Customer Reviews

Body Rides

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(12)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Body rides is another interesting book by laymon because it's alot different then what were used to reading from the man...A man saves a woman from certain death by a lunatic and as a reward she gives him a very special bracelet once given to her....This bracelet lets the wearer hop into bodys and view the world through another persons eyes and it's a good thing too because the man he saved her from is coming back for her and he's next....I enjoyed it, it's not his best but it's nowhere near his worst, and with all that i almost forgot about the sex and violence which is seldom missing from a laymon book. But then again thats why we love the man.

Neal Darden only wanted to avoid getting into trouble by staying off the main road as he crossed town to return the videos he and his girlfriend had just watched. Then he hears a woman scream for help, and the nightmare begins. Grabbing the gun he keeps concealed in his car, Neal runs to the rescue, shooting the assailant. But he and the potential victim fail to check the body to see if the attacker is, in fact, actually dead. In gratitude for saving her life, the woman gives Neal a special bracelet that allows the person wearing it to slip into another person's body and mind. Then things go bad. The attacker is still alive and, after Neal has left, he finishes his job and starts coming after Neal.

Believe me, the book sounds better than it reads. Laymon, as he does in most of his books, has the story run in 'real time' and it bogs down in the middle with a plot twist that seems to exist just to add kinky sex to the mix of the story. Even worse, the characters act in the best interest of advancing the plot, not in exploring realistic human behavior in unrealistic circumstances. Laymon fans will enjoy it, but readers new to the late author will wonder what the loyal following is all about.

This is my first Layton book. I don't know if I will read another, but I loved this book. The villian was a little underdeveloped as a character, and the premise of 4 bullets and he didn't die, was a bit far-fetched. The author might have made Rasputin a bit more believable, more mortal. But, the characters were fun, likeable, and entertaining. The gratuitous sex was pretty great too. I would recommend it highly.

What do you get when wish fulfillment fantasy and horror collide?

In the case of Body Rides, you get buckets of blood, oodles of gratuitous sex, serial killers, movie stars, gunplay, torture, mayhem, sappy romance and a rapist who's thrown in for comic relief.

Of course, the very concept of a string of beautiful, smart, capable women like Elise, Marta and Sue all falling desperately and unconditionally in love with a pitiful speciman of humanity like Neal Darden is ridiculous! Anyone who doesn't appreciate that misses the whole point of the book.

Will someone please tell Quentin Tarantino or Robert Rodrigez about Richard Laymon. It would be a match made in...you know...that place.

This book is difficult to put down on the parts that are good but is real slow and boring during some long interludes. Neal is an out of work writer who goes late at night to return some videos. On the way he happens on a woman being attacked by a madman. Neal rescues her shooting the madman but not verifying that the madman is in fact dead. Grateful the woman gives him a bracelet that makes him a kind of Dr. Strange where his asteral body lifts out of himself and can travel and actually enter another person. When the user is inside the other person he feels everything the other person feels and hears all the other person's thoughts.

Unfortunately, the madman (who Neal will nickname Rasputin) will come back and murder the woman. What follows is Neal experimenting with the bracelet, fleeing town to get away from the cops and Rasputin. Several things make it hard to really like Neal as he has a girlfriend who he insists he loves yet he falls in love with the woman he rescues and over the course of a day, he falls in love with two other women.

The book has some very well written parts and then other long drawn out parts especially love making scenes. I gave it four stars because when the book is good it mesmerizes you!

I am not one of Mr. Laymon's legion of die hard fans; I have read only 8 of his books including this one. I am, however, well on my way toward becoming one. As with the others, BODY RIDES grabs you early and keeps you enthralled in the story to the very end. The premise that one can leave one's own body and ride along inside another undetected is pretty far from reality, but Laymon doesn't give you the chance to think about it. He grabs you and drags you through the rest of the story.

This is a book that follows the main character into other people's innermost thoughts as he reads their minds and experiences all their physical sensations. As expected, I found it pretty sexy but never pornographic; a nice R rated book for thinking adults. I can also truly say that I could not put this book down, finishing it in record time. My only negative comment is that the ending (I won't reveal it) is a little hard to swallow, even after accepting the premise of "body riding." It can only be described as sappy, a let-down after an otherwise superb piece of fiction.

I can't wait to get to the rest of Laymon's work. The world of horror fiction truly lost a giant with Laymon's death.

I was very impressed with this book. Very few disappointments come your way in this book. I couldn't get enough of this book. I was sad to see it come to an end, but satisfied with the ending. This is a book that will get read more than once, at least in my opinion. I hope this was helpful, if you haven't already bought this book and are reading this review for help on your decision to buy it or not, my response would be to buy it and read it for yourself. I think you will be pleasently surprised. I hope you enjoy it.

Being a fan of Richard Laymon, I try to read everything of his I can get my hands on. Body Rides was no exception. Great idea - a bracelet that allows the wearer not to read minds, but to actually enter another person and tag along with them - seeing what they see, hearing what they hear, feeling what they feel, while their body is safely somewhere else. But, the 'rider' cannot communicate with the host, nor can they manipulate them in any way. So, what's the point? Reading this book, I thought of many ways to make it better, but of course, it wasn't my idea. The villain (Rasputin) had such a small undeveloped part that I wondered throughout whether there really was a villain in this book - and his appearance had no purpose except to explain why Neal (our 'hero') ended up with the bracelet in the first place. Long book, not a 'page turner' by any means, but an ok read for fans.

This novel, like "Trader" by Charles De Lint, grabbed me and wouldn't let go. Laymon is a super writer of scary stories. A man finds that he can move all over the city by thought with the aid of a magic bracelet. It's a real page-turner with a good dose of sex.

Check out Laymon's "Island" (a great read! People stranded on an island ).Island

Also, read "Night in Lonesome October." Enter the strange night world of a college town when a young man is dumped by his girlfriend. Restless, Tom begins the wonder the town on foot late at night, and he runs into all kinds of mysterious characters and even finds a new love.

A real grabber.Night in the Lonesome October

Check out the "Trader," by Charles De Lint. An old man wakes up in a young man's body and vise versa. The only problem is that the young punk now has the old guy's money.

Trader (Newford)

Highly recommended!

Also check out "Animal Hour," by Andrew Klavan. A woman goes to work and nobody recognizes her. Another real page turner.

Animal Hour

I also really enjoyed "Desolate Angel," by Chaz McGee. A detective is murdered and wakes up as a ghost.Desolate Angel (A Dead Detective Mystery)

Every 6 months, Leisure Horror publishes a "new" Richard Laymon title. "New" only in the sense that the novel was previously unpublished in the U.S. Most of Laymon's works were left unpublished in his native country, instead only available through a British publisher by the name of Headline Feature that distributed his books mostly in the U.K., Australia and Canada. Body Rides, which first surfaced under Headline in 1996, is reputed among many hardcore Laymon fans to be one of his best titles. As someone who has now read upwards of 20 Laymon books my concensus is this: Body Rides is solid and well worth a read but at the same time nowhere close to being a Laymon top-five.

While returning a couple of video rentals late at night, Neal Darden hears a faraway scream coming from a wooded area on the side of the highway. He pulls over his car, grabs his unregistered Sig Sauer .380 pistol and heads over to the rescue. He finds a naked young female tied to a tree while a man is physically abusing her. Neal ends up shooting the man and rescuing the woman. The woman, named Elise, thanks Neal with her life and hands to him as a reward a gold magic bracelet. The bracelet enables someone to take "Body Rides", which means your spirit leaves your own body and enters the body of another unsuspecting person. The bracelet will prove invaluable to Neal, as the rapist he shot has vengeance on his mind. With the aid of the bracelet, Neal can step into the minds of others, including his would-be killer...

In typical Laymon style, the novel starts off with a bang, with a series of intense scenes of rape, revenge and murder. After the first maybe hundred pages or so however things slow down drastically. Neal, wanting to flee the dangers he now faces in L.A., goes on a sort of joyride through the California and Nevada deserts, where he will find love and a temporary inner peace of mind. This joyride through the desert, which is a major portion of the book, is entertaining in its on way but sort of feels separate from the novel he started. It doesn't really do much as far as progressing the story and although I enjoyed it I couldn't help but wonder where Laymon was trying to go with all this. I guess the major bone I had with this Laymon was the absence of danger Neal faced throughout the book. The villain Laymon created is very menacing, a sort of skinny, shaggy-haired, greasy Charles Manson lookalike but his appearances throughout the novel were far and few, which I found took away from the novel's intensity.

A thumbs up must be given to Laymon for creating truly great characters in this one however. Neal is quite likeable and most of his actions somewhat believable under the circumstances. Then there are the two women he loves, Marta, and a hillbilly girl named Sue. Reading about their love triangle was a blast, although I had a bit of trouble believing that two women who barely knew each other would be totally cool about sharing the same guy. If a lot of guys are lucky enough to have this happen to them in real life than I guess I've been missing out on something good. The novel's central premise of taking "Body Rides" was certainly very entertaining, it made for a lot of embarrassingly humouress situations, to which Laymon exploited its full use. Overall this was certainly a good Laymon but not one of his very best. For that, I would recommend "Island", "Travelling Vampire Show" and his sick n' twisted "Beast House" chronicles.