House of Bones [Paperback]

Dale Bailey (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 2, 2003

Five strangers brave the unknown when they investigate an abandoned housing project said to be haunted. Now they'll discover where evil dwells in this bone-chilling return to a classic tradition in horror novels.

Product Details

• Paperback: 384 pages
• Publisher: Signet; PF edition (December 2, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0451210794
• ISBN-13: 978-0451210791
• Product Dimensions: 6.7 x 4.2 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (20 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,070,552 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

21 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Surprisingly well written, June 23, 2004

By 

Beamer (Duke University) - See all my reviews

This review is from: House of Bones (Paperback)

This book was frightening. There are very, very few books I'd give that adjective to, and many belong to Mr. King himself.

The plot is essentially the same as The House on Haunted Hill. A group of strangers are asked to spend a specific amount of time within a supposedly haunted building, only to learn that they have some connection webbing between them all.

It's not the most original plot in the world, but even Shakespeare was known to recycle from those before him.

Ok, I've already referenced King and Shakespeare here. This book is not in a league with them (nor are they in a league with each other). It's a solid effort, though. There are some groaning points, and moments when you just keep asking why the character is being so stupid, but it's made clear that many of these characters are not of sound mind and not of the best judgment.

What really makes this book, though, are the following:
Setting. Run-down projects with a long history of violence.

Characters. They're diverse with clearly different personalities.
Writing. This book is dense. The paragraphs are long and thick but not cluttered. You're getting a great deal of words for your dollar, as no page is wasted. The result is a clear understanding of the characters and some great, flowing narrative and descriptions.

I suppose the last point could be a sore one for many. My girlfriend started this novel and found it bulky, never finishing it. To me, though, it just made the book richer and livelier. Horror books tend to vary between pages of redundant, gory action narrative and pages of simple, one-sentence dialogue. This book tries to read more like a novel and less like a movie script, and it pays off.

Be aware of some flaws in this book, but it will still shine as you read it. Give it a chance if you want a horror book with moderately more meat than the rest of the market.

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Bailey Strikes Again!, December 18, 2003

By 

Jack Slay (LaGrange, GA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: House of Bones (Paperback)

About this time last year I called Dale Bailey's The Fallen one of the best contemporary fantasies I'd read in some time. Hardly a year later, Bailey comes round with a second novel, this one contemporary horror -- and how pleasing it is to say that this one's even better.

House of Bones is a haunted house novel for the twenty-first century. Though Bailey fills his story with familiar trappings--a small band of disparate characters, each of whom harbors a secret, tossed into a building haunted, an inner-city highrise that harbors an unknowable and unspeakable evil (a pinch of The Shining, a dash of The Haunting of Hill House) -- he spins these archetypes in wholly new directions. As this crew settles into the haunted Dreamland, reality unspirals around them: disembodied voices, automatic writing, the blood-chilling laughter of a faraway child. Bailey takes writerly care with each of his characters: by novel's end we know their secrets, their fears, their haunted dreams. In the end, they are like family.

I defy anyone to read the last 75 pages in anything but a single sitting: it comes with a roaring, shattering violence that, though horrifying, rings true. Dale Bailey's House of Bones is a novel that will remain with you long after the doors of Dreamland have closed.

20 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars House of Horrors, December 23, 2003

By 

Sebastien Pharand (Orléans, Ontario, Canada) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: House of Bones (Paperback)

Dale Bailey is THE author to watch in today's genre fiction. Not only is his prose beautiful and very imaginative, his plotting is also tight and intricate. His books are usually about characters placed in dawry situations, and not about situations affecting characters. This is psychological horror at its very best.

Bailey is no stranger to the ghost story. He began his career with a non-fiction examination of the haunted house in literature, so it is only fitting that his latest effort touches the very same thing he's been examining for so long. In House of Bones, Bailey throws five strangers into an eery setting that might or might not be haunted. Dreamland was once part of an apartment complex. It is now the only remaining tower, standing alone, forgotten and decrepit. Dreamland has a very strange and violent history, one that was never fully put to rest, one that should never be brought to the surface.

When our five strangers enter the building to try and investigate the strange happenings, they will soon realize that the house itself seems to be very much alive. Paranoia, claustrophobia and fear will start coursing in their veins as the house will slowly close up on them. Their arrival awakens the house and brings back its thirst.

Nothing is as it seems to be. One by one, the five of them will be faced with the horrors and monsters of their past. They will soon discover that the past is always waiting to come back to them. All of them have horrible secrets to hide, and all of them have horrible dreams about the things they've done wrong. When the house awakens, so will their past, and their fear will become a very, very real thing. Everything spirals, leading us to the great climax that will make you keep on turning the pages until the early hours of the morning.

In House of Bones, Bailey fully displays his talents. With only two books and one collection under his belt, he has already become one of the brightest voices in genre fiction. The fact that he never sacrifices character development for plot is a thing most new authors take years to learn. The fact that he carefully construct his stories, where each word has a purpose, only makes this book greater. This is quiet horror at its very best.