Customer Reviews

Possessions

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

 

 

This book hurt. I usually can tolerate some silliness in pulp horror, but this book was awful. Moore makes Bentley Little look like James Joyce. A series of drawn out fight scenes makes up the plot. The main character took so many beatings and stayed alive that I thought we were heading towards an Unbreakable finale where he ends up being a superhero. Oh, and they also hit the lottery. This is not early Stephen King, this is more like early Don King.
Skip this one.

Ever since his debut novel, Under The Overtree, the work of James A. Moore seems to be getting worse. He started off very promising, but fell a notch with Fireworks and now fell even further with Possessions. Like Fireworks, his books start off promising but two thirds of the way in take a nose dive. Almost the last hundred pages of Possessions is nothing but a continuous fight scene involving monster after monster, with excessive descriptions on the creepy creatures. Yes, Mr. Moore, I understand they are very yucky things. I don't need a hundred pages describing them! I get it. With that said, Moore is quite talented at character development, but unfortunately those characters are left in a world that I've seen many times before. This was too close to the Body Snatcher films for me. The pace and tone of this book changed drastically in the last hundred pages and really pulled me out of the story. I enjoyed Under The Overtree, so I'll give James A. Moore another chance. But three strikes and you're out.

First off, let me say I love horror and I'm always looking for new horror authors to read. This is my first James Moore book. It will be my last. And I'm sorry to say that. I wanted to like this book, I really, really did (in fact, I read over 200 pages before I gave up on it...something I rarely do). I give the book two stars because it starts off great...with well-developed characters, a tragic event juxtaposed with a joyous, surprising one. And then, it degenerates. The characters go from being well-developed, interesting teenagers to being stick figure punching bags (the fight scenes in this book are incredible: incredibly boring...going on for sometimes ten pages at a stretch, stretching into long-winded monotony). The story disappears: it's just man against monster over and over again, with no suspense and the character development so deft at the beginning withers away, so you can't care about what happens to them. Even Moore's writing, which starts out crisp, punchy, and clean lapses into cliche-ridden drivel by the end (something "takes the cake"; someone "gets his clock cleaned"). I wish I could recommend this book. I wish I could have enjoyed it enough to just get through it. If the horror genre is going to flourish, it needs better offerings than this.

I give Mr. Moore one star for creating something from nothing (I'm working on my first horror novel, so I know how hard it is) and another star for convincing Leisure Books to publish this bad idea of a horror novel...Where to begin? The 17 year old hero gets his ass kicked so many times in the course of three days that he should have been dead before the halfway point. And then he wins the lottery and that's never mentioned again - why? And those aliens/monsters that Mr. Moore seemed to have created from a bad Lovecraft story - the descriptions were horrible and I could never picture any of them. And where exactly did they come from? And why were they after the Western Key? And why did Chris's mom have the key in the first place? Nothing was explained. The entire book was a series of fist fights/brawls. That's all it was. Bad, just plain bad. Sorry.

I don't like to write bad reviews. But I have to say that this book just wasn't an enjoyable one for me....:( At times I found it was a bit cheesy. I finished reading it because it was part of a challenge that I am doing (and I was secretly hoping it would be get better). By about page 210 it started to look up because it starts the final fight scene, unfortunately the fight scene was 100+ pages and I lost interest in it rather quickly.

Chris has just lost his mother and won the lottery. Now all of a sudden he is thrust into a battle over the "western key." His little sister is is going through a tough time after losing her mother and now is running off constantly. His best friend Jerry tries to help out the best he can but ends up being caught by the demons and Katie (Jerry's girlfriend) is the mother hen to everyone. Chris also has several flashbacks that don't flow with the book and are very confusing at times. Personally, the characters did not feel very well developed.

Like I said, this book wasn't for me. I am still confused exactly what this book is about. It is called Possessions yet there is no possessing going on. Instead the humans they are imitating are kept in heart shaped pods in the basement of a house. When I finished the book I was just confused and disappointed.

James Moore's other books are a lot better. This one is OK, but not much character development--mostly details about fighting the bad guys.

I love horror. I love everything about it. But what I don't love is a protagonist who spends the entire book getting his butt kicked in the most graphic and amazing way and is still able to take on the bad guys in the end. It was endless and rambling and never tied into the intro in anyway. I am all for suspending reality for a good read but this was a a train wreck. I continued reading in the hopes that it would redeem itself somewhere. I was terribly wrong.

The last happy moment Chris Corin will experience in a long time is his eighteenth birthday celebration with his closest friends and family attending. When his mother leaves early to work she realizes the necklace she always wears is at home; moments later she dies in a traffic accident caused by a creature not of this world. Chris' best friend Jerry and his girlfriend Katie help him and his fourteen year old sister Brittany get through the days preceding the funeral. After the funeral, Chris sees that someone tore up his mother's room looking for something.

People that change into creatures seek the Golden Key, going so far as to dig up the grave of Chris's mother. They finally grab it off Brittany's neck but Chris is determined to get it back. He learns where the creatures are conducting a ceremony and accompanied by Katie and Brittany he goes there to stop them and rescue Jerry and Brittany's boyfriend who are encased in a gel like substance. Their doppelgangers are upstairs performing a ritual that if completed will let an untold evil into the world.

Add a pinch of Stephen King, a dash of Dean Koontz, a flowering of Peter Straub and one part Bentley Little and readers will have an idea what a horror novel by James A. Moore is like. He is a grand storyteller who can hold his own with these masters. The good guys are so well developed and realistic that readers will fear for their safety and hope that if they survive, more stories starring this fine young group will be forthcoming.

Harriet Klausner

After browsing the other reviews, I see some gripes about not having everything spelled out. Sure, I wondered what Chris' moms role was with the key, and sure, I would have liked it explained, but you know what? This is a good book, and not everything has to be handed to me on a silver platter, explaining the whos, whys, and whats of the world. Yeah, not everything was explained in detail, but nothing major - this does not ruin a good book.

Minor plot holes aside, I found the plot to be original enough, well executed, some nice twist and turns in there, with no cheap plot ploys tossed into the batch. It was unpredictable - I NEVER saw the end result coming.

The characters were strong and smart, being a pleasure to read about. They complimented the story and took it in all directions full force. The pace is quick, starts off almost immediately, never letting up.

The atmosphere is rich with suspense, plenty of creepiness in there. Tension was thick, lots of action, drama, even minor budding romance cues.

With gripping suspense, enthralling events, sympathetic characters, an
admirable writing style and almost endless flow of sheer horror (while being fun) - "Possessions"
is not a snack for a starving horror fan to miss!

Here is an author with a fresh perspective, a little individuality and a lot more personality with a psychotic neurosis that would make Carl Panzram blush.

The plot, although not original, is pure unadulterated gluttony. Moore takes a little bit of such classics as: Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Alien, and The Thing and adds his own twist of terror to the mix with skill. The only problem with the story is it never truly explains the reasoning behind most of what occurs. For example, why did the mom have the necklace, who is their father and what's the deal with the lottery ticket? With so many holes abound, it can make a reader feel drafty and miss that old blanket.

The pace in the story is a thrilling roller coaster ride. Starting out with what seems like a perfectly normal afternoon, the suspense begins to build and maneuvers throughout with subtlety and finesse. You actually never notice the tension building until you suddenly realize you've had your hand clenched the entire time and you now have half-moons on your palm. Moore's style of writing is receptive, sardonic and laced with a lurking compassion. Right from the first page you realize that he isn't writing for you and he's not writing for the critics, he's writing for himself and to see just how much he can get away with. Perfect!

The atmosphere in the book is filled with a sense of traumatic instability. The air becomes palpable and you can almost visualize the thin ice these characters tread on mentally and physically. The characters in the book are inviting, credible and at times, completely moronic. Reminding me of my own brother, Moore pulled off what so few have - sincerity. Capturing a photo-shot of adolescence, the author ingrains each mood, emotion and insane significance of what it's like to be a teenager.