December [Paperback]

Phil Rickman (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 1, 1996

Thirteen years after recording and hiding an album in a tower house that had been an abbey in the twelfth century, the members of The Philosopher's Stone band reunite and agree to confront the dark horror that prevented the album's release.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In December 1980, a rock band whose members are all psychics, records an album amidst the ancient ruins of an abbey in Wales. The result is tragic; but 14 tormented years later, the band members are lured to a reunion by inescapable forces. Together, they try to stem the evil emanating from the abbey. Though long, this novel rarely drags. But neither does it terrify. A surfeit of plot may be the explanation; it's hard to work up a good scare when moving so quickly and shifting focus so often. The idea of an all-psychic band?a real stretch?suffers here from overkill: the talents of these four men and women include precognition, teleportation and much more. And the novel's whirlwind ending, however entertaining, does not sufficiently resolve all of the preceding conflicts. December remains a good editing's distance away from the caliber of Rickman's (Curfew) best. Less would have been more.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Product Details

• Paperback: 688 pages
• Publisher: Berkley (July 1, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0425153770
• ISBN-13: 978-0425153772
• Product Dimensions: 6.6 x 4.1 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (22 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #465,051 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Psychic Music..., July 19, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: December (Paperback)

If you've been reading the standard Koontz, King and Laymon fare prepare yourself for December. The characters are so much more vivid and likeable or hateable. The story blends modern rock music with ancient tales and the supernatural, musos will find many in jokes and references. But overall this is just a damn good book, you have to read it at least twice to understand the complex storyline, I have read it 4 times because I love it so much. I HIGHLY recommend this book.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Compelling musical horror, September 22, 2003

By 

E. A. Lovitt "starmoth" (Gladwin, MI USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: December (Hardcover)

If you are digging into the horror novels that Phil Rickman wrote prior to his wonderful Merrily Watkins series, you will meet four of the characters in "December" (1994) who later appear in "The Cure of Souls" (2001): Moira, the folksinger; Simon, the vicar; Isabel, the sex-starved, wheelchair-bound accountant; and Prof Levin, the alcoholic recording engineer.

Boy, will you meet them--and like them too, even though Moira is a recluse who might be responsible for the death of her mother; Simon is a self-confessed homosexual necrophiliac; Isabel's first sexual adventure killed her partner; and Prof Levin stays drunk through most of "December" (a very reasonable response to finding oneself in the midst of a Rickman horror novel.)

What little sex there is in this novel is very dark, as in corrupted, or sometimes darkly humorous, as in Isabel's aerial deflowering. Loathsome, brown candles are a regular supernatural visitation foretelling death and/or really hellish sex. However, this book isn't really about sex (even though I keep talking about it.)

It's about music.

I learned more than I thought I ever wanted to know about John Lennon, Jim Morrison, Bob Dylan, and even Simon and Garfunkel--well, Goth horror is something else this book is not--mostly it concerns musicians from the 60's who didn't make it very far into the 80's. One of the main characters, Dave the guitarist, is plagued by the notion that he could have prevented John Lennon's death on December 8, 1980. Dave has some pretty snappy dialogues with Lennon who now seems to be living in his head.

Dave isn't the only one with a psychic problem. All of the musicians who attempted to record an album in an ancient abbey-turned-recording-studio on the date of Lennon's death are traumatized by a tragedy that gradually works its way to the surface through the course of this novel.

Rickman piles horror upon horror until thirteen years after Lennon's death, the musicians are compelled to return to the abbey to complete the song that had called up an ancient evil.

You'll be reading this one through the night--even though you shouldn't.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Another brilliant Rickman book, August 8, 2005

By 

Jeannette Angell "author of Callgirl" - See all my reviews
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This review is from: December (Paperback)

He's my current favorite author, and if Rickman keeps writing for the next fifty years I will be one happy reader! I started with the Merrily Watkins series, which led me to start reading the standalones... hence DECEMBER.

The coolest thing that happened, reading the books out of order as I've done, is that I'm finding characters in DECEMBER that I recognize from other books, particularly from the Merrily Watkins series. They're not major characters, for the most part, but there's a wonderful glimmer of recognition as I encounter them in the book, and a certain, "Aha! So *that's* how they met!" sort of thing. It gives a sort of organic continuity to his work that I find fascinating.

DECEMBER is another ghost story of sorts, shining and complicated, with characters' paths crossing and re-crossing to weave a fascinating tapestry of relationships and a slowly building sense of immediacy and fear. Yet another book (like *all* of Rickman's) that was stunningly difficult to put down.


--- Jeannette Angell, author of Callgirl