Customer Reviews

HUNTED PAST REASON.

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(8)
2 star:		(10)
1 star:		(23)

 

 

Richard Matheson is one of my favorite authors. His work with The Twilight Zone was stunning. His novels Bid Time Return (which later became the classic movie Somewhere in Time) and What Dreams May Come (which spawned a movie of the same name) are excellent.

So it was with great excitement that I discovered this book and bought it. A new Matheson novel! I couldn't wait to read it.

Boy was I disappointed.

Hunted Past Reason is a pedantic novel with dialog so heavy-handed and stilted that I'm not sure Matheson himself wrote it. How could he have? He's a master storyteller, a legend among legends!

Yet, there's his name on the book, and his photo on the dust jacket.

The story is about two supposed friends (more like acquaintances) who go backpacking in the wilderness. One man (Doug) is experienced. The other man (Bob) is not. But Bob agrees to go on the trek because he's writing a novel and wanted actual backpacking experience with which to add realism to his book. Somewhere along the way, Doug turns into a maniac and hunts Bob down with intent to kill him.

The friction between the two begins immediately...and clumsily. I could tell immediately what was going to happen, and how it was unfolding. The scenes were unbelievably transparent.

I never did feel any tension or suspense reading Hunted Beyond Reason. All I felt was a sickness in my stomach from the way-too-graphic scenes of violence (Bob being sodomized by Doug, for example). Ironically, I also found myself pressing forward to complete the novel with the same dogged determination that Bob and Doug pressed through the woods. Not because I was enjoying it, but because I had a destination in mind (the last page) and I wanted to get there as soon as possible.

I finished the book last night and felt nothing but relief that it was done. The book's premise is shaky, its dialog is clumsy, and its main characters are unbelievably written. Doug, for instance, is evil incarnate. Bob, on the other hand, compassionately talks to animals and even stops long enough in his haste to flee Doug that he frees a trapped mountain lion. Like, hello! You have a madman at your heels and you're playing Dr. Doolittle?

I can't recommend Hunted Beyond Reason. In fact, I heartily suggest you hunt for an entirely different Matheson novel...and let this one remain snoozing with its fellows on the book store shelf.

This book is torturous to read. I have to ask if Matheson is going a bit senile in his old age. For a man who gave us I Am Legend, and Hell House, and Stir of Echos, and a bunch of other brilliant books, his latest releases (such as the reprinted Now You See It) are simply abysmal.

I am about forty pages from the end of this book and am seriouly considering not even finishing it. I've only not finished (excluding some books i hated in high school--The Good Earth anyone?) maybe four books my whole life.

Where to start with why this book is bad. Well, to begin, it's completely rehashed. Our hero spends two days getting chased through the California woods by a man who wants to kill him. And rape him. Can you say Deliverance? Okay, so the book acknowledges that part, as the endorsement even says it's "straight out of Deliverance" or some such nonsense. But come on, it's not even an original twist on the subject. It's the same as that stupid Ice T movie, as a bunch of television episodes from the 80s. The so-called "chase through the forest for your life" game. Secondly, these characters are boring archetypes. The hero who believes in karma practically has the ability to talk to woodland creatures. And the bad guy is just bad for no reason. Oh wait, he's jealous. Yes, that's right, he wants to kill his friend because he's jealous of said friend's success. C'mon, I don't buy it.

On top of that, anyone who's been hiking for a weekend or more knows that the odds of seeing a bear,a mountain lion, another bear, a rattle snake, etc, are slim at best. I'm surprised the hero didn't run into an elf, a goblin, Jimmy Hoffa, Atlantis, or any other elusive noun as well. And the lightning? Please!

And finally, and maybe this is a style opinion, but who actually has arguments with themselves when they're alone ALL DAY LONG! This character does this throughout the whole book:

Yeah right, all of a sudden I'm a champion swimmer, he thought to himself.

"Shut up Hansen, just keep moving."

Once or twice okay, but all the time? Is the character nuts or something?

Well, you get the idea, this book is not only a dissapointment but a complete piece of (insert expletive) from a writer who is otherwise truly gifted. Do yourself a favor and skip it.

Richard Matheson is the author of one of the few horror classics, I Am Legend, and one of the most astute satires of 50's veneer, Stir of Echoes. Add to that the dozen or so great "Twilight Zone" episodes he wrote, and you have the basis for the cult following he enjoys.
Unfortunately, with this new book, Matheson has besmirched his reputation.
Hunted Past Reason is your basic chase story. Two men on a backpacking trip, one descends progressively into evil and we end up with a "game," where the bad guy is after the good guy, trying to kill him. Wrapped up in this is a metaphysical puzzle about whether there is life after death, and what happens because of the choices we make in this world.

All well and good, if not terribly original. But Matheson chooses to take the low road in his portrayal of the villain, with the most pornographic (yep, Matheson would have been arrested for this stuff in the 50's) and base images imaginable. The frequent use of four letter words and gross sexual commentary grows quickly tiresome, and reads like some fifteen-year-old's first attempt at "adult" storytelling. Or what he imagines is adult these days.
Which is the major disappointment here. Matheson, in his mid-70's, should be better than this. He should be giving us something more than juvi-porn-violence. Using the skills of a writing lifetime, he ought to be trying to reach for something that is great and lasting. Instead, he has merely penned a piece of fast-moving garbage.
If he believes, as his hero in the book, that we have to pay for the "bad" we do in this life with some sort of penance in the next, I'm afraid Matheson's going to be doing some hard time. He has tossed another trashy novel into our midst; we surely did not need any more of them.
There is some sloppy writing, too. ("Doug, let's continue with our hike, he imagined saying to Doug.") He has a character much too young to have been in Vietnam talking about killing people in Vietnam.

Matheson also piles on information about backpacking, so it seems like he's just copied a whole backpacking book. It's just clumsy. But I could have lived with all that. What I can't stomach is the story, and the way it's told.

If bad writing were a crime, Richard Matheson would be on death row.

As it is, I feel like I've done hard time by reading this book.

Mr. Matheson uses the protagonist in this book as a vehicle to float every left-leaning, New Age theory imaginable: he's pro-reincarnation, anti-gun, anti-violence, pro-animal rights. And the results are almost laughably absurd. After the main character has been sodomized and beaten and is fleeing a psycopath in the forest, our hero stops his escape to rescue a cougar that has been trapped by a fallen log. Why not brew a little latte' while you're at it? And after the psychopath rapes the protagonist's wife as a prelude to murdering the hero and the hero gains the upper hand, the protagonist refuses to kill the pyschopath "because that would make him like the psychopath." Huh?

It's this kind of muddleheaded thinking that the reader must endure thoughout the book. Save your money and your time. Look elsewhere.

The title I chose pretty much says it all-I never thought it possible for my favourite authour to have written such a book. I've been reading Matheson since the 50's and have been absolutely enthralled by his magnificent tales over the passing decades ever since. When I saw a brand new novel out,I immediately picked up a copy and packed it away for something to read at night during an up and coming trip to Europe. It took an iron will to resist sneaking even a peak at it in the days before I left,but somehow I managed to hold firm!
At last,after a particularly long and tiring day of tramping about Amsterdam,I lay back on my bed with a contented sigh and reached for the much awaited new Matheson! Finally,after long last,it was time to dive into another great Matheson masterpiece! And then the illusion ended. The more I worked my way into this new book,the more I couldnt believe I was reading anything by my favourite authour. The plot was something thats been done over and over again-the chase of the hero through the woods by the demented killer. Nothing new there,but I could have lived with that. Matheson can make even a shopping list fascinating and irresistable to read! Except that he Didnt here. The story simply progressed from stale and uninteresting into something even worse-Bad. The hero of the story gets graphically sodomized and is unable to even mount a halfway effective resistance-he just takes it. And the story doesnt improve from there-it just gets worse and worse. The writing seems to have come from another authour all together! Richard Matheson simply isnt Capable of writing such a horridly poor novel! But apparently he Has. If I hadnt read it(And I sincerely wish now that I hadnt)I wouldnt have believed it.
If you love Matheson as I do-Please dont read this book. Its an embarrassment and an outright affront to the memory of an authour of the magnificent talent such as "Bid Time Return" or "I am Legend". I never thought that someday I would be writing such a review of Richard Matheson,but here I am doing just such a thing today. I dont want to speculate on a man of such awe-inspiring talent like Matheson's mental powers slipping in his elder age but if this is what his mind is producing today,then perhaps its better for him to quietly retire and refrain from sending out any further horrors such as this dreadful book and let his legions of fans remember him as they Should-a Legend.

This is possibly the first novel I've ever really thought of giving two stars to. Oh, I've read much worse... but then there was usually an excuse for it. Here, there is simply a mediocre book- I found it moderately entertaining, but then I'm the kind of person who can sit through five B-movies in a row without blinking an eye. In fact, this book would make a pretty convincing B-movie. Case in point, I've decided to list all the reasons this book is hilariously inept. You may want to read it after hearing the descriptions, but you're more likely to be confused as to how an author like Matheson ended up writing this dud.

Okay, reason number one:

1. The REPETITION. This feels like Matheson wrote the same book five times and then slapped them together in the semblance of a linear narrative. The same lines get repeated. The dialogue is rehashed within paragraphs of each other. The protagonist meets various species of wildlife, gets hurt a lot, cries a lot... Probably in evenly spaced intervals, as well. The book is basically the following events, repeated ad nauseum:

A. Bob asks Doug a question. Doug responds in a typically antisocial manner, then insults him. Bob sits there and takes it while whining internally. OR! Doug responds in a perfectly valid manner, which Bob takes to be a lecture while whining internally. One of the characters uses God/Jesus' name in vain, to which the other character says something like "God/Jesus has nothing to do with this". Repeat.

B. Bob meets wildlife, then helps/deters it somehow in a fairy-tale-princess-who-can-talk-to-animals kind of way. Bob meets an obstacle. Bob's mind says something inane, to which Bob says aloud "Shut up, Hanson". Bob breaks down in tears, then struggles valiantly on. Repeat.

Insert psuedo-meta-physical discussions here that don't nor ever will have anything to do with the plot.

2. The character's names. Okay, not really a reason but it's hard to escape the fact that the two main characters share the names of two infamous Canadian hosers, Bob and Doug Mackenzie. The book would have been more interesting if, halfway through, Bob told Doug to just "shove off, eh..." Alas, no such event occurred. I hate the name Bob for fictional characters. I really do.

3. The dissolution of characterization (MILD SPOILERS). The fact that Doug eventually goes crazy isn't really a secret here; it's just not very well carried through. First of all, he has this one scene where he describes his horrible horrible childhood. It's quite upsetting. It would have been a strong, emotional scene, if Bob had done more than sit there and act defensive for no reason. This says a lot about Bob, who alternates between being a whiny, defensive victim to a bland, psuedo-philosophical 'hero'. Whenever something bad happens, it seems he forgets it in a couple of pages, and instantly reverts back to whatever he was having conflicts about earlier. And we're stuck with him for the whole book. Yippee.

Anyway, back to Doug, who would have been a cooler antagonist if he A) Had a clear reason for suddenly going berserk or B) Redeemed himself somehow in the end. He had a terrible childhood, a worse life and the book implies it's all his fault. Obviously bad karma, which Bob believes in; and if Bob is the good guy, then karma is valid in the context of this fiction. So Doug really is pure evil? I don't buy it.

4. As mentioned above, the book tries too hard to be spiritually meaningful. That's probably it's worse flaw. The book carries on with no meaning, randomly throwing out 'possibly' or 'maybe so' sentences, implying lots of things but never answering its own questions. This leaves a deeply unsatisfying novel with a whole lot of discussions about good and evil that don't relate to anything, much less Doug's sudden attack of the crazies and Bob's mysterious ability to talk to animals. By the way, I've had deeper conversations with my fifteen-year old sister. This is not an attack on Matheson's beliefs, but these arguments always seem to consist of dialogue like:

BOB: I belief that there is an omnipresent being out there who embodies an objective concept of justice.

DOUG: Oh, so you're saying my life is all my fault, huh?! Well I'll have you know my dad used to beat me every hour on the hour back when I lived in a cage in the basement. By the way, Hitler was awesome and your beliefs suck. G'night.

...Except wayyyyy longer.

(Mild Spoilers)

5. The rape scene occurs somewhere in-between the Repetition Points A and B as mentioned above. This is the best part of the book. Why? Because it BREAKS UP THE MONOTONY. Up 'till now we've had to suffer through Doug's endless antagonizations of Bob, who only complains about it internally, and the pretty floating spiritual discussions... yawn. At least here, we have some real conflicts, real pain. To bad it doesn't amount to anything.

I was hoping Bob, even if he refused to relinquish his belief in the afterlife, would start to question his sexuality; but NOOO. His consternation amounts to a sore rectum and name-calling Doug in his head.

Well, I've prattled on long enough. Actually I had a pretty good time reading this, but I know a lot of other folks out there wouldn't want to bother slogging through all the stuff I've just mentioned. It's so bad it's good. In a bad way. Or a good way. Shut up, Hanson, it's all in your mind...

P.S. For some reason, all of Matheson's other novels are of much better quality. His strong point seems to be short stories; with longer pieces of fiction, he tends to repeat himself. Again. And again. Over and over.

P.P.S. The drawn-out beginning will teach you everything you need to know about preparing supplies in the wilderness. If you could remove all of Bob's mindless interjections ("Thank you, Doctor Crowley"), this would be the perfect survival manual. The rest of the book is pretty handy for that too, but you'd have to cut out a lot more. And remember, if you're being chased by a maniacal rapist, it's essential to be able to communicate with bears and rattlesnakes.

... how lousy this book was. I wish I'd thought to log in to Amazon and read the other reviews before being sucked in by the Matheson name in an airport bookstore. I wanted to throw the book down the air-flusher.

It was like a bad dream I couldn't wake from. I kept waiting for the REAL Richard Matheson to appear -- the one from I, Legend, Hell House, Stir of Echoes. But know, some James Dickey wannabe has obviously taken over his mind. I found the plot to be tired, and the sex/violent scenes to be gratutious. Now, mind you, I'm not one to shrink from erotic horror and I've even published vampire stories, (including a short-short I dedicated to Mr. Matheson), but this was simply hack work.

Next time, I'll buy a classic from the airport bookstore, and wait to log on and read the reviews at Amazon.

Richard Matheson is the master of the normal guy suddenly plunged into a terrifying situation thriller. Matheson has written many classics with this formula such as Duel (a truck driver takes road rage to a new level), The Shrinking Man (normal everyday guy starts and keeps shrinking having to battle redback spiders and other obstacles as he gets smaller and smaller) and of course the classic I Am Legend (everyday guy finds he may be the last man on earth and if this is not enough must constantly repair his house for the nightly attacks by his vampire neighbours). The problem with Hunted Past Reason is that the main hero Bob is a little bit below the intelligence and averageness of your everyday guy and most readers following his terror trip would be thinking, why the f would you do that Bob and not the much more common sense thing? However there are below average intelligence people in this world so if you can accept Bob is one of these you'll enjoy this thriller story ride a lot more! Bob isn't the most likeable character either but Matheson lead characters seldom are (except when they are turned into movie characters).

What is a bit hard to take though and the main reason I don't rate this five stars is the wildlife encounters, if these were realistic Bob wouldn't have lasted long enough to worry about Doug catching up with him. Matheson has written a fair bit of Scifi in his days and I don't know, guess in his mind he needed to include these could be in a children's picture book scenes in this novel. I also wondered if there was a regular ferry service, where all the other hikers were? And surely Doug being familiar with this area would have factored this into his decision on giving Bob a three hour start. The other detrimental factor of this book is that Bob occasionally tells the reader that he survives by saying things like looking back on that now I don't know where I got the strength from. But to be fair to Matheson most people would rate Deliverance by James Dickey as the benchmark of this genre and it should be pointed out that he did the exact same thing.

Hunted Past Reason is the terror of the ultimate hunt. A writer named Bob asks a friend who he only ever met up with as a part of a couple but who is now divorced, Doug to take him on a four or five day hike (Matheson calls this backpacking) through the wilderness to Doug's remote cabin where they will meet up with Bob's wife Marian. From the start the unfit and wilderness smart Bob begins to pick up the vibe that Doug is jealous of his family and career success, this opinion in Bob's mind turns into maybe it's resentment, then does he blame me for his failures, Bob is never quite sure, even when Doug's moves from just paying him out or being annoyed to verbal hostility. Even when Doug tells Bob that he brought him with him to kill him as they fall asleep one night Bob still naively thinks his friend will take him to the cabin. It is only after Bob is tied to a pole and brutally sodomised (and Matheson doesn't leave out any graphic rape scene details for squeamish readers) and the situation is explained slowly and clearly to Bob with the additional information that Doug will give him three hours head start, the fact that they aren't both going to be meeting up with Marian at the cabin sinks into Bob's mind.

Hunted Past Reason isn't the most realistic novel in the world and most people would handle the situation a lot different and smarter than Bob does but if Bob was a normal person, Doug would have never have had any chance of catching up with him and we wouldn't have the hard to put down enjoyable thriller that we have.

No real surprises here. The typical thriller plot, uninteresting characters, and a chase scene I have read/seen hundreds of times before. How can we be expected to believe that the villain, Doug, can go as psycho as he did without warning? I don't think even Jason had as many lives as Doug!

I also didn't care for the graphic violation of Bob. Didn't need that much detail. Also, Bob seemed to recover pretty darn quickly from such a horrific attack.

NOT recommended by me!

I must admit that I've always wondered why Matheson's books are considered classics in the horror genre. For the most part they're readable, some even stay with you for a while, but classics? No. So all I expected from this one was a moderately enjoyable read. I didn't get even that. While the writing was competent, it was extremely repetitive. Either Matheson was afraid the reader would forget what he'd said ten, or even five pages back, or he kept forgetting that he'd already told us something. There's enough half-baked philosophy in here to fill a dozen self- help books, the situations which arise are improbable, to say the least, and the ending is like something out of a B slasher movie. Just when you thought the villain was dead ... guess what?