A review by snowmaiden
Ancient Images by Ramsey Campbell
4.0
When I heard about this book, I was pretty excited. I've always loved novels in the "cursed book" genre, and I also loved the only other "cursed film" story I've read, [b: House of Leaves|24800|House of Leaves|Mark Z. Danielewski|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1403889034s/24800.jpg|856555], so I figured I'd be bound to like this one as well. The book started out well. I love the main character, Sandy Allen, a strong woman who nevertheless feels like a real, vulnerable person. The descriptions of her daily life before the horror kicked in never seemed boring. This might be aided, of course, by the fact that the book takes place in England, so scenes that were probably run-of-the-mill to British readers seemed wonderfully exotic to me. The love story feels a little bit tacked on, but not egregiously so, and the horror itself, once it finally started happening, was of the "something scary outside the window" variety, not the "decapitated and/or disemboweled bodies" variety.
One thing that did bother me was way too much foreshadowing of the horror throughout the book. Sandy is noticing strange smells, rustling noises behind her, and wild animals following her every few pages, and when she always writes it off as just her imagination, she starts to seem like an idiot after a while. If I kept noticing those things all the time day after day, I'd probably think that something was up, even if I didn't know what it was. At the very least, I might start to question my own sanity, but Sandy never does that either. I think this book could have used another pass by an editor, and the first thing I would have done is take out a lot of those references, which were laid on way too thick to be effective.
As we came closer and closer to the end of the book without a resolution, I was afraid the ending would be a big disappointment, but although the story concluded very abruptly in 70's adventure movie mode, with the screen fading to black the moment the danger was over, it was a good resolution that did make enough sense to satisfy me.
I'm glad I read this book, and I'll be interested to read something else by this author in the future.
One thing that did bother me was way too much foreshadowing of the horror throughout the book. Sandy is noticing strange smells, rustling noises behind her, and wild animals following her every few pages, and when she always writes it off as just her imagination, she starts to seem like an idiot after a while. If I kept noticing those things all the time day after day, I'd probably think that something was up, even if I didn't know what it was. At the very least, I might start to question my own sanity, but Sandy never does that either. I think this book could have used another pass by an editor, and the first thing I would have done is take out a lot of those references, which were laid on way too thick to be effective.
As we came closer and closer to the end of the book without a resolution, I was afraid the ending would be a big disappointment, but although the story concluded very abruptly in 70's adventure movie mode, with the screen fading to black the moment the danger was over, it was a good resolution that did make enough sense to satisfy me.
I'm glad I read this book, and I'll be interested to read something else by this author in the future.