Floating Dragon [Mass Market Paperback]

Peter Straub (Author)

Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback
• Publisher: Berkley; Later Printing edition (1986)
• ASIN: B000I8SAOC
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (34 customer reviews)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Straub's 'final' horror tale is wonderfully over the top., November 20, 2001

By 

Chadwick H. Saxelid "Bookworm" (Concord, CA United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Floating Dragon (Paperback)

"I wanted to write a special effects show. Something that would make the reader's jaw drop and make them think 'I can't believe that I'm reading this.'" - Peter Straub on writing Floating Dragon.

Well Mr. Straub you have succeeded.

Floating Dragon was, at the time, Straub's last foray into supernatural horror (Mr. X marks his return to the field that made him famous). As an ancient, paranormal thing awakens to again wreak havoc on an accursed town, an equally horrid nerve gas escapes and infects the population of said town. How much of the events of this story are really happening and how much is collective hallucination brought upon by the gas? The question is not answered by Straub, who leaves a great deal to the reader to figure out. But the clues are there, you just have to dig past all the symbolic and over the top effects scenes (of which there is a HUGE amount). Granted Floating Dragon may not be Straub's best novel, but even his lesser efforts are far superior to other horror writers successes.

17 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Floating Plotline, May 21, 2002

By 

Bruce Rux (Aurora, CO) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Floating Dragon (Paperback)

Peter Straub has never written a bad book, only better and worse ones. This is probably his worst, but it's still readable and has a few things going for it.

The plot is confused. The "Floating Dragon" is - perhaps - partly supernatural, though primarily it is explained as a leaked Department of Defense gas, that drives people insane and eventually liquefies their bodies. While losing their minds, the unfortunate victims hallucinate - hence, the possibility that what is being perceived as a recurring supernatural evil is all in the mind of the beholder.

I really disliked this book when I first read it, but I decided it required a re-read in later years after overcoming my initial disappointment. It was much better than I remembered it, but its flaws still gravely weaken it. Really, it's all quite good until the last seventy-five pages or so, when the action becomes completely hallucinogenic and virtually impossible to follow, and the ending is terribly trite to the point of being laughable. Straub's worst trait is a tendency to go way over-the-top, and that is at its worst here. But his characters, as usual, are quite memorable, and his writing in every other regard in typically splendid form.

If you're a Straub fan, this one may or may not put you off him. If this is your first exposure to the author, pick a different title, something like Ghost Story or If You Could See Me Now, to get a better feel for Straub closer to the top of his game.

17 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The siege of Heaven., July 16, 2000

By 

Miguel "Writer, Journalist, Film Critic" (Gijon, Spain) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Floating Dragon (Paperback)

Hampstead, Connecticut, is almost like a sister community to [the also fictional but] heavenly Stepford: gracious homes, genteel people, all the happiness money can buy.

Then, on the afternoon of saturday, May 17, 1980, a local housewife, Susan "Stony" Baxter Friedgood gets horribly murdered meanwhile her emotional cripple of a husband witness an accident at a Secret Chemical plant and -- literally, but methodically- all hell breaks loose, or rather comes to settle, on the perfectly manicured lawns and beautiful, restored colonial houses on tree-lined streets.

This is one of Straub's most ambitious horror novels... perhaps even more so than Ghost Story, although the villainess there is quite simply one of the most memorable characters ever created. But nevertheless, it breaks all the boundaries of where his work had gone before, or would go later.

The main characters are people who live and breathe and slowly move into your heart and touch you in ways that surprise you: Take Graham Williams, writer and demon-chaser, who has battled his very own private horrors for ages; adorable Patsy Tayler McCloud, sensible and sweet, but also catalyst to ever so much power just waiting to be used. Tabby Smithfield, a boy who would go anywhere just to be loved, at least a little; and Richard Allbee, a man who is always trying consciously and un- to scape himself and his child-actor past and who has returned to his hometown after 12 years in London, along with his beautiful and very pregnant wife, the kindly and very human Laura, to face his destiny and future.

Follow these characters and a few others that you won't be able to forget either (like Ulick Byrne, Sarah Spry, Wren Van Horne, Clark, Monty and Jean Smithfield, Les McCloud and the aforementioned, pivotal, and deeply moving Laura Allbee -- who evokes all the strenght and vulnerability of another memorable pregnant heroine, Rosemary Woodhouse, whom all of you surely know from a certain famous modern gothic) through a landscape that slowly but imminently shifts from a suburban paradise into a breeding ground for nightmares.

Ira Levin meets Henry James and Lovecraft? Maybe... this novel deservedly won the British Fantasy Award and has unjustly been branded as "talky" and "overlong"... actually, its lyrical nature and accurate detail of the setup is one of its most disturbing aspects, once the gory, horrifying and breathtakingly awesome denouements come around (my personal favorite? Richard Allbee's epiphany/dream sequence on which he meets Philippa, his daughter, before coming home to Laura) to haunt you.

Give this book a chance and you will never forget it. Wondering, why was it never made into a film? It woyuld be so much better -- if well-adapted- than much of the unbelievably horrid stuff we get these days.

Definitely one of my all-time favorites.