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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Brilliant. Not horror, but brilliant.,
By
This review is from: Owl Light (Paperback)
Michael Paine, Owl Light (Charter, 1989)As the eighties wound down, so did America's fascination with horror novels not written by people who sell millions of books on the day of their release. Even the most promising eighties horror authors who weren't publishing hardback originals lost their big book deals and had to go to smaller presses, if they continued writing at all. Needless to say, a number who had been signed at the height of the fad deserved to fade into obscurity, but a smaller number did not; number in the "where are they now, and why aren't they at the top of the publishing heap?" file such luminaries as John R. Holt (When We Dead Awaken, one of the best horror novels of the late eighties), Joe Lansdale (who saw the shift in the tide and started writing straight mysteries), and Michael Paine, whose second novel, Owl Light, is a treat. Owl Light is not really a horror novel in the traditional sense, but Paine seems to have gotten lumped there along with other non-horror-writing folks like Geoffrey Household (The Sending) and Stephen Gregory (The Woodwitch) when no other genre seemed to fit their work. Actually, Owl Light has quite a bit in common with those two novels. All have a creepy air about them, a relatively slow pace, a readable tone, and the type of mismarketing that can hurt a career. There are overtones of the supernatural here, but more in the sense of a spiritual crisis than your run of the mill monsters, aliens, serial killers, or what have you. The setting is a small town north of Pittsburgh (at the northern top of Butler County, for those in the area), where new girl in town Sybil Antissa has managed to insinuate herself into the lives of three men-the town pastor, Paul Eiden; the university's biology professor, Grant Stewart; and one of the few people who straddles both camps, high school student Peter Newell. Eiden and Stewart are about to embark on an historic creation-evolution debate that's been picked up by the media and polarized the town; Peter is one of the few people who hasn't picked a side yet. Added to this confusion is Sybil, a mysterious older woman whom he is attracted to upon their first meeting. Most of the story takes us through the interactions of these characters and those around them, and how Sybil emotionally manipulates them. Like Ender's Game, remove the supernatural elements from this novel and you've still got a cracking good story. And despite an ending that leaves the reader with far more questions than it answers, there is still a feeling of completeness at the end of it; Paine knew what he was doing in ending the book like that. (One wonders if it was a setup for a sequel, or whether Paine was really willing to take that much of a risk.) Either way, this reader sees a successful book. *** ½
5.0 out of 5 stars
"There were streams of blood all over her. . .Finally she screamed, just as a huge mourning cloak thrust its pin into her eye.",
By Mark Louis Baumgart (Michigan, USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Owl Light (Paperback)
Peter Newton is your typical all-American kid. He's an athletic sixteen-years-old dedicated Christian. He's also saddled with an alcoholic mother and tunnel-visioned fundamentalist pastor. One of the ways that he keeps it together is to hike up the nearby mountainside to the local town of Mill Creek and sitting under his favorite tree, enjoying the countryside, and reading and meditating in solitude. On this day he will meet newcomer to Mill Creek Sybil Antissa and will fall instantly in love with her. During their first meeting Peter also stumbles upon a dead screech owl, and in her compassion, Sybil picks it up and coos to it causing it to suddenly awake. She remarks to Peter that it wasn't really dead although he is not so sure. She also seems to have some philosophically unorthodox views on life, views which Peter instantly brand as pagan and heretical. Still, she manages to seduce the boy.
Paine, who is really John Michael Curlovich, goes really overboard in his description of Peter's pastor, describing him as a handsome, athletic, and blond-haired hunk. He's also fanatical in his beliefs, and he will soon be taking part in town debate as to whether or not evolution should be taught in the town's schools. Coming back from a hard jog he discovers Sybil in his church, and misjudging him, she tries to seduce him. It doesn't work, so she changes her tactics and manages to get him to agree to see her again later. That she almost blew her first meeting with Eiden is something that she reports to Peter's professor and her lover, Dr. Grant C. Stewart. Stewart is self-superior, and equally fanatic about his beliefs in science or "reason", and the other half of the upcoming debate. Stewart had sent Sybil to Eiden in the hope that she would seduce him and report back to Stewart on Eiden's debating strategies. And here is the set-up as Sybil will divide her time between the three men, seducing all three, and seeming to play all three against the others. As the date to upcoming debate starts to creep up, Peter sees that Stewert is corrupt, arrogant, and intolerant, and that the fame that is coming to Eiden because of the upcoming debate is also corrupting him. Disillusioned, he decides to start following the teachings of Sybil. And we're still only halfway through the novel. Paine/Curlovich has always been a satirist, and there are plenty of moments of droll sarcasm sprinkled throughout the book as he skewers the unthinking fanaticism of both the unthinking rationalists and the fanatical Creationalists; pointing out that the inability to see outside the box makes fools of both camps, as science without spirituality and spirituality without regard to the facts are both foolish viewpoints. And you just know that to do a proper job of reviewing a Paine/Curlovich novel you're just gonna hafta blow an hour or two on the ol' Internet checking up on things that he has buried in his novels. Paine/Curlovich evidently has done some reading into Greek mythology as the name Sybil is derived from Sibyl and THAT is derived from the ancient Greek Sybylla, or prophetess, who is given a thousand year life span by Apollo. And it is made very clear in this novel that Sybil's lifespan can be measured in centuries, and that there are a few others like her out there. He also mixes in the Greek legends of the sirens, one of whom was named Ligeia, who were half-human and half bird creatures whose feathers were plucked and who fell into the sea to become marine animals. Winged creatures become very dominant in this story, Orpheus was a famous Greek poet and musician who fought off the siren's songs with his own, and so, Orpheus is the name that she gives to the owl that she revives. Also, the half-human and half-bird thing, be prepared for what turns up. Apollo also figures strongly in the creation of the sirens according to legend. As to where the idea of raising the dead comes from, well, Sybil did have something to do with Pluto's underworld, where the original Orpheus was killed. It's all very confusing. But, REGARDLESS, Sybil is one helluva character as she weaves a very Machiavellian web around herself that will end up destroying the dreams, and lives of those she gets involved with. If you know Paine/Curlovich then you know that he often peppers his novels with gay references, the main one here is Sybil's surname. Antissa is a Greek city of the island of Lesbos, the same island that legend says Orpheus' head and lyre washed up on the shore of. Another thing many might like about Paine/Curlovich is that his fiction is never indebted to Stephen King. He's more literary, less nostalgic, a better writer, a tighter plotter, and he's more clever in his subtext, and he never, ever writes those big fat doorstoppers that King and his imitators do. He tells his stories, keeps on point, doesn't stoop to pointless sensationalism, and when he's done, he doesn't waste our time. He just packs his bag and leaves. And unlike his other novels, this novel has a more subdued ending leaving us with the feeling that there might be more to the story and someday there might be a sequel. It's time for these quiet, subdued, and clever horror stories (imagine a coherent, less obtuse Robert Aickman) to come back into print. This is an easy five star book. For this site I have also reviewed the following Paine/Curlovich novels and books: Cities of the Dead The Colors of Hell The Mummy: Dark Resurrection The Night School Stage Fright Steel Ghosts Triptych of Terror: Three Chilling Tales by the Masters of Gay Horror
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