A review by pjrochester
Allhallow's Eve by Richard Laymon
2.0
I always find that while Richard Laymon's writing is solid—his style is strong and his prose is easy to read and understand—it's in the way his stories hang together that everything comes apart.
Which is sad, really. It's almost as if he had this power with his words, this capacity to tell great stories, but was more interested in output than quality. The result being that his stories feel jumbled, and lack the kind of internal logic that makes them believable—in many respects detracting from any tension or terror he might otherwise be able to invoke.
There were so many times, while reading All Hallow's Eve when my mind rebelled, screaming "She did / said what?" (she invited the guys who'd just assaulted her into her home for cider? She agreed to go to a party being thrown by one of her high school students, like they're friends? He told the high school kids to have some fun on their own in a room full of booze?). Small things, sure, but they add up and ultimately strip away the illusion of Laymon's fictional universe.
All Hallow's Eve is a decent read. If a little confused and very brief. I just wish Richard Laymon could have paid as much attention to the story as I did for the couple of hours it took me to get through it.
Which is sad, really. It's almost as if he had this power with his words, this capacity to tell great stories, but was more interested in output than quality. The result being that his stories feel jumbled, and lack the kind of internal logic that makes them believable—in many respects detracting from any tension or terror he might otherwise be able to invoke.
There were so many times, while reading All Hallow's Eve when my mind rebelled, screaming "She did / said what?" (she invited the guys who'd just assaulted her into her home for cider? She agreed to go to a party being thrown by one of her high school students, like they're friends? He told the high school kids to have some fun on their own in a room full of booze?). Small things, sure, but they add up and ultimately strip away the illusion of Laymon's fictional universe.
All Hallow's Eve is a decent read. If a little confused and very brief. I just wish Richard Laymon could have paid as much attention to the story as I did for the couple of hours it took me to get through it.