The Homing [Hardcover]

John Saul (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 28, 1994

From the bestselling author of "Guardian," "Creature," and "Black Lightning," a spine-tingling tale of all-consuming evil as riveting and chilling as any he has ever produced.

It will be a sweet homecoming for Karen Spellman. After years of living in Los Angeles, the pretty, young widow and her two daughters are returning to the lush countryside of Pleasant Valley, where Karen grew up. In this verdant, fertile place, Karen hopes to find not only a refuge from urban chaos, but love, for she is going home to marry her high school sweetheart.

But something sinister awaits her. Something as primal as nature, as demonic as hell itself. For long ago, a shadowy menace stalked Pleasant Valley. A menace forgotten, thought dead. But only sleeping.

Now Karen's homecoming will become a confrontation with terror as she battles to protect her daughters from a malign, preternatural force that must satisfy its gruesome thirst for innocent prey . . .

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Though Saul ( Guardian ) has kept up with readers' tastes by depicting far more graphic violence than he did years back, he still offers the sort of old-fashioned terrors, told without a whisper of literary experimentation, that for 17 years have made him the most consistently bestselling horror writer next to King and Koontz. His 18th novel, no exception, is a snappily paced extravaganza of insect phobia, featuring a mad scientist who doubles as a serial killer, hordes of creepy-crawlies and some threatened kids--here, teens in the oven-hot flatlands of California's San Joaquin Valley. Julie Spellman, 15, thinks she has it bad being forced to move from L.A. to the farm where her mom's new husband lives. But her real trouble starts when Carl Henderson, a crazed entomologist with a lethal thing for girls with long dark hair, arranges for the brunette newcomer to get a shot of his latest concoction. Soon the girl is gestating a swarm of mutant insects that controls her mind, grants her dominion over other insects and forces her to implant the swarm into other teens. Meanwhile, Henderson chortles as he listens to the screams of his latest homicide victim, under attack from his pet ants: "Eaten alive! She was actually being eaten alive! " Onslaughts of bees, termites, spiders and scorpions round out the somewhat repetitive but always intense action, which, despite an unexpectedly dark ending, will no doubt send sales of this novel--and cans of Raid--soaring.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

This novel may be the ultimate stomach turner. Saul follows his standard theme: a group of dangerous young people must be destroyed for the world to be safe. The story begins with Julie falling victim to a strain of bees whose venom is unusually toxic. The man who developed the bees, and their antitoxin, is a serial killer. Not wanting Julie to survive, he switches the antitoxin for an untried substance that turns out to be a new species of insect that requires a mammalian host for survival. Julie survives, infested with internal insects, and spews them forth to infect her friends. The horror of her condition is thoroughly detailed. Saul also gives us a splendidly creepy bug-infested house of horrors and a fitting revenge for the villain. Not for the weak of stomach, but essential for any library that has Saul fans.
--Marylaine Block, St. Ambrose Univ. Lib., Davenport, Ia.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 389 pages
• Publisher: Fawcett; 1st edition (June 28, 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0449908631
• ISBN-13: 978-0449908631
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.1 x 1.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (42 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,190,761 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

House of Reckoning is John Saul's thirty-sixth novel. His first novel, Suffer the Children, published in 1977, was an immediate million-copy bestseller. His other bestselling suspense novels include Faces of Fear, In the Dark of the Night, Perfect Nightmare, Black Creek Crossing, Midnight Voices, The Manhattan Hunt Club, Nightshade, The Right Hand of Evil, The Presence, Black Lightning, The Homing, and Guardian. He is also the author of the New York Times bestselling serial thriller The Blackstone Chronicles, initially published in six installments but now available in one complete volume. Saul divides his time between Seattle, Washington, and Hawaii.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Freaky!, July 22, 2002

By 

"honeydick" (Toronto Canada) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Homing (Audio Cassette)

While a bit far fetched I enjoyed listening to this tale from John Saul. The story drew me in from the very beginning and I was anxious to see what happens twoards the end. I have to confess I did like the ending. Some parts of this book were really creepy and this kept me glued to my stereo. It was a tad disturbing to see that the majority of victims were teen agers but it gave the book that extyra thrill and horrific jolt. All the characters were engaging and played their parts nicely. I also liked all the underlining sexual themes in the book; anybody else catch those? The reader did a good job, though at times her mid western accents got a bit too much. She did portray the drama of the book well occasionally going over the top in some of the more vilent scenes. This version contains two audio cassettes and is narrated by a single reader.

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars The buzz you hear is the monotony of the narrative, November 8, 2002

By 

Daniel Jolley "darkgenius" (Shelby, North Carolina USA) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Homing (Mass Market Paperback)

I've read about ten of Saul's novels, and The Homing is definitely my least favorite. The story is indeed far-fetched, but what ruins this novel for me is the sheer monotony of its action. The same thing happens to one character after another. Here's the backdrop: Karen Spellman moves her two daughters from L.A. back to the farming community she grew up in when she marries an old flame; naturally, her teenaged daughter Julie does not want to leave the big city for life on a farm. Julie likes her new step-father well enough, though, and she and her step-brother get along very well (a little too well for step-siblings, if you know what I mean). Her step-grandfather basically hates these new women moving into his dead daughter-in-law's house, but that's not really important. What is important here are bees and all kinds of other insects. First young Mollie is stung by a bee at the wedding and almost dies; only a new, definitely non-FDA approved antivenom saves her. Then Julie is stung, and she has quite a unique reaction to the antivenom. She appears to be perfectly healthy, but she actually feels miserable; worst of all, she inexplicably cannot tell anyone how she really feels, parroting out "I'm fine" phrases against her will to everyone. She starts to wonder if she is going crazy, begins doing things against her will, etc. This mystery ailment strikes one teenager after another-every single time, we have to go through the whole routine once again-teen feels awful, appears normal, can't tell anyone the truth, fears he/she is going insane, begins acting weird. It's like reading the same chapter over and over again, the only difference being the name of the character each time. That monotony is what ruined the novel for me.

As for the larger story, it is pretty unrealistic. The death and suffering the reader witnesses is rather out of the ordinary, though. I have one word for you: insects. If you absolutely love insects-bees, ants, scorpions, spiders, mosquitoes, etc.-this is the book for you. If you have some kind of phobia about insects, you will probably want to steer clear of this one. Insects are everywhere in this book, doing all of the worst things you can think of them doing; it's intense enough to make you start itching and feeling things crawling all over you. The story gets slightly gory a time or two, but for the most part the horror just makes you uncomfortable. I think there is also too much of it; Saul goes into detail about the behavior of the insects time after time after time.

I am a John Saul fan, but I don't think the storyline here really succeeds. Even if you cut out a couple hundred pages of monotony, I don't think the premise behind everything would hold up very well. Characterization is another weakness here. Karen picks up and leaves L.A. to marry an old sweetheart, but we really don't see any romance between the two; their relationship clearly exists, but we don't get a real look at it. A lot of the dialogue seems forced at times, individuals keep doing the same dumb things over and over again and then going on and on about their bad decisions. I watched these characters move about and interact with one another, but I never really got to know (let alone care about) a single one of them. That is basically the third strike that makes this novel rather disappointing to me. If you buy into the insect foundation of the plot here, you may well enjoy the book. I did not buy into it, and nothing else about the book succeeded in rallying me to its cause. Saul never seemed to put his heart into The Homing, and it shows. I'm still a Saul fan, but this is definitely my least favorite of his novels.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Creepy Crawling Nightmare!, April 5, 2005

By 

Susie Morris "Book Junkie" (Southern California) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Homing (Mass Market Paperback)

When I started reading THE HOMING, I wasn't exactly sure what it would be about. I had previously read, and thoroughly enjoyed, THE GUARDIAN by John Saul and was anxious to start another by this author.

Although I didn't enjoy THE HOMING as much as THE GUARDIAN, it brought out many emotions even if it did go into extreme detail on a wide variety of insects. I'll never look at another bug in the same way again.

While reading, I learned that homing is an insect instinct that leads them home. You can't move a beehive within 5 miles from the previous location or the bees will return to the previous hive location hovering over the empty spot until they drop dead of exhaustion. I also learned more that I ever wanted to about larvae, pupae, etc.

Karen Spellman grew up in Pleasant Ville located outside of San Luis Obispo. After attending her high school reunion, she falls in love with a former classmate, Russell Owen, and they decide to get married. Karen with her two daughters, Julie and Molly, move from Los Angeles ready to live a happily ever after type of life. From the day of the wedding, marital bliss eludes them as one tragedy after another surrounds them.

On Karen's wedding day, Molly (her youngest daughter) is stung by a bee and has an allergic reaction. The local doctor's anti-venom doesn't work and they fly to San Luis Obispo in a friend's plane. New, experimental anti-venom is given to her and the symptoms instantly subside. Dr. Ellen Fillmore, Pleasant Ville's local doctor, asks for some of the anti-venom to have on hand for future needs, and so the evil begins...

The real anti-venom is substituted with a serum that harbors insects in the host's body until they multiply to the state that they are expelled into another host. Sounds pretty gruesome, huh? It is and it gets worse. Since Molly was given the real anti-venom she isn't affected, but when her older sister, Julie, is stung, she is given the substitute and many changes begin to take place. Julie in turn infects some of her teenage friends and the horror is multiplying faster than you can imagine.

Saul creates many believable support characters all eagerly trying to find answers to the many questions raised in this book. He even throws in an A & W owner who is the town gossip and flirt along with a small town cop who is a downright nice guy.

One of the things I didn't like about THE HOMING was that I found it depressing. It seemed as if it was disaster after disaster with few positive things happening to any of the characters throughout the entire book. After awhile it begins to wear on you, and I just wanted to finish the book and be done with it. Looking back, I'm not sure that was because of the goriness or the image of the millions of insects reeking havoc among the townspeople that my mind pictured. Whatever the reason, I read quickly so I could move on to something a little less intense. I think my next book might be that Calvin and Hobbes I have on the shelf!