Customer Reviews

To Wake the Dead

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(10)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(8)

 

 

An undead mummy is stalking the halls of a natural history museum. Several captives are imprisoned in an underground vault and sexually tortured in bizarre ways. These are the two main plotlines in a twist and turn filled pulp horror novel from the late Richard Laymon. There are suprises around every corner, laughs and plenty of extreme gross-outs. If you have never read Richard Laymon before this is a fine place to start, but beware: this is undiluted horror-black, no sugar, no cream, but plenty of blood, sex and torture.

Also recommended: BLOOD ROAD by Edo Van Belkom, THE CHURCH OF DEAD GIRLS by Stephen Dobyns, and RISEN by J. Knight.

I am a HUGE Laymon fan and it pains me to give anything bearing his name one star. But in the midst of all the gaudy sex (which comprises the bulk of the novel), and the tiresome use of "Christ" as a swear on every page, I found I kept asking myself if Laymon had even written this book. This is not one of his better novels in my opinion. It's not scary, it's not creepy, it's just vulgar. The mummy plot was a good one, but there were too many other plots mixed in which watered it down, and by the end of the novel I didn't care anymore. There were new characters being introduced and killed off too far into the book (like chapter 45). All of the sub-plots (if we may call them that) tied together in the end rather messily and, for me, didn't make much sense. I had no idea what any of those people really had to do with the mummy at all. Those extra plots could've been taken out of To Wake the Dead and made into separate novels - that would've been better. I love Richard Laymon's writing, but I had to force myself to finish this book, I hate to say. If you want prime Laymon check out Madman Stan from Cemetery Dance Publications (cemeterydance.com), or, for prime Laymon at a cheaper price check out In the Dark or Blood Games. Anything before this book will do.

I picked this up for a bit of gratuitous escapism and it turned out to be a really enjoyable book. OK, so it isn't in the same class as a good Stephen King novel, but Laymon wastes no time in dropping you into the deep end and doesn't get lost along the way. This story is less of a supernatural chiller and more of a splattering gore-fest. The book is actually a very good analogue to the classic B horror movies that were spawned in the 70s - Bravo! It is intentionally confronting as Laymon seemingly tries to squeeze strong scenes into every chapter and this might disturb some people or indeed many. But, if you are looking for a somewhat tongue-in-cheek, page-turning book, that makes no apologies, then this is worth a read.

In 1926 Robert Callahan accompanied his father to Egypt and through an unusual set of circumstances found the tomb of Amara, the favorite wife of Mentuhotep I. He unknowing opened the magic seal that prevented her from walking the night and actually saw the body of the man she had killed. He finds an Egyptian mystic to fashion two seals that will keep her in her coffin and when that is done he smuggles her home to add the sarcophagus to the family's Egyptian antiquities collection.

In the present thieves enter Robert's home and break the seal that binds Amara. Freed, she kills Robert before returning to her resting-place. The collection is willed to the Charles Ward Museum but at night Amara walks, killing anyone whom gets in her way. She looks for her infant son once buried with her and will not rest until she finds him. The police refuse to believe there is a killer mummy stomping around, but one man knows the truth and is bound by his promise to Robert to find a way to stop the mummy's reign of terror.

Richard Laymon is an award-winning author and after reading this book it is easy to see why. Unlike the recent Mummy tongue in cheek (wrap?) movies, TO WAKE THE DEAD is a very scary novel, so frightening that readers will go to bed with the lights on. The author has given the mummy quite a personality without her ever saying one word and somehow he makes her believable to the audience and that is what makes Mr. Laymon so good because few horror novelists ever achieve the stark realism he attains.

Harriet Klausner

I have now read quite a few of Laymon's books and have learned that you can generally expect quite a few deaths at least half of them being fairly gruesome, women who are unnaturally horny and at least one attempted rape per book. I am generally quite happy with the violence level in the books, but am not a fan of needless sex or specifically meaningless rapes in a book.

This book had very little in the way of original plot. It's about a mummy who we really learn almost nothing about as far as her history or background. There are a plethora of characters who are unfortunately very undefined and not all that interesting. Many characters are included simply to be killed however they get almost a full chapter prior to their demise. There are many deaths, though they are not as nasty as most of his other books. This book seems to be far more about sex and rape than violence and mummies. Just about every character here is either sexually assaulted or sexually assaulting someone. The only character I can think of off hand who is sexually ambivalent is the mummy.

Short Synopsis: Some thieves try to steal a mummy from a private collection; unfortunately they manage to break the seals on the sarcophagus which kept the evil mummy Amara contained. She is then moved to the local museum where she begins wreaking havoc in the evenings. In addition to the mummy we have random people who are being snatched up by an unknown assailant and kept in cages where they are forced to do unspeakable things to keep themselves alive.

I must say that my favorite part of the book is the tale in the diary explaining how Amara the Mummy was found. I had a hard time with this book because most of it was not about the Mummy, or even the characters... every couple of pages someone was having sex, getting raped, fantasizing about sex, etc. I had been hoping for a scary book about mummies and instead this turned out to be "Debbie does LA." The characters are weak, their motivations are strange and un-comprehendible, and sadly the mummy was so underplayed that even the final battle with her was a let down. As if no one in all the thousands of years of her existence thought to try that method? I don't know... I was sadly disappointed with this book.

If you are looking for a good scary read, look elsewhere. If you are a 14 year old boy this will probably be right up your alley.

Robert Callahan interrupts a burglary at his house, kills the burglars and saves his stuff, but in the process breaks the seal on Amara's sarcophagus letting her loose, to murder and destroy, but only at night (?). Callahan dies, badly, and his stuff, including Amara's sarcophagus gets donated to the Charles Ward Museum (!) where the killing continues.

The killings are "investigated" by assistant curator Susan Connors, who is carrying on with fellow staffer Taggart Parker, who is himself being stalked by the grotty, fat, mentally-retarded Mabel, who, more pathetic than menacing, is dumber than your pet rock.

All of this could have been a fairly entertaining mummy-on-a-rampage story that could have been a good pulp page-turner if Laymon hadn't left it, and his characters, so underdeveloped. The story also suffers from the fact that Laymon just didn't seem to have any idea as where to go with this idea, as Amara wakes, kills, falls asleep, wash, rinse, repeat. And that's it, with the story crawling on for fifty pages too long, and ending with a clichéd direct-to-DVD explosion.

Unfortunately this novella didn't come alone. "To Wake The Dead" is also printed with a concurrent novella that is braided into the mummy-on-a-rampage storyline. This is essentially a poor, pointless, plotless, pornographic grindhouse bit of torture porn roughie involving two people that have been kidnapped and are relentlessly raped and mutilated. This storyline goes nowhere, slowly, as more captives come and go, while the tedium never ends. This tenaciously mediocre story meanders endlessly, with our captives finally cooking up an escape plot, which never happens. If over a hundred pages of pointless, tone-deaf, and conversely, banal, sexual terrorism is your thing, then prepare to be thrilled into a state resembling an orgasmic induced coma. The denouement, if you can call it that, is a true WTF moment.

The problem is that either of these novellas could have been developed into something with a little effort. Well, okay, not the second one, but at least the mummy-on-a-rampage storyline coulda been. As is, the Amara story works best, but that's like saying that stepping into a pile of cow turds is better than stepping into a pile of dog turds because the cow turds smell better.

Richard Laymon is, along with V. C. Andrews and Robert E. Howard, one of the most prolific dead writers around, and it shows. These two novellas are clearly either rough drafts, the outlines for two separate novellas that couldn't find a market while Laymon was alive, or, they were ghost written by somebody so utterly incompetent that they couldn't be counted on to write bad graffiti on a bathroom wall. While this is marketed as a novel, except for a brief few pages, neither novellas ever intersect.

Another problem is that the book is bloated with too many extraneous characters that go nowhere, and exist for no reason except to pump up the word count. These would include a fearful and oversexed Egyptian, a sad blind girl, a trio of runaways, and a midget transvestite (!). These plotlines are never wrapped up, as too many really important questions are left unanswered, and with most of the cardboard characters literally just driving off novel's pages into nowhere.

This overlong "novel" remained unpublished at Laymon passing, and for good reason. However, it certainly couldn't have hurt to have had SOMEBODY either re-write or edit these novellas into some semblance of coherency, or quality. Dean Koontz gives a decent anecdote about Laymon that was vaguely interesting, but pretty was pretty much non-essential. I remember liking Laymon's early stories, but this is the first thing, that is also known as "Amara", that I read after fifteen years, and what a sad misogynistic visitation this was. I guess I've grown up some since then. Only for the very, very easily amused. One generous star.

First of all, if your going to write a plot about a mummy than at least attempt to feature alittle more background story on the mummy than metering out the same lines to blithely encompass her existence over and over again.

Also, Laymon interjected a random side story about young people being kidnapped and sexually molested and tortured without ever being able to tie it into the plot plausibly except for a brief moment towards the end.

Another thing that bothered me, if the mummy was supposedly granted eternal life then why was fire able to destroy it so easily?

The foreward by Dean Koontz was not only the best part of the book, but the only reason to ever pick it up and open it.

What a waste of time.

I am not a horror genre fan, but picked up the book when it looked like a good old-fashioned cheesy "mummy" story. I admit it, give me a story about a mummy or Egypt, and I'll often read it even if only for the chuckle value. This book was so disappointing, that I did not even finish it. The multiple plot lines vary from "fairly interesting" to unsettlingly sadistic and I found no reason to follow the stories through, even just to see if "it all comes together in the end".

Looking at the cover the book appears to be a mummy thriller. I expected the creepy tomb feel with a good story. What I got was trashy sex that didn't seem to fit into the story at all. As a matter of fact, most of the characters didn't tie in together at all. It is too bad because Laymon had a good story base with the mummy if he would have just kept to it and left the other story plots out of the book. The result was a very bad book and I felt cheated.

Even giving this book one star is generous. This has got to be without a doubt the worst book that I've ever read.

This book isn't scary at all, like the description would have you believe. There are so many different subplots with so many different characters that you never really get attached to and frankly you don't even care what happens to them. The plot isn't memorable at all either.

The author tried WAY too hard to add shock value to this book, whether it be violence or sexual (mostly sexual). If I had a dollar for every time the author wrote the word "engorged organ", I'd be very wealthy indeed. There is a subplot where some young people are captured and repeatedly sexually tortured, but where does this go? Absolutely nowhere. That's right... nowhere. Completely, utterly pointless. And it has nothing whatsoever to do with the story. At all.

This story was so much more about terribly written sex/rape scenes than a mummy story. I seriously forgot multiple times that I was supposed to be reading a horror book about the walking dead.

Not kidding, I told a friend about how bad it was and she wanted to borrow it and see for herself. We then continued to have this long struggle of who got to keep the book - except it was her trying to give it back to me, and me trying to get out of taking it back. Lasted about two years. Eventually I did get it back and promptly donated it. To this day we still talk and joke about how terrible this book is.