Customer Reviews

Gossamer Hall

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A history professor at a small Texas college is not really interested in history. He is an expert on a local mass murderer known as Mad Marron. His studies have shown that Marron has a treasure and it has never been found. Now one of the students may be the key needed to finding the treasure. The student has the ability to form objects out of thin air. The professor is convinced that in the right circumstances the student could unwittingly recreate Marron's map to the treasure. But things do not go as planned. Soon Marron and his gang have risen from the dead and are after everyone in the building.

This is a tale of ghosts and possession, of secrets and hidden identities. The story has an interesting premise but there are some things that are rather vague. How does the student's ability to "make" raise spirits? What actually went wrong with the plan? We know how the results are wrong but not why. I did find the ending to be refreshingly different (you'll have to read it to get the details) even if the overall plot had its weak spots. There were some odd details about distances that didn't add up right. A pretty light horror novel that might fill the bill in the right circumstances but wrong if looking for a scare or a thrill.

This book is the worst of the kind. How it ever got published? The "horror" scenes are all junk picked up by the author while watching cheapest horror movies, no doubt. Not a single original idea could be found. The style - hmmm, could it have been composed by a not too bright teenager? The whole thing seems to have been chewed and chewed to fill more pages, then the author just got bored stiff with their own creation, and decided to wrap it up PRONTO. Very bad indeed.

This Author has a nice writing pace and style. That makes this book a quick read even though it is actually close to 400 pages. Scary? Not really but it definitely had it's share of fun and gore. It also was pretty good on character developement. I actually cared who lived and who died, unlike a lot of books I read nowadays. I enjoyed it but there were a few flaws for me. I had a really hard time keeping track of where everyone was. The descriptions of the hall made no sense at times. People were here one minute and there the next. This made the book confusing at times. I was more than a little disappointed with how it ended. I do not want to spoil it for anyone but needless to say there are some significant things that happen with no explanation of why or what the impact is. I still enjoyed it and am thinking about purchasing "Disconnection". Another book by this Author. It's a good read!

Since he was a young child Juan Fuentes knew he had the special gift of making things out of thin air. This skill horrified his mother who sent her "evil" son away to be raised by a relativee. Juan currently attends Brookhaven College; where his history professor Dr. Hastings knows what the student can do and intends to exploit the teen in order to obtain the cache of gold that mass murderer Mad Maron hid.

Hastings arranges for a séance in his class, but before they can finish, an earthquake strikes. The deformed grotesque bodies of Mad Maron and his partners rise from the ground wanting to kill everyone in the classroom. Since they are already dead, they cannot die, but they can be distracted so that the students can escape. However, the dead men use the secrets of each pupil to induce them to come to them; only the strong willed can resists the lure.

This reads sort of like a slasher movie where many will die by choosing a foolish path. Readers will be hooked by wanting know who survives fighting the call of these two dead killers. There are plenty of action scenes but the gore is limited as the classmates try to outwit the homicidal deadly quartet. Fans get to know some of students as their plight grows nightmarishly worse with little hope to survive the reanimation ordeal.

Harriet Klausner

It took me about 3 months to get through this book. Usually I can get through a book in two weeks or less, but I kept putting this down and finding another book to read. The premise had my interest piqued, but too little action and too much drag in the story. it had all the right elements, but it seemed like the author wanted to draw this out slowly. At some points I got confused which zombie cowboy was chasing the characters. Also, i saw no point in the whole earthquakes. This book had too much going on. I just might be leery of buying more of this author's work.

What seemed like a great premise for a horror novel turns out to be a flat , uninteresting and predictable story about a college student who is able to "make" things out of thin air. When a seemingly half deranged history professor suggests a seance during his night class to experience the murderous deeds a century long dead outlaw(why this would be part of a history class is beyond me), the "maker" somehow brings back the dead murderer. He then proceeds to track down and start killing the students one by one during (of course)a wild thunder storm that looms outside. The lack of character development and any frightening moments drag out to predictable ending that left me wondering why I continued reading this after the first few chapters.

In a nutshell, the story revolves around the history of mythical Texas outlaw, one Mad Maron, and the efforts of an unethical professor who has made the study of the outlaw his career defining subject. The Prof intends to capitalize on the legendary, equally mythical, capacity of one of his students to claim Mad Maron's treasure buried somewhere in the Texas desert. What occurs in the novel is essentially the return to life of Mad Maron and his blood thirsty gang and the fate which befalls a handful of students at Gossamer Hall (the campus building where the class meets for their Texas history class).

Weighing in at 300+ pages (of type which seems large by comparison to some other novels I've recently read), the story is a quick read and develops using the traditional story arc. However, there are a few holes from which exposition or more detailed explanation which might have helped the story (such as (a) the state-of-being in which Juan spends much of the story, or (b) what exactly are the "rules" and abilities surrounding the return of the dead outlaws). Also, Ms. Samiloglu's writing and description lacks in some places. These were areas perhaps clear in her mind as a writer, but because they were left out, caused the reader to pause ("Huh? Oh, I see. Wait, that's what happened?") before picking up the story threads and moving on.

I mention these shortfalls, only because they are glaring to me (I'm usually a very forgiving reader when it comes to writing style and prose). The story is only okay, and we can see where the tale is headed by the time order begins to unravel. The characters however, are the standout achievement of the novel. With the exception of an epilogue, the story unravels throughout the course of one night. We get glimpses of the history of the characters in flashbacks throughout the novel, but these are done in such a way as to help develop the relationship between us and them. In retrospect the characters become more powerful than the actual action taking place, so much so that, by the end, when the story comes to its inevitable conclusion, we can actually empathize with the remaining survivors.

Is it a worthwhile read? Yeah, I think it is. Would it be missed in the great pantheon of horror novels? Meh.