Customer Reviews

Haunter

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
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1 star:		(1)

 

 

Charlee Jacob, Haunter (Leisure, 2003)

For years I have been searching for the book that would compete with Robert Devereaux's debut novel, Deadweight, out on the bleeding edge of Most Extreme Horror Novel. No one has been willing to tread the same path of degradation, misery, and despair. What anguish must it cause a writer (because, as we all know, to convey emotions effectively the writer must feel them twice as strongly) to write a novel of such unremitting, relentless brutality?

Well, I finally found it. Charlee Jacob has written such a viscerally disturbing book in Haunter that even I had to put it down a few times simply because what was going on was so disgusting. And that, folks, takes some nasty material to achieve.

Haunter is a sequel of sorts to Jacob's first novel, This Symbiotic Fascination. Where that novel dealt with the depredations of baby brother Arcan Tyler, in Haunter Jacob focuses on the two big brothers, Vietnam vets Harry and Elliot Tyler. Elliot, after the war, joined a ragtag band of mercenaries led by the brutally perverse Saab Gestetner; Harry, after a quick trip home (related in This Symbiotic Fascination), simply vanished into the jungle, never to be seen again. Or so everyone thinks.

There's a new drug on the Cambodian streets called Soma. One dose will do you. After you take it, you spend a while in screaming hysterics, seeing the very bowels of hell. But after that, you become a being of radiant happiness, one whose contentment literally shines. And you stay that way for the rest of your natural life. The only problem is, it's really annoying the rest of Cambodia's drug lords. So, armed with only a supplier's name, the biggest of them hires Gestetner and his mercs to find the source of the Soma and either appropriate it or stamp it out. They find, however, a lot more than just a drug operation...

A plot (however thin) and really nasty-sounding events are not, however, enough to make a book a good novel. What really causes Haunter to rise above the masses is Jacob's use of the Cambodian landscape and the Hindu mythology in which it is steeped to address (and inventively answer) all those existential questions literature is "supposed" to address. You know, why are we here, what are we doing, etc. Between that and Jacob's willingness to spend time building her characters (in order, mostly, just to make you feel that little bit worse when the inevitable other shoe drops), this book comes out a winner. Better than This Symbiotic Fascination, but if you want to get more of a grip on Harry Tyler, you'll want to read that one first anyway. ****

This is deep, dense, poetic, surreal, mystical and sometimes disgusting stuff. I didn't give it 5 stars because I felt like it could of been trimmed.. I think the author lost her way in a few parts. Anyway, I am dying to read more by her. This book is original and beats the heck out of most of the horror out there.

...just when I think I've written something really transgressive,
something new by Charlee Jacob appears and takes me to school.
However,a lesson from this particular teacher is always welcome.
HAUNTER is brilliant,period. It contains passages that made me utter "Oh my GOD..." out loud. HAUNTER is wondrous,but
don't assume you're ever going to want to eat again after you
read it.

Charlee Jacob scares me to death and I love it! Horror fans everywhere, rejoice, because horror fiction was jolted out of the doldrums when Ms. Jacob roared onto the scene with THIS SYMBIOTIC FASCINATION. She returns with the horrific, nightmarish, brutal and beautifully written HAUNTER, which grabs the reader by the subconscious and does not relent until the final page. A Cambodian god returns in the body of a former American GI to crush demons that have invaded a small Cambodian village, and a nightmare ensues before peace can be realized. Mind-blowing hardcore horror from the hottest new writer in the field, you MUST READ CHARLEE JACOB!

"Haunter" is Charlee Jacob's second novel, following the her gruesome freshman effort "This Symbiotic Fascination." I do not think there is anyone in the horror genre today who writes like Charlee Jacob; she elevates gore and grue to an entirely undreamt of level. Just when you think the pages and pages of sickening descriptions cannot get any worse, the author drags you kicking and screaming into even deeper levels of carnage and mayhem. "Haunter" continues this tradition, delving into every type of horrible perversion imaginable (and some unimaginable).

After reading "This Symbiotic Fascination," I wondered aloud about Arcan Tyler's brother Harry. He appeared only briefly in that book, leaving behind him more questions than answers. Fortunately, "Haunter" fills in many of the gaps concerning the weird relationships in the Tyler family. You see, the Tylers are not like most typical American families: Deborah Tyler, the matriarch of the clan, is a shape-shifting beast. Her offspring, Arcan, Harry, and Elliot all have serious physical and psychological problems. Arcan's story is at the center of "This Symbiotic Fascination." Harry and Elliot are the main characters in "Haunter."

Something strange is going on in Asia. Street urchins in Bangkok suddenly turn into glowing zombies, sitting in stupors with beatific grins and colorful halos around their heads. A local drug dealer, Mr. Tak, wishes to discover the amazing chemical that has wrought such a startling transformation in these castaway kids. After interrogating the man responsible for giving the kids this drug (called Soma, of all things), Tak discovers that the village of Phnom Yhop in Cambodia is the source of not only the drug, but also a town full of war cripples purporting to worship an incarnation of the god Shiva. Tak hires a mercenary army led by Saab Gestetner, a degenerate who likes to make sculptures out of human flesh. One of Gestetner's soldiers is none other than Elliot Tyler, hiding out as a soldier for hire because of his discovery of his horrible ability to reflect the misery of others in his face (literally). All of the other mercenaries in Gestetner's employ have horrible secrets to share, appearing to the reader in one grindingly grotesque chapter after another.

Brother Harry gets a significant amount of face time here too. The bizarre transformation of Harry first described in "This Symbiotic Fascination" finds elaboration here. Harry suffers from many afflictions, but the one that gets him in the most trouble is a raging case of priapism. Harry's efforts to relieve this "pressure" backfires on him one day when his squad of soldiers is wandering around the countryside during the war. They encounter a strange creature; a hermaphrodite that passes something on to Harry that changes him permanently.

Along the way, Jacob exposes the reader to endless descriptive passages outlining the sickening effects of Soma, a drug that drags the user through an ungodly vision of hell before they achieve nirvana, and graphic descriptions of painful and gory deaths by gun, saw blade, and other equally unpleasant ways of slipping out of this life. It is easy to find other books that go into great depth with the gore, but Jacob does it in a style that is difficult to replicate. The scenes in this book are often intensely upsetting, yet at the same time they are beautiful to read. That is what makes Jacob such an effective writer. One gets the feeling she could write romance novels or travelogues and be just as successful as she is here.

"Haunter" shares some faults with Jacob's first book, namely a plot that does not always gel and a few subplots that do not go much beyond the embryonic stage. For example, the sudden locale switch from Southeast Asia to Texas is jarring and forced. Moreover, the book at times seems episodic, more a series of grue filled vignettes than a novel. There are also parts of the book that mystifies the reader, something that happens often in a Jacob story.

This is an excellent read for horror fans and people who enjoy beautiful prose. I found the style kept drawing me back to the book when the plot line started to drag a bit. I admire the dynamic tension of Jacob's writing ability, the opposition created between soul shattering content and literary prowess. I am not sure if Jacob is planning to write more books based on the Tyler family and their unfortunate circumstances, but if she does I await another book with baited breath.

Holy Hindus on a hot plate, the lady done did it again!!! Charlee's back at it with Haunter, a tale of redemption and salvation in the jungles of Cambodia and deserts of Texas that not only lives up to her debut but surpasses it in every way. Plot crunch: A new living incarnation of Shiva has arisen to protect a small Cambodian village but a small group of mercenaries led by a righteous buttwad is after the village to obtain the soma, a narcotic that is integral to their religious ceremonies. You are pulled into the past transgressions of the heroes as well as those of the mercs and you are never allowed for a second to take the easy way out. What keeps drawing me to Charlee's work is to stare unflinchingly at the worst aspects and actions of humanity with a sense of reverence for the horror of it instead of resorting to cheap shock tactics. Her prose is gorgeous, her words searing even amidst the worst moments (bad just isn't a strong enough word for the torture and mutilation that occurs here). As much as I loved This Symbiotic Fascination, its narrative was hampered by myriad plot lines that seemed to have little to no relation to the core story; thankfully Haunter bears no such issues. Sure, you have many tales being thrown at you simultaneously but by the end they are woven together seamlessly. Not for weak stomachs or hearts but a damn good read from one of the most original and powerful authors in horror.

The author of this . . . "novel", is obviously deeply disturbed. Reading it gave me a bad feeling inside, and after taking a long shower I still felt unclean. This book is foul.

Mind you, I am not unaccustomed to "extreme horror" or "splatterpunk" -- I have read over a dozen books from that genre. I also am not unfamiliar with the actual reality of violent death. Violence does not shock me. Death does not shock me. Perversion disgusts me, but holds little shock value. Hence, I was not "shocked" by what I read in Haunter . . . any more than I'd be "shocked" by walking into a public restroom to find that a former occupant had been fingerpainting on the walls with their own waste. I felt saddened and ill.

The violence goes way beyond "gratuitous" and becomes cartoonishly depraved. It is not realistic in the least . . . in fact, it is rather ridiculous. Charlee Jacobs attempts to "shock" the reader by including every taboo perversion she could think of . . . and then she added a few of her own toxic fantasy sequences. If we actually cared about any of the characters, and the violence was unexpected, yeah, that'd be shocking; but that is not the case here. The characters are too shallow to be called "2-dimensional," the plot is meandering and confusing, and there's SO MUCH violence and perversion that it soon became so tedious I began flipping ahead. Furthermore, she clearly neglected to do any significant research, as I found a number of glaring technical errors (i.e., her profound ignorance of: priapism, fly larvae, and mini-grenades).

I'd normally abstain from giving a 1-star review to a creative work, but seeing that this book has received nothing but glowing recommendations (2 being from "top reviewers"), I felt it was necessary that there be some balance -- so others won't be as easily deceived into purchasing this vile garbage like I was.