Customer Reviews

The Bridge

5 star:		(14)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

This is far and away the greatest horror I have read. Nailed clean in the style that Skipp and Spector mastered so well, a craftily ironic tone that your own mind uses in its more honest moments, this constantly claustrophobicly narrowing vision of the environmental haulocaust to come grabs you by the short and curlies demands that you should SIT RIGHT BACK and hear of the coming tribulation. The deftness which with it was handled, the delecate suspension of disbelief holds even with the fantastic swirling and gelling. They were the best horror going in the '80s and early '90s, no debate and bar none. I miss them all the time, and boys and girls, this is as good as it got. Maybe the best it could get.

An Absolute MUST-READ, this one grabs you by the throat and doesn't let go until it has shredded your sensibilities and made you think twice about even turning on the water faucet. With characters you care about, Bad and Good, and an inexorable march to destruction that seems to have No savior...heroes still emerge and save what they can in a hopeless situation. The writing is excellent with details that are vivid but never diving into gore overdrive.....well, maybe a little but what the hell. These guys bring the goods and not only do they not "pull any punches"...they punch through your skull and rip out your cerebral cortex.......If you find it .....BUY IT......

Nature evolves according to its environment and the changes in its ecosystem. Poison it too much, and it will compensate in the most horrific way possible.

This book was very painful to read, like watching a train speed off its tracks into a playground full of children. Relentless and unforgiving, its plot held me captive from start to finish, unable to put it down no matter how much I wanted to.

This is not a book you will read over and over again, but it is a book you should read at least once.

Suberb horror from two of my favorite writers. here is the premise: we have polluted the planet by dumping toxic waste without regard to the consequences and now the toxic waste has achieved consciousness and is bent on destroying humanity. the description of the "overmind" and all it's creation is gruesome and horrible. those that live near the waste dump try in vain to escape the creatures that take over their small community. it is inevitable that the cancer that is the overmind and it's minions, will branch out and soon cover the earth and the change will be complete, with our planet altered forever.

You can feel the claustrophobia build and build as the the malignancy grows and devastates everything in it's path. mother nature is very angry with what has been done to her planet and payback is unforgiving, and terrible. if you're a fan of take no prisoners, politically incorrect horror, where no one is safe, this is for you, *spoiler*, there is no happpy ending here. I didn't want it to end, it was that good! one of skipp and spector's best, and they have several. [highly recommend "the light at the end"]

Environmental horror is actually a thriving subgenre. Virtually all those fifties giant-bug movies were warnings about the mistreatment of nature, but none were as direct and fierce in their warnings as these two guys are. In 'The Bridge' a local environmental disaster assumes global proportions as a group of well-drawn characters struggle to survive when a horrible new life-form is created in a chemical-waste dump site. This book is like a runaway express train, leading to an inevitable, but still devestating, ending. I read it in one sitting. Well worth your time

Like the finest work of Stephen King, Skipp and Spector establish a fine ensemble of characters and make us feel for them, knowing that any one of them could be the next to suffer a horrific demise.

The characters are unaware that nothing will be the same after the events in the book, unaware that their world is slipping away...

The book is disturbing, gruesome and impossible to put down. Once this book's tendrils ensnare you, God help you if you have other things that need to get done.

"The Bridge", arguably Skipp and Spector's finest work as a team, is a modern classic, proving them to be more than mere "splatterpunks." With this book, they cemented a place for themselves amongst horror's elite.

Toxic waste gets a life of its own. Great! I love that concept! But what's this? The waste is an intelligent force taking over minds and bodies? Spirit guides? Magick? Lawn ornaments coming to life? What the hell? Yeah, all those are factors in this book that work against it making the story more and more ridiculous as it progresses. Not only that, but the whole thing is an overly preachy "serious" attempt to warn its readers of the dangerous chemicals that surround us in everyday life and how they effect the earth spirit. Ugh! I absolutely hated this thing! It's a PSA made by hippies thinly disguised as a horror book.

*
Simply put, The Bridge is one of the finest horror novels I've ever read. If you enjoy your horror on an epic, apocalyptic scale, then this is one book that is sure to delight. There are only a handful of books in this genre that deserve to be mentioned in the same breath as The Bridge: The Stand by S. King, Phantoms by D. Koontz, Swan Song and They Thirst both by R. McCammon, Deus-X by J. Citro, Imajica by C. Barker (although some might argue that this title is better classified as fantasy). However, make no mistake, The Bridge is an altogether unique effort. I refuse to give any particular plot points away. In brief, The Bridge deals w/ the ultimate ecological nightmare scenario. It is absolutely riveting and features and ending that creeped me out for days-weeks-months! (Heck, I read this book over a decade ago and IT STILL CREEPS ME OUT!!)

If you a remember a rather [bad] horror movie from 1979 called Prophecy w/ Talia Shire(not to be confused with The 1995 film The Prophecy starring Chris Walken) that dealt with the monstrous consequences of man's reckless polluting of the environment and suspected that there was real potential for a truly great story embedded deep within that cheesy...film, then this book confirms those suspicions!

I truly believe that if adapted for the screen by the right filmmaker - Kubrick would have been my ideal choice, - it could potentially scare today's jaded and desensitized audiences on a level heretofore reached only by the likes of The Exorcist.

To take any stock in Robert P. Beveridge's bone-to-pick review of this fine book (which unfortunatlely occupies the pole-position in the reviews for this book) would be an enormous misatake on your part. Trust me! If you're looking for THE wild ride, then this is it. Mr. Beveridge claims that this is not the case, stating that The Bridge is "...so much less fun than Skipp and Spector's first five wild rides." Nonsense! Mr. Beveridge simply appears to be an unfortunate gent whose intellectual capacity causes him to take himself way too seriously. Lighten up, bro!

There are few books that I would go through the effort of bashing a reviewer who had in turn bashed it . This is one of those books. I simply don't want to see any of you folks miss out on one helluva good read because of someone's scathingly negative over-analytic review of a true horror classic.

Peace.

I'm a big King & Koontz fan and I was researching for other authors/books that could entertain me. I saw many suggestions for King & Koontz fans to try this book, so I did. NOT a fan. The idea of toxic waste that's dumped into our waterways coming to life and taking over like invasion of the body snatchers just seems silly to me. I finished the book, but only because I have a compulsion to finish books once I start them. It was boring and predictable, which, when coupled with the discontect due to the age of the book, wasn't worth it to me.

Though reprinted from the eighties, one only has to visit the local landfill or read about catastrophic oil spills in the newspaper to understand the lasting relevance of a novel such as "The Bridge". Big and ambitious, brimming with a razor-sharp social consciousness and gut-wrenching horror, its resonance proves far more powerful than the average "monster story". In a world increasingly more reliant on man-made products, its importance cannot be ignored.

In the small industrial town of Paradise, Pennsylvania all seems well, especially for those holding the reins of power. For crooked waste management companies and corrupt officials alike, business is booming. For everyone else, life has capered along as normal. The people go about their business, ignorant of the chemical stews brewing in the depths of Codorus Creek and in other sinkholes secreted throughout the area.

Everything changes on an average "discrete disposal" run during an unseasonal storm. A tremendous clap of thunder, an eldritch flash of lighting, one too many barrels of toxic waste dumped into the simmering waters of Codorus Creek...and something awakens, after long last. A threshold has been breached, a malignant consciousness born, and it is bent on finally lashing out in retribution for a thousand ecological sins. It spreads, infects, consumes and assimilates....remaking the world around it into a twisted, nightmarish vision from which nothing and no one can escape....and it has a message to spread...

To the rest of the world. This is a toxic spill that cannot be covered up, for even the ground itself has joined the cause.

All the "right parts" of a horror novel are here in "The Bridge", but what separates it from average fare is, as always, the human element. As man's sins rise up in chemical-breathed life to judge and punish, there are no "innocents" who escape. Humanity as a body is measured and found lacking, demonstrating the all too painful reality that abusing the Earth is simply too much like abusing our own bodies, plucking out our eyes to indeed spite our faces.