Customer Reviews

Freak Show

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4 star:		(1)
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An unusual horror anthology, in which an overriding story ties together all the tales within. It's horrific, smart and filled to the gills with great characers.

The book relates the story of a travelling circus and freak show - The Peabody-Ozymandias Traveling Circus and Oddity Emporium - that, while entertaining (and grossing-out) folks, seeks out pieces of a mysterious machine that threatens all humanity upon its completion. We're treated to all sorts of weirdos, and they're downright frightening, kids. The fiction treatment of even the common types of freak show participants - the mystic, the fattest man, snake-boy - is chilling.

This is a super-rare paperback book, but if you come across it ANYWHERE, even if you don't like horror, get it.

I enjoyed this book because it was facinating the way that F. Paul Wiilson was able to focus so many writers to create separate stories. Yet, the stories come together to create a world within a novel that will haunt me forever. I'll never forget it. I've read the book several times since I originally purchased it a couple of years ago on a whim. I'm sorry that it's out of print, because now I'm afraid to lose my copy. P.S. An aside to Mr. Wilson...even though it might have been a hassle (dealing with all of the egos and personalities necessary to get this done), from my perspective, it was worth it...

Freak Show is a superbly put together novel, each chapter written by a different author and following a main storyline; like George R. R. Martin's Wild Cards series. F. Paul Wilson has done a brilliant job of editing this strange foray into the world of the Circus Freak.

With authors like himself (F. Paul Wilson), Richard Lee Byers, Dan Simmons, Rex Miller, Nancy Kilpatrick, and many others each dedicating their talents to a single chapter of the Ozymandias Traveling Circus and Oddity Emporium's journey across the US, focusing on a particular freak and his particular talent; the life that pulses through this amazing collection is realistic and...well...freakish.

Year's ago, Oz's father scattered pieces of a peculiar machine all across the countryside just before committing suicide. Now Oz, a freak himself, has gathered those around him who are like him, different in some way or another. Some with green skin, some with wings, or beaks, or fur, or two faces, even enormously fat or with eerily long fingers; they all fit in with Oz and called the Freak Show home. Oz has promised them that their turn in life is coming, when the freaks will become the norm and the normal people will become freaks; all they have to do is gather and assemble the pieces of the machine his father scattered about years ago.

As we cross the country with this Oddity Emporium, the various authors bring us into the lives of these people, sometimes horrifying and sometimes tender; and we learn what it is like to be them, to feel like them, to live like them. I found myself extremely caught up with this band of outcasts, sympathetic for some and not for others, but always compelled to read more and find out what and who Oz really is, and what will happen if his task is completed.

Though I felt the ending was a bit cheesy and fell short of my expectations, it did not do so enough to spoil the overall experience of this book. Not since Dean Koontz's Twilight Eyes have I enjoyed a carnival/circus book so much, and it is too bad the F. Paul Wilson has said he will not edit another compilation such as this. Personally, I think it is his greatest work.

Do not confuse this book with F. Paul Wilsons book "The Peabody-Oz Traveling Circus" feb 09.

Wilson wrote that book but in this 1992 version he gives approx 10 horror authors the character of OZ and his freaks and they write their own stories.

These people/freaks are touched by Wilson *OTHERNESS* in ways that will shock you. I love this old book so much more than the new one. I think you will too.