers. The tragedy here was that the last portion especially this worked against the story instead of for it, slowing down the work and placing the pace in need of help. Combine that with an ending that was not really strong and you found a reader that really liked the author, that really enjoyed the works he has done in the past, but that was skipping pages to leave behind over-detailled treelines and only to discover that the premise was much more promising than the story really delivered.

Sometimes I wonder about short story writers when I see this, wondering if the pressure to deliver a story with length overtakes the thing they are best at. Tim Lebbon sometimes makes me wonder that; he is a talented writer, to be sure, but his strength seems to be in the idea of the short story and in the creation of a solid front. Berserk was good in some ways, I liked the way the whole idea made me feel and I even liked some of the pieces to the puzzle as they showed up and delivered. The process of fleshing out the book seemed mechanical, however, and the people I wanted to feel sorrow for made me flip pages and wonder when things would begin to move. There is an entire series where the father keeps thinking he has gone mad for thinking the dead can speak to him, for example, and he continually stops the linear motion of the story to fish around in himself and ask (and ask and ask. Even the more terrible things, the finding of bodies with their heads cut off attached to a chain that ended with a little girl that communicated to a person who wanted so much that she knew, took so much time as the sounds of mud were described painfully and as the picture was painted in too high a volume and I even skipped aorund in that. I could see where the sentences should have been cut, too, and I could see where the idea ran out of steam.
I really wanted to like the book, I liked "White and Other Tales" enough that I was willing and tried as I delved deeper into the story, but I kept thinking that it should have been a piece in a book and not a book itself. Not recommended unless you have an eye for potential and want to flesh out a glass filled far past the brim to fill a boring day.

Berserk is a unique and interesting horror novel, with creepiness to spare. This being my first time reading Lebbon I was worried that after reading such an interesting blurb on the back of the book, that it would be hard to deliver. Luckily Lebbon managed to meet my expectations and more. The book is about a man who's son "died" ten years ago when he was fighting in war. After overhearing a conversation about the coverups done at the place he son died, the man (Roberts) heads off planning to find out what really happened. I don't want to go too into it but needless to say there is a government coverup dealing with monsters, what are they vampires, werewolves?? Lebbon is too creative to make it so clean cut. The only problem I had with the book is that a times it can be a little slow and though I liked the ending I wanted just a tad more. But the book was so good that I'm willing to overlook those points and read more of Lebbon's work.

This is a fun and fast read. It never digs as deep into some of the things I was hoping it would, but then if it did it would not be such an easy read. For what it is, it's a lot of fun. Tim Lebbon has done a good job of this one. If you like mysterious government plots and strange underaged zombies, this might be right down your alley. If you want ultra gory horror, this is not the one. This bowls it straight down the center. It may appeal to everyone, but won't win anyone's vote for best.