Blackstone Chronicles: 6 Novels in 1 volume [Hardcover]

John Saul (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: 1997

A horror story set in New England. Built on top of the hill in the 1890s, the long-vacant Blackstone Asylum casts its shadow over the small town, but now workmen have moved in to demolish it. As they do so, they unleash a terrible evil, an unholy fear long locked within its walls.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Oliver Metcalf is the editor of the Blackstone Chronicle in Blackstone, NH. His father had been the director of the Blackstone Asylum before his death. Oliver had grown up in a cottage on the asylum's grounds. A sense of evil and darkness pervades the now empty asylum. The Chronicle reports that the asylum is to be torn down and replaced with an upscale mall. About the time the wrecking ball makes its first swing, the funding for the project falls through. Residents of the town begin to receive mysterious gifts that seem to have the power to visit evil on the recipients. An accidental fall, a suicide, a kidnapping, and an explosion leave the town reeling. Metcalf knows he must remember something key to understanding the mystery and halting the terrible chain of accidents. This abridgment causes the "accidents" to appear with very little plot or character development. This, in turn, causes the terror to become somewhat tedious. The story is read with feeling and skill by Lee Meriwether. Recommended for large library collections.AJoanna M. Burkhardt, Univ. of Rhode Island Coll. of Continuing Education Lib., Providence
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Audio Cassette edition.

From the Inside Flap

Now, for the first time, the New York Times bestselling serial thriller is complete in one terrifying volume. John Saul, the master of supernatural suspense, John Saul, brings to chilling life the small New England town of Blackstone--and the secrets and sins that lay buried there. . . .

From atop Blackstone's highest hill, the old Asylum casts its shadow over the village. Built in the 1890s to house the insane, the Asylum has stood vacant for decades. But now, the wrecker's ball is about to strike--and unleash an ominous evil. Strange gifts begin to appear on the doorsteps of Blackstone's finest citizens.

Each bears a mysterious history.

Each brings a horrifying power to harm.

Each reveals another thread in the suspensefully woven web of . . .

THE BLACKSTONE CHRONICLES

Part I--An Eye for an Eye: The Doll
Part II--Twist of Fate: The Locket
Part III--Ashes to Ashes: The Dragon's Flame
Part IV--In the Shadow of Evil: The Handkerchief
Part V--Day of Reckoning: The Stereoscope
Part VI--Asylum --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 416 pages
• Publisher: Fawcett (1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1568654073
• ISBN-13: 978-1568654072
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.8 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (73 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #358,313 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

House of Reckoning is John Saul's thirty-sixth novel. His first novel, Suffer the Children, published in 1977, was an immediate million-copy bestseller. His other bestselling suspense novels include Faces of Fear, In the Dark of the Night, Perfect Nightmare, Black Creek Crossing, Midnight Voices, The Manhattan Hunt Club, Nightshade, The Right Hand of Evil, The Presence, Black Lightning, The Homing, and Guardian. He is also the author of the New York Times bestselling serial thriller The Blackstone Chronicles, initially published in six installments but now available in one complete volume. Saul divides his time between Seattle, Washington, and Hawaii.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Entertaining, a good idea, but I saw most of it coming, April 7, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: The Blackstone Chronicles: The Serial Thriller Complete in One Volume (Paperback)

I picked up "Blackstone Chronicles" from a bookstore, not because I had heard anything about it, but because I wanted to read some good horror. Now, having finished the book, I can say that it was well worth the buy. A good idea, an excellent setting and it made the hours pass by rapidly. The downside was however, that the foreshadowing gave the game away from early on. Still, I am now hooked on John Saul and will be on the look-out for his other novels.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars "Savoring the suffering. Delighting in the disease unleashed upon the town.", January 11, 2006

By 

Mary Whipple (New England) - See all my reviews
(TOP 50 REVIEWER)    (COMMUNITY FORUM 04)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)   

This review is from: The Blackstone Chronicles: The Serial Thriller Complete in One Volume (Paperback)

At the outset of this six-volume series, author John Saul introduces the major characters, establishes the Gothic setting in small town New Hampshire, creates foreboding about the scheduled conversion of the Blackstone Asylum into a shopping mall, and then introduces the "single dark figure that moves through the ruptured stone wall" into the silent Asylum. There the figure locates a small cubicle containing the artifacts of long-ago inmates. As these artifacts appear, mysteriously, in the lives of the present occupants of Blackstone, death and destruction result. (Plot summaries and reviews for the six separate volumes appear separately on Amazon.)

Saul tells the reader from the outset that the destruction of the Asylum will change everyone's life, then goes about proving it. Because his characters are not fully developed, they do not inspire the reader's sympathy when they change from ordinary citizens to demons or when their lives move from normalcy to chaos, especially at the beginning. The stories move along quickly and inevitably, however, the Gothic shock evolving from the amount of cruelty and the amount of horror, rather than from our knowledge of the individuals and our surprise at their behavior.

Throughout the series, the agonizing tortures (in the name of "cures") at the Asylum fifty years ago are interspersed with modern day life, and occasionally Saul gives us the name of a former employee or resident of the Asylum which enables the reader to tie a contemporary victim to the history of the Asylum. The victims are usually one or two generations removed from the events in the Asylum, however, and not directly responsible for what happened there, so one wonders why the "dark figure" is emphasizing the "sins of the father" by punishing the children or grandchildren.

Filled with blood-drenched rooms, sudden explosions, unexplained attacks on seemingly innocent people, and wholesale destruction, the series does not show clear motivation for all this horror, the shock of which dulls over time. The "dark figure" has little direct involvement in the havoc, once he has given an object from the Asylum to his next victim, and he fails to evolve as a terrifying force. Though the ending answers some of the questions, it does not connect all the victims or answer all the questions. (And many readers will figure out the identity of the "dark figure" by the end of Volume 4.) Ultimately, I was disappointed that the violence and horror exist here for their own sake. There is no accountability for the death and destruction, leaving the reader with the feeling that justice has not been served. n Mary Whipple

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Horrors, crafting credibility out of the incredible, June 16, 2002

By 

Gregory Bascom (San Jose Costa Rica) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Blackstone Chronicles: The Serial Thriller Complete in One Volume (Paperback)

I'm not a fan of horror fiction; it's not my genre. I read The Blackstone Chronicles as part of a project to read twenty novels, two by each of ten selected authors. Chronicles is the fourth of the twenty, and the first ever by John Saul.

By my side, as I write this, is a flyer that tells me John Saul has written 30 straight N.Y. Times bestsellers, including...his six part serial novel The Blackstone Chronicles...." So how, I wonder, could I be so audacious, brazen and insolent to rate this tale a "three..." I've gotten old, however, opinionated, and it's a three.

The writer of good horror fiction takes the incredible and weaves it into a cloak of credibility. The author's job is to make the reader believe, or at least vicariously wonder for awhile, if the absurd is possible. To accomplish this, the novelist must create characters that we identify with, and then suck us in to take possession of them in an improbable scene. We ought to cringe, sweat and fear the next sentence, yet have to read on despite our better judgment.

I'm sorry Mr. Saul; I read Chronicles in the middle of the night by a lone 75-watt bulb and not once was I afraid of going to the toilet.

I liked the town, though. At the beginning of the combined version of the six part series, in the "Dear Reader" section, Mr. Saul admits "I have been living in the fictional town of Blackstone in my head." Me too. I was raised in a small New England town. Although the place where I grew up is not quite like Blackstone, it's close enough. And from the perspective of a young boy, we had some neighbors that were as quirky and scary as the lost souls in the imaginary Blackstone are supposed to be.

Still, in the end, especially in the end, the tale didn't work for me. Perhaps the series structure is at fault. Each of the six parts deals with a "gift" that causes mayhem. So designed, the author had to deal with six improbabilities and make them credible enough to make us scared. As I recall, even Steven King will tackle only one implausibility per novel.

In the afterword, Mr. Saul mentions that he might again write about the citizens of Blackstone. If he does, I hope it's about just one book-length incredibility, and that his maniacs stay true to character.