Customer Reviews

The Parasite

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

 

 

This is my favourite Campbell novel without a doubt. The story revolves around Rose who begins to have weird out of body experiences years after using a oujiboard. This book like all Campbells work is unsettling, well written and has great characterisation with well drawn, realistic relationships between characters in contrast to Koontz et al cardboard cut out stereotypes. More than any of his other novels this has some deeply scary and memorable scenes that will stick in your memory for a long time.

I picked this up after reading an enjoying a few of Ramsey Campbell's short stories in various horror compilations. This is strange to think back on now, as my big problem with this book is that it feels like an underdeveloped short story that was needlessly padded to novel-length. It is a shame, because there are seeds for a good story buried in the mess, but they don't really appear until about 2/3 of the way through the book. By that time, they have been smothered by poorly executed and repetitious exposition. By the end of the novel (admittedly the strongest part), the payoff is too little, too late, and largely predictable. The potential for a good story was there, but bad execution seems to have squandered it. I cannot recommend this book. A good horror/supernatural suspense novel should never leave a reader bored and uninvested in it's protagonist, but that's just what this book did.

This is the slowest moving horror story I have ever read. It's not that slow to start- the odd things begin fairly early on. But the events drag horribly- much of the book is spent in denial of what is happening. Worse, none of the characters is very likeable. Not that they are dreadful people; they are just people I couldn't care about. Even the protagonist, who I feared for at first, is portrayed too flatly to seem real. One character, who it seems like will be important to the protagonist's development, just disappears halfway through the story and we never know what finally happened to her. The story is frustrating, more than anything. Even the end seems a cheat; a Deus ex machina appears to take care of the monster. Ultimately, it doesn't really, but we're still left to wonder what the Deus ex machina was and why it intervened. This is a poor novel that might have been a good short story or novella.

I read this book a couple of years ago...and yes it is confusioning @ times...I still liked it...But not as scary as I would of liked....More Occult and Astral Projection stuff...But a Mild thumbs up...