Customer Reviews

The Boys Are Back in Town

5 star:		(17)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Christopher Golden's novels have blown me away. Although he writes in the horror genre, his writing is done with so much emotion and skill that you can easily lose yourself in the narrative. The Ferryman and Straight on Til Morning are two of the best horror novels published in the past decade.

That said, it comes with great disappointemnt to say that The Boys Are Back in Town is a step back for Golden. Although the very things that have made his previous books such successes (great characters, a very imaginative plot, beautiful writing) are present, the book nonetheless feels like something Golden would have written in the early parts of his career.

Will is getting ready to go to his high school reunion. Once there, he rekindles his friendship with all of his high school friends. But just as things start to fall into place, Will's memories of the past start to change. Mike, one of Will's friend, now seems to be dead while Will remembers e-mailing him just a few days before the reunion. More of his memories disappear, replaced by darker, more violent ones.

Why? Well, everything is related to the past. Seems like Will and his best friend Brian were deep into magic as teens. Now someone seems to be putting a spell on Will, one that changes his memories to make his present life a living hell. Will feels he has no choice but to cast a spell on himself to bring him back in time - to his senior year of high school - in order to stop whoever is murdering or torturing his friends.

The plot does sound like some bad 80s b-movie. And at times, the plot points feel just a bit too ludicrous and over-the-top to be truly enjoyable. And that's too bad, because Golden was able to create some very emotional moments in this book. Who wouldn't like to go back in time to change the way things were? Who wouldn't want to go back in time to meet his younger self and try to stop him from making the mistakes you've done? If Golden had played with this aspect more, the book would have been much stronger.

And the narrative isn't helped by the Carrie rip-off ending that never suits the book. That said, there is still a lot to love about this book. The nostalgic plot will often leave you feeling quite sad, while the characters feel so real and are so well written that it feels as though they were your own friends back in high school. Golden was always able to write vivid and realistic characters, and this one is no exception.

If this book did one thing for me, it made me wonder what Golden could do with a straight-on, non-genre narrative. The Boys are Back in Town is a novel full of emotions and plot twists that never ad up to what they should. And although this one is still better than half the horror books out there, I still couldn't help feeling a bit disappointed in the end.

I have to say this was some the best dark modern fantasy I've read in quiet some time. I will be reading more from this author for some time.

Highly recommended.

As a time travel novel "The Boys Are Back in Town" is a good fast read. The characters are, for the most part, likeable, the author effectively deals with time travel paradoxes, and the plot is a page turner.

For a genre piece this book is a four star effort. For general quality, it's a three.

First off, the primary villain is not really believable. The character is so inherently evil and cruel that it's not believable that they are motivated by the events in the book. Because this is genre fiction the author sped the plot along and glossed over these details. In a better book we would have known and understood more about what led to the villain's mindset.

The book also suffers from far too many characters who are almost undistinguishable from each other. True, any book about a high school reunion is likely to include many people. But here we just get surface descriptions. Obviously, the author would have slowed the plot down with this information.

One reviewer on the cover refers to this book as something Rod Serling would love. When you read the last paragraph you'll understand the remark. It's a good ending (can't say that about many books!) and it fits the tone of the story.

In the end, "The Boys Are Back in Town" is a highly enjoyable read that will likely be quickly forgotten. If you're looking for a more memorable time travel novel I'd recommend "Replay" by Ken Grimwood.

By the time you'll be able to keep track of all the characters' names it's too late to care very much about them in this nostalgia-ridden tale of time-travelling, magick-wielding teens turned adults, trying to figure out who's messing with their pasts on the eve of their high school reunion. The book starts off cruising on an endless stream of pop culture references, slides into flashbacks and time travel, only to come to a halt with a couple of fight scenes and plea for forgiveness. There's a lot of detail here, but not a lot of depth--the boys may be back in town, but I hardly felt that any of these main characters really cared about what they came back for. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for high school nostalgia, but this reads more like the Cliff Notes version of true feeling and memory.

As a current high school student, I find it difficult to find teen novels that honestly show the reality of a high school student's life. Not only do most books stereotype their characters and place them into cliques, but they scrub them clean of any nitty gritty, deep down emotions and thoughts that teenagers may share. When trying to appeal to a larger demographic, they forget about being completely real to their inspiration.

This is not so in "The Boys Are Back in Town". When picking it up, I found myself unable to put the book down for quite some time. Beautifully written, Golden's narrative nostalgic story flows well and is always peaking your interest.

The one thing I especially liked about this novel was its honesty. So what if it seems that the amount of curses and obsceneties is a little much? If you're in high school, or recall high school very well, you may remember that those words are used as a part of an everyday vocabulary. Your emotions are at its highest, and Golden shows this through the characters reactions.

I also enjoyed the pop culture references. When you're in high school, your life revolves around the media and this is something that is touched upon very well in the story.

I thoroughly enjoyed the no shame, bluntness of the characters and have found this to be one of the best books Golden has written.

Holy Harry Potter.

The books I read tend to gravitate toward fantasy and horror, so there's a fair bit of magic in most of my stories of choice. However, I don't know if I've ever read a book that dealt with magic like that in The Boys Are Back in Town.

The book offers a great blend of warm nostalgia and gritty suspense, with many twists and turns and a plot that keeps pounding right up until the last page.

In The Boys Are Back in Town, Boston tabloid writer, Will, is getting ready to head home for his 10-year high school reunion. He's not thrilled about seeing the high school sweetheart who left him at the alter, but has been conned into going by his best friend and former girl next door, Ashleigh. Despite the dread of seeing his ex-fiancee and living up to the fact that he hasn't become a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, he's eager to see all of his old friends -- especially Mike Lebo, who he hasn't seen in years, but has been catching up with over e-mail.

When Will arrives at the reunion weekend, though, strange things start happening quickly. When he asks about his friend Mike, he's startled to learn -- and then remember -- that Mike died their senior year. Soon other strange memories start taking over Will's mind, and facts about his friends start changing, too. In some cases, even his friends themselves are changing before his very eyes. Will (and readers) are left with the mystery of unraveling what's real and what is illusion, and how to make heal both the past and the present in this tale that spans 11 years.

The story, overall, is chilling but not truly scary. It's disturbing, but not gory. The story line does jump around from Will's high school days to the present time, but the author does a great job of making sure that readers don't get lost along the way. And the ending? Let's just say, I didn't see it coming. Great, great stuff.

This was my first foray into the writing of Christopher Golden, and I'm very excited to pick up another of his novels in the future. He is very economical in his word use (which usually kind of turns me off) but I thought it really worked well in this story. He writes teenage boys exceptionally well, and it was refreshing to read something that was so unexpected and engrossing. [close]

When you are talking about fiction books, it really gives ample room for writers to shrut their imagination. Golden certainly utilizes this to maximum in this book. Linking magic, time travelling and curses together, be prepared for a fantastic ride across time in this book.

Golden illustrates different behaviors of same individuals across different time zones in an impressive and not confusing manner. Despite the many characters created, Golden is capable of leading you to follow the main cast and the villian was kept in wraps till the last minute with twists along the way.

Christopher Golden has come a long way from his vampiric novels. This outing manages to mix together the angst of high school reunions, long-distance friendships, and family ties in a way never-before-done by an author not named Stephen King! The supernatural elements are deftly woven into the novel's framework a little at a time, and don't take a prominent position until about 175 pages in. By that time even a jaded critic of horror novels will care enough about the characters to keep on reading.

A well-done outing, and one that's going to keep you up later than you want to be. The pages will keep on flipping, but it's not due to magic, it's due to Golden's magical touch with the written word.

The Boys Are Back in Town by Christopher Golden: Christopher Golden has established himself as a talented writer within the horror genre. In The Boys Are Back in Town, he tells an incredible story, one that reminds readers there are still great books being written that will suck you in from the first page, and make you want to shut off from your life and commitments until you get to that last page.

Will James is in his late twenties and while he hasn't necessarily managed to follow his dreams...more The Boys Are Back in Town by Christopher Golden: Christopher Golden has established himself as a talented writer within the horror genre. In The Boys Are Back in Town, he tells an incredible story, one that reminds readers there are still great books being written that will suck you in from the first page, and make you want to shut off from your life and commitments until you get to that last page.

Will James is in his late twenties and while he hasn't necessarily managed to follow his dreams, he is a journalist working for a newspaper and is happy with the life he has. He suffers suspicion from others due to his pursuit of the supernatural and any story involving magic. However, he considers it his job to debunk these people and reveal them as the frauds they are. The high point for his weekend is his ten-year high school reunion, which begins Friday night with a meeting with Stacy, a former friend who has become an interesting and beautiful woman. But when Will asks where his best high school friend Mike is, he is greeted with anger and furious stares, and a short while later memories surface of Mike dying in a horrific hit-and-run accident during their senior year. Will is confused, for he has vaguer memories - shadows in his mind - of knowing Mike through college and receiving an e-mail from him just the week before about coming to the reunion.

The next day at the Homecoming game, Will makes a comment to another close friend, Ashleigh, about the Homecoming Queen during their senior year, but then is corrected by her. She says that it was a different person because the girl was raped the night before. Before his eyes, Will watches Ashleigh visibly change, as she recounts how she was also raped, which is why she can't have children. Will feels his mind splitting, since he recalls visiting Ashleigh and her husband last Christmas, and seeing their beautiful twins. He knows there is something very wrong going on here, not just someone playing a prank on him; someone is messing with his timeline, his reality, changing events. He has some ideas about who is involved, but he's going to have to go back to the life of magic that he had deliberately forgotten; it will require using a spell that will take him back to his high school years. He's going to have to stop whoever is doing this, whoever is rewriting history, and changing his life before his very eyes.

The Boys Are Back in Town will horrify and astound, as well as bring back memories of your high school era. Golden writes with a skill and emotion that brings these years to life on the page, while adding a deadly element - for memories are meant to stay the same, and are not supposed to change on the fly.

[...]
[...]

Got hooked right from the first paragraph. The perils of tinkering with ones memories comes to wreck havoc on the lives of not only the main character Will James but those around him. The plot twists and turns and dark alleys that Chris brings us through kept me on the edge of my seat. It was a great read!