popolopoi's review against another edition
dark
tense
medium-paced
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.25
blair_wolff's review against another edition
2.0
Her boobs bounced boobily as she boobed her way through the cave, boobing every cannibal as they, too, boobed viciously. Their need for boob was insatiable, and pair of boobs who was main character was gonna boob it to them.
kiki_carina's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
mysterious
sad
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.5
kyleofbooks's review against another edition
1.0
Two 1-star reads in a row.
2020 is off to a pitiful start...
This is, I believe, my first foray into the “splatterpunk” sub genre of horror lit. I don’t know how—or why— it has taken me this long to discover it... horror holds a special dark place in my heart in all things cinema, literature, and television. I’m a certified gorehound! But this book let me down. I hope this doesn’t set a precedent for the ones to follow, because this book is trashy, and not in a fun way.
Midnight’s Lair was published in the late 1980’s, and it shows—it really felt like I was reading the novel equivalent to a campy, retro slasher film, which was fun... at first. We get a host of the usual suspects you’d find in an 80’s horror, as well as lots of topless women (a good percent of this book is devoted to women being ogled terribly), pervy men/teens, cheeky banter, and all the ill-advised sex and unrelenting violence.
The novel starts off quickly, with no time to develop a real sense of the characters. I thought to myself, “They’re trapped already? That was fast!”. As it progresses, though, we get multiple shifting POV’s, and the characterizations were almost enough to satisfy me (with the exception of Kyle—who I regret sharing my namesake with—because I really, truly loathed him!). A slower build-up of tension would’ve benefitted this book greatly, but it just wasn’t there. And then, the actual “cave dwellers” don’t pop up until about 2/3rds of the way through. Instead, the author chose to focus more on sex, objectifying women, and creepy lechers. I had to skim a lot of this, because it made me feel icky—all the unnecessary sexual violence against the women—it was absolutely abhorrent! Almost every page, there are descriptions of women’s breasts, panties, thighs, “rumps”—and all through the heavy “male gaze”— as well as numerous incidents of slut shaming and someone making off-color comments. If blatant misogyny and shitty horror are your thing, Richard Laymon is for you!
I was hoping to read something campy and fun, but this just left me feeling gross. I’m against censorship, so I don’t mind ultra-violence, gore, and artistic expression in the horror genre when it’s done for a reason and makes sense in the story. But here, it’s just played for shock, titillation, and schlocky exploitation—and I love exploitation films and literature, too—but not when it’s pointlessly crude and mean-spirited.
Also, there were just too many characters for me to focus on or try/care to remember (I believe the initial number started at 40). And while we get many POV’s, I think it would have been better served with a smaller batch of characters.
In the end, I really have nothing good to say about Midnight’s Lair. The author should be ashamed of himself for writing such trash! This book is a waste of time, money, and paper.
2020 is off to a pitiful start...
This is, I believe, my first foray into the “splatterpunk” sub genre of horror lit. I don’t know how—or why— it has taken me this long to discover it... horror holds a special dark place in my heart in all things cinema, literature, and television. I’m a certified gorehound! But this book let me down. I hope this doesn’t set a precedent for the ones to follow, because this book is trashy, and not in a fun way.
Midnight’s Lair was published in the late 1980’s, and it shows—it really felt like I was reading the novel equivalent to a campy, retro slasher film, which was fun... at first. We get a host of the usual suspects you’d find in an 80’s horror, as well as lots of topless women (a good percent of this book is devoted to women being ogled terribly), pervy men/teens, cheeky banter, and all the ill-advised sex and unrelenting violence.
The novel starts off quickly, with no time to develop a real sense of the characters. I thought to myself, “They’re trapped already? That was fast!”. As it progresses, though, we get multiple shifting POV’s, and the characterizations were almost enough to satisfy me (with the exception of Kyle—who I regret sharing my namesake with—because I really, truly loathed him!). A slower build-up of tension would’ve benefitted this book greatly, but it just wasn’t there. And then, the actual “cave dwellers” don’t pop up until about 2/3rds of the way through. Instead, the author chose to focus more on sex, objectifying women, and creepy lechers. I had to skim a lot of this, because it made me feel icky—all the unnecessary sexual violence against the women—it was absolutely abhorrent! Almost every page, there are descriptions of women’s breasts, panties, thighs, “rumps”—and all through the heavy “male gaze”— as well as numerous incidents of slut shaming and someone making off-color comments. If blatant misogyny and shitty horror are your thing, Richard Laymon is for you!
I was hoping to read something campy and fun, but this just left me feeling gross. I’m against censorship, so I don’t mind ultra-violence, gore, and artistic expression in the horror genre when it’s done for a reason and makes sense in the story. But here, it’s just played for shock, titillation, and schlocky exploitation—and I love exploitation films and literature, too—but not when it’s pointlessly crude and mean-spirited.
Also, there were just too many characters for me to focus on or try/care to remember (I believe the initial number started at 40). And while we get many POV’s, I think it would have been better served with a smaller batch of characters.
In the end, I really have nothing good to say about Midnight’s Lair. The author should be ashamed of himself for writing such trash! This book is a waste of time, money, and paper.
paulopaperbooksonly's review against another edition
2.0
This is not a good book at all. It would be a great movie - all those naked girls and sexy moments :D
Now talking more seriously. This is a novel that to me fails in every department. It takes a lot of time to get into action and then it was over within a couple of pages.
First of all the characters are bad. They are cardboard and weak. As all other novels by Laymon womens are always gorgeous piece of meat and men are pigs (althought they all think of sex 90% of time).
When they are trying to escape they think of sex, when people are falling and dying they think of sex. not only the bad guys but the good as well.
I love the story behind the beings and the boy psychic (totally evil bastard).
The main heroine is Tomb Raider wannabe. Perfect body, perfect mind, everything perfect. So uninteresting - and her love click it's almost immediately. She met a guy and fell in love as deep as you can imagine in only a couple of hours. Enfin. Crappy. Oh and her mother was also HOT as you can imagine an hot milf.
Low doses of Horror; High doses of sex and boobs. Crappy novel altogether.
Now talking more seriously. This is a novel that to me fails in every department. It takes a lot of time to get into action and then it was over within a couple of pages.
First of all the characters are bad. They are cardboard and weak. As all other novels by Laymon womens are always gorgeous piece of meat and men are pigs (althought they all think of sex 90% of time).
When they are trying to escape they think of sex, when people are falling and dying they think of sex. not only the bad guys but the good as well.
I love the story behind the beings and the boy psychic (totally evil bastard).
The main heroine is Tomb Raider wannabe. Perfect body, perfect mind, everything perfect. So uninteresting - and her love click it's almost immediately. She met a guy and fell in love as deep as you can imagine in only a couple of hours. Enfin. Crappy. Oh and her mother was also HOT as you can imagine an hot milf.
Low doses of Horror; High doses of sex and boobs. Crappy novel altogether.
cltweedie's review against another edition
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
3.0
thejoster's review against another edition
fast-paced
3.25
I went into this with high hopes because the description just sounded like it’d be right up my alley, and the general story was nice! and exciting to read! However the sexual assault really ruined it for me, i get that part of it was the basis for the whole story but there could’ve been other ways to achieve the same purpose. Plus the whole deal with Kyle? Yeah, no. Also there are like several misogynistic things said that didn’t seem self aware or like they were meant in a joking way (which’s not suprising given this was published in the 80s, but still). Last thing i didn’t necessarily like was the incredibly abrupt ending that felt extremely lazy, which’s relatable, but left me pretty unsatisfied. To end this on a positive note though, all in all it was easy and exciting to read because it’s pretty fast paced and, you know, takes place in a dark cave 150 feet below the surface.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Sexual assault and Misogyny
verkisto's review against another edition
2.0
Midnight's Lair was the first Laymon book I read, over twenty years ago, and bits and pieces of the story have stayed with me all that time. It's a great idea -- a group of tourists touring an underground lake are plunged into darkness and have to find a way out -- and a lot of the scenes have power, so I was looking forward to re-reading the book, even though his books have been mostly misses with me. This one, I thought, would show me whether there was something good about Laymon's style.
The short answer is: Mostly. The novel starts off with its hook, unspooling the rest of the events from that moment, and it works surprisingly well. I finally saw Laymon's characterization skills at its best, since he managed to create his main characters very well, in a short span of time. I think he minimizes them, though, by giving them romantic entanglements that develop in the span of minutes or hours. My guess is he's hoping to get the readers more engaged in the characters by giving them something to live for, so to speak, but the relationships develop so quickly that they seem trivial. Darcy, the main protagonist, is capable, smart, tenacious, and has more of a reason to get out of the cave than just survival (her mother is above ground, and events develop to the point where she has to get out to make sure her mother is all right), but when she starts smooching and loving on Greg, the male protagonist, she suddenly becomes a lot less interesting. I think developing a romance from the two characters is fine (in fact, it would be disappointing had they not hooked up by the end of the story), but let them get out of their predicament before they start giving over to their physical desires. Speed may be a cheesy action flick, but at least it got the romantic aspect of the story right.
Midnight's Lair would make an excellent premise book, except for the fact that Laymon has to go and make it about more than just escaping an underground lake cavern in the dark. He has to bring in a group of people who live in that darkness feeding on the people who are unfortunate enough to become trapped down with them. Laymon populates his group of people just right, so there's internal conflict to go along with the main conflict of just surviving long enough to escape, and that alone is enough to carry the story. I get that this is a horror novel, and that Laymon needed to add an unknown protagonist, but I thought the idea of forty people trapped underground in pitch blackness, along with a sexual predator, was enough of a story by itself.
I do my best to separate an author from his or her fiction, but with Laymon, I have to wonder what his worldview was like to write these kinds of books. In Midnight's Lair, there's a scene where people are watching a hotel burn to the ground, and one guy comes on to a woman in her bathing suit. She rebuffs him, mentioning that her daughter is trapped beneath the fire in the caves, and as she walks away, she hears him call her a "tightass cunt". I'm probably showing my privilege here, but are there really men out there who would act like that in that kind of a situation? That sort of thing isn't limited just to this book, though; there's usually a character like that (sometimes more than one) in every one of his books. Laymon at least portrays his male protagonists as being respectful, but did he think all other men were like this? Or are they, and I'm just unaware?
By contrast, the novel also features a character -- a sexual predator -- in the caves who takes the opportunity to take his stalking of another character up a level, despite the situation being one of life or death. I could accept that, since I can accept that a sexual predator would be self-absorbed, obsessed, and unable to judge the appropriateness of a situation, but I had a hard time with the casual misogyny of the other male characters in the novel. I should note that I started reading Laymon's books after finishing up Jack Ketchum's books, where I didn't see this kind of problem, even when his books were much more brutal, much darker, and committed worse atrocities toward women. There was misogyny there, too, but it didn't seem to be as prevalent and consuming as it is in Laymon's books. In Ketchum's books, the misogyny was the main problem; in Laymon's books, it's just part of the background.
Laymon also makes his female protagonists fit, and usually has at least one overweight female character (described by other characters -- bad and good -- as "gross"), who is either an antagonist, or marked to be killed off later in the story. Later, when the group first get a hint of being saved, they start talking about the first thing they're going to do on getting out. The men talk of eating steak and drinking alcohol, but the women want baths. Laymon makes it explicit in his narrative: "'All I want's a long, hot bath.' That was a woman, of course." It's disappointing in lots of ways, and where some critics can look at his other portrayals of women and write them off as satire of some kind, that kind of casually sexist portrayal can't be dismissed as easily.
The story is engaging, and is certain to be memorable, but it's not without its problems. I'm thinking that these problems are just part of reading a Laymon book. I still like his style enough to keep moving forward, but I'm not sure what the difference is between him and, say, Bentley Little, whose casual sexism made me quit reading his books. Though, if I'm being honest, Little's stories started to get boring. Laymon's novels, at least, are anything but, even with all the problems.
The short answer is: Mostly. The novel starts off with its hook, unspooling the rest of the events from that moment, and it works surprisingly well. I finally saw Laymon's characterization skills at its best, since he managed to create his main characters very well, in a short span of time. I think he minimizes them, though, by giving them romantic entanglements that develop in the span of minutes or hours. My guess is he's hoping to get the readers more engaged in the characters by giving them something to live for, so to speak, but the relationships develop so quickly that they seem trivial. Darcy, the main protagonist, is capable, smart, tenacious, and has more of a reason to get out of the cave than just survival (her mother is above ground, and events develop to the point where she has to get out to make sure her mother is all right), but when she starts smooching and loving on Greg, the male protagonist, she suddenly becomes a lot less interesting. I think developing a romance from the two characters is fine (in fact, it would be disappointing had they not hooked up by the end of the story), but let them get out of their predicament before they start giving over to their physical desires. Speed may be a cheesy action flick, but at least it got the romantic aspect of the story right.
Midnight's Lair would make an excellent premise book, except for the fact that Laymon has to go and make it about more than just escaping an underground lake cavern in the dark. He has to bring in a group of people who live in that darkness feeding on the people who are unfortunate enough to become trapped down with them. Laymon populates his group of people just right, so there's internal conflict to go along with the main conflict of just surviving long enough to escape, and that alone is enough to carry the story. I get that this is a horror novel, and that Laymon needed to add an unknown protagonist, but I thought the idea of forty people trapped underground in pitch blackness, along with a sexual predator, was enough of a story by itself.
I do my best to separate an author from his or her fiction, but with Laymon, I have to wonder what his worldview was like to write these kinds of books. In Midnight's Lair, there's a scene where people are watching a hotel burn to the ground, and one guy comes on to a woman in her bathing suit. She rebuffs him, mentioning that her daughter is trapped beneath the fire in the caves, and as she walks away, she hears him call her a "tightass cunt". I'm probably showing my privilege here, but are there really men out there who would act like that in that kind of a situation? That sort of thing isn't limited just to this book, though; there's usually a character like that (sometimes more than one) in every one of his books. Laymon at least portrays his male protagonists as being respectful, but did he think all other men were like this? Or are they, and I'm just unaware?
By contrast, the novel also features a character -- a sexual predator -- in the caves who takes the opportunity to take his stalking of another character up a level, despite the situation being one of life or death. I could accept that, since I can accept that a sexual predator would be self-absorbed, obsessed, and unable to judge the appropriateness of a situation, but I had a hard time with the casual misogyny of the other male characters in the novel. I should note that I started reading Laymon's books after finishing up Jack Ketchum's books, where I didn't see this kind of problem, even when his books were much more brutal, much darker, and committed worse atrocities toward women. There was misogyny there, too, but it didn't seem to be as prevalent and consuming as it is in Laymon's books. In Ketchum's books, the misogyny was the main problem; in Laymon's books, it's just part of the background.
Laymon also makes his female protagonists fit, and usually has at least one overweight female character (described by other characters -- bad and good -- as "gross"), who is either an antagonist, or marked to be killed off later in the story. Later, when the group first get a hint of being saved, they start talking about the first thing they're going to do on getting out. The men talk of eating steak and drinking alcohol, but the women want baths. Laymon makes it explicit in his narrative: "'All I want's a long, hot bath.' That was a woman, of course." It's disappointing in lots of ways, and where some critics can look at his other portrayals of women and write them off as satire of some kind, that kind of casually sexist portrayal can't be dismissed as easily.
The story is engaging, and is certain to be memorable, but it's not without its problems. I'm thinking that these problems are just part of reading a Laymon book. I still like his style enough to keep moving forward, but I'm not sure what the difference is between him and, say, Bentley Little, whose casual sexism made me quit reading his books. Though, if I'm being honest, Little's stories started to get boring. Laymon's novels, at least, are anything but, even with all the problems.
positivelyhorror's review against another edition
5.0
Yes some of the language and the heavy male gaze is problematic and dated, and yes, the word rump should probably never need to appear 18 times in one book, but Midnight's Lair is a very fun read if you're into trashy horror. It is exactly what you'd expect if you were watching an old gruesome video nasty, which is what I'm often found doing. This is only my second experience with Laymon and it certainly won't be the last.
ghostthereader's review against another edition
dark
mysterious
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
4.0
Content Warnings
Moderate: Rape, Sexual assault, and Sexual harassment