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49 of 50 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Down the tunnel of my soul..., October 25, 2004
This review is from: The Manor (Paperback)
There are two things I really love about Nicholson's books, his characters and his Appalachian settings. I found The Manor to be as fast a read as both The Harvest and The Red Church were, well paced and suspenseful using fully fleshed out characters and lush settings.
I felt like I knew Anna and Mason and the artiste-de-general of the Manor's guests, I felt dizzy at the crossing of the bridge and I could smell the loamy woods surrounding the manor. So now gather round this setting with these people, and get ready for a frightening ride.
A group of artists are invited to the mountain retreat of Korban Manor, an isolated and rustic place with no electricity, to practice their crafts and attend a party the night of the October blue moon.
Among the painters and sculptors and photographers and writers, Anna seems a bit out of place, being a paranormal researcher, invited to Korban Manor to hunt ghosts. Or was she summoned? Anna has the gift of second sight, and an unusual attachment to the strange house.
Mason is a sculptor, trying to make his break, and when he gets to Korban Manor his talent seems to explode, his hands flying over the wood as he carves out an image of Ephram Korban.
Everybody's talent has taken off, underneath the watchful stare of the portraits that hang in every room of the house and under the withering heat of the constantly lit furnace. Something isn't right here, and the line between the living and the dead is growing thinner and thinner as the blue moon approaches. The guests grow uneasy and suffer from horrid nightmares, and the staff just keeps getting odder and odder. The dead are awake.
I don't want to give too much away because Nicholson has a few lovely surprises in store for his readers, having created an old fashioned ghost story with some eerie new twists that sent shivers of delight running down my spine. Using just the right mix of creeping fear and bloody splatters, The Manor is a fast-paced, delightful read that is best savored in the lonesome hours under dim lighting.
Enjoy!!
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21 of 23 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The author's best novel yet!, October 5, 2004
This review is from: The Manor (Paperback)
Ephram Korban had been an admirer of art in all forms - literature, painting, photography, music, sculpture, and more. He died in an October on the night of a rare blue moon. Miss Mamie, his last living relative, still abides by Ephram's last wish. The deluxe manor is tucked away in the Blue Ridge mountains and serves as an artists' retreat. The manor is isolated from the rest of the world. It has no electricity and is totally self sufficient. Miss Mamie often chooses an elite group of people to stay in the manor for six weeks. During this time, artists will concentrate on their form of art uninterrupted.
Yet even though it all looks serene at first glance, it is anything but. Within the halls of the manor something is feeding off the energies of those in the manor. Something determined to reclaim life at any cost. And the next October blue moon is due.
***** Author Scott Nicholson sends cold chills down the spines of his readers. The dead actually seem to come back to life due to his dark writing talent. This time Nicholson has managed not only to keep me awake reading long into the night, but also to invade my dreams with dark visions. "THE MANOR", in my opinion, is his best novel yet! *****
Reviewed by Detra Fitch of Huntress Reviews.
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11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Promises Unfulfilled, September 13, 2005
This review is from: The Manor (Paperback)
This was my first Scott Nicholson novel. I was looking for a good read in the horror genre, and I came upon The Manor. After reading many glowing reviews, I figured it was worth a look-see.
I must say that I was drawn in to the story immediately, by both the character introductions and the fascinating setting. Nicholson has a gift for penning description, but while this is his strength, it also turns out to be his weakness. There is a time for an author to step back -- after giving ample preliminary description -- and allow the reader to internally visualize the settings...to come to "own" the story by this bit of inner personalization. Nicholson denies his readers that chance, often getting so caught up in his rich descriptive passages, I quickly got to the point where I hoped he would run out of similes (an actual metaphor now and then would have been a welcome change)!
But, alas, this was not the case, and, in some parts of this novel, it seems almost as if the same flowery, unctuous "muse" that took hold of the character of Nicholson's corpulent author, had also taken hold of Nicholson himself.
That having been said, the book did hold my interest, and held a few unexpected surprises...always a plus in this genre. The characters were well-developed and the use of backwoods superstitions, spells, cures and the like was very effective. It's worth looking into on ink-black nights so cold they hold your soul in a death grip... ;)
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