Toy Cemetery [Paperback]

William W. Johnstone (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback: 412 pages
• Publisher: Zebra (December 1, 1987)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 082172228X
• ISBN-13: 978-0821722282
• Product Dimensions: 6.9 x 4.2 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #367,737 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Toy Land....Toy Hell!, March 19, 2003

By 

David Seguin "djzilla" (San Diego, CA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Toy Cemetery (Paperback)

William W Johnstone's novel "Toy Cemetery" starts out fast and furious like a lot of his novels. It's got a decent storyline about a town taken over by an ancient evil. In fact parts of the storyline are quite similar to his previous trilogy Devil's Kiss, Heart and Touch. As with most Zebra books the summary on the back is quite deceptive. The toys in the story really are a minor character. In fact, Johnstone's novel is full of characters, some of them are throw away some of them are keepers. It's a shame because it's the sheer amount of characters in his novel that prevents me from giving it 5 stars. Written mostly like a classic pulp horror novel, it is quite graphic in it's violence. Sometimes funny..sometimes chilling its a quick easy read for those looking to remember the days of pulp horror novels.

Authors like Johnstone often get burried under the works of King, Koontz, Saul and others and are often overlooked lost treasures. I recommend Johnstones writing for the most part because it's light refreshing entertainment that won't bog you down. Toy Cemetary while not his best horror novel is quite entertaining nonetheless.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars JUNK CEMETERY ?, August 5, 2003

By 

Martin Boucher (Montreal, Canada) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Toy Cemetery (Paperback)

Action wins over substance in this unoriginal tale of a town runned amok by evil. Returning to his Missouri hometown after inheriting his aunt's estate, Jay Clute and his young daughter soon realize that all is not what it appears to be. People are acting stranger by the minute, time inexplicably comes to a standstill, and to make matters worse, talkative toys have taken over Jay's properties. How will the Clutes deal with all of this ?

Survival is the theme, here, for this oh-so cheesy horror opus in which the plot, just like its thinly developed inhabitants, goes in all directions. Sometimes a horror story, sometimes a adventure yarn, TOYS CEMETERY can't seem to find its true voice, but one thing is for sure: the novel is never boring. Page-filled action and gore aplenty, plus a hero with a trick or two up his sleeve make CEMETERY enjoyable despite the author's repetitive storyline (check out any of his horror novels) and his obvious degradation of women characters (again, check out his novels). Every female is a victim of Johnstone's overripe sexual imagination. It's no wonder he ended up leaving the horror field to concentrate on adventures and westerns, where men rule. His children characters, however, do bear a certain credibility, especially in their interaction with one another. One can't help but ponder on how much more effective the book would have been with them as center stage.

As a grade-B novel, TOY CEMETERY delivers in spite of its headless-chicken-run plot and it's one-dimensional characters, but as a piece of horror literature, it completely fails to pass the test.-----Martin Boucher

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars One of Johnstone's Best, January 3, 2010

By 

D. Ciocca - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Toy Cemetery (Paperback)

Pretty much, if you've read one of William W. Johnstone's "Home Town Armageddon" novels, you've read them all. "Toy Cemetery" transcends the lot, though, and if Johnstone's horror appeals to you even a little, do not miss out on it. The Satanic kookiness of "Toy Cemetery" make it a work of Horror "with a capital H" and I think William W. Johnstone only achieves that with one other book, Jack-in-the-Box. These two books makes me wish Mr. Johnstone had devoted lots more of his effort toward Horror writing than he did.