Customer Reviews

Cellars

5 star:		(3)
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3 star:		(3)
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I've read this book twice (with about 8 years between each reading), and it still scares me. John Shirley has a knack for taking something I do without thinking about it, such as closing my eyes, and makes me SCARED of doing it. In Cellars, he's got New York City subways, and sub-subways, and psychics, and street urchins, and horrible "blessed" people, and secret societies, and things coming up from drains, and each horrific event is more disturbing than the last--all the way to the last page. Shirley doesn't write many horror novels, but when he does... Well, you have to read one for yourself. The only other book that actually scared me--and I read a LOT of horror stories--was another John Shirley book, In Darkness Waiting.

Cellars was the first horror novel I ever read by John Shirley. It was so intense, that authors like Barker, Lumley, Garton, and others positively paled in comparison. Cellars is unflinchingly executed. Gritty, dark, and truly scary - it keeps you guessing until literally the last page. I can't recommend this book for those who like Hollywood horror where everything is happy and fine after the minor scares. For those of you that are tired of the predictable, toothless horror novels that glut the shelves - give Cellars a read.

I just started chapter five of "Cellars" earlier today. This is exactly what a creepy horror novel is supposed to be. Wonderful mise-en-scène: Critics often talk about how in a John Ford Western, the landscape itself is a character. What Ford did for the old West, John Shirley does for the New York City of the "me first," Reagan revolution 1980s. While Ford's wilderness panoramas awed viewers with the power and beauty of nature, Shirley's smoldering New York is always just on the verge of doing something unspeakably nasty to his protagonists and to the reader's ability to sleep with the lights off.

I did enjoy this book, I would recommend it to be read, but in comparison with Shirley's other books, it's a bit lacking. It has the same wonderful characterization Shirley always shows, the right combination of drugs, sex, tense moments, and action that he always delivers, but I felt that the second half of the story was a bit rushed, the ending especially. If you just want a good, short read, then by all means, pick this book up, but if you're looking for one of Shirley's better works, I would recommend the Eclipse Trilogy or Demons.

Carl Lanyard is an occult investigator that gets caught up in a case of ritual murders below the streets of New York. The deeper he's getting, the more he'll discover about himself and his involvment in the grand scheme of things.

I'd heard a lot of great things about this book and after reading Edward Lee's praise for it, I decided to pick it up. I enjoyed it but wasn't overall impressed by it. It has great characterization, an intriguing plot and enough sex and gore to keep the average horror reader hooked, but I found it lacked something. I lost of bit of my initial interest in the middle of the book; it felt a bit off to me and dragged at times.

It's still a fast read and a satisfying book, just not the masterpiece many are claiming it to be. Then again, maybe my expectations were too high or maybe it's because I've read too many Ketchum, Lee and Laymon books. Keep in mind that this book was published 25 years ago and at the time, it was a fresh take on the genre. The story is still very much relevant today so I guess it's a sign that it has aged well.

I enjoyed Cellars, but as someone looking to sample the "splatterpunk" genre, I found that it does not match Ketchum's Offseason or even most of the Michael Slade novels in terms of "splatter".