A government experiment goes awry and a deadly gas is released over the affluent suburb of Hampstead, Connecticut. Meanwhile, the decendants of the town's original founders return toHampstead for the firts time in over 100 years, igniting a firestorm of events that are the continuation of an ongoing curse. After I read (and was completely scared shitless) by Ghost Story in high school, I was afraid to read anything else by Straub. I remember passing up Shadowland and this book; by then I was involved with reading too many other writers to be concerned with him. But rereading Ghost Story last year got me thinking about investigating more of Straub's work and the 30th Anniversry edition of FD seemed like a good place to start. I was mistaken about that as this book was a huge disappointment. I think the biggest problem with Floating Dragon was that it couldn't decide if it wanted to be a supernatural or science-gone-awry tale. It begins with a pretty good setup of a DOD expereimental project getting released into the atmosphere and then becoems the tale of a curse over Hampstead that recurs every 30 years or so. Even as the two threads continue, they never mesh in any significant way--in fact, the narrator of the story decides that the chemical accident was merely a coincidence. So the reader is left wondering why it was needed to bloat an already over-wrought story. Then there is the narrator of the story, a black-listed author of novels/screenplays who ex-patriated himself to England and alcoloholism until the McCarthy-era ended. He begins his story in the third person, but then breaks in with a chapter of first-person narration to explain his role in the affair. He says he got most of his information from the diaries of the three other protagonmists, but he may have made some stuff up himself--he's a writer after all, and he may not have remembered stuff very well. Then it's back to the first-person (though he does break in two more times for pointless POV narration.) So now we have a unrealiable narrator to deal with. Finally, the overall tone of the book is one of Straub being in love with his own writing. His unrealiable narrator speaks as if he is smarter than everybody else in the room and he knows it. Add to this a setting of affluent people who are feel they are better than everybody else and there's very little to care about in this confused and off-putting tale of death and destruction. In the epilogue to the story he talks about the narrator finally publishing "the excellent book Floating Dragon"--that actually made me laugh. But it just went to the overall arrogant and confused prose relating this tale. There was about 100 pages (divided by one of the narrator's interludes) that were pretty good--they dealt with the main storyline of the curse, not the chemical accident. And I liked the climactic scene in the Gorge at Kendall Point. But overall, this was not a memorable reading expereince. If you are a newcomer to Straub, start with another title--I recommend Ghost Story; if you're already a fan, you'll probably like it. But Cemetery Dance's edition of the book is beautiful (I gave it and extra 1/2 star for that!)
I keep on being drawn back to Peter Straub for my Horror fix. With this author it isn’t just about the nasty stuff: it’s about the presentation. Floating Dragon is a case in point: not only does Straub expose our fears; he toys with them.The plot in a nutshellWhat you’ve got here is essentially a town that is periodically plagued by a sequence of terrible events: serial killings; disappearances; children dying under mysterious circumstances. This only happens once every generation and only the individuals who know the town’s history exceedingly well are even aware of the pattern (they can be counted on one hand), the rest are blissfully ignorant. It’s time for the horror to start again, only this time it coincides with an industrial accident that releases a bio-weapon that is still in a very unstable phase into the atmosphere. The net result is gobsmacklingly macabre. The gas has a hallucinatory and psychotic effect (think military grade LSD) and in extreme cases causes an extremely grotesque disease. From the author’s introductionAnything like restraint or good taste was verboten, the aesthetic was grounded in a single principle, that of excess.ThoughtsKudos to Straub. He never quite lets his horror become splatterpunk overly gory. This is good, because once you start gore-shocking your audience into submission, all other considerations (like, for example, good characters) go flying out the window. Like other reviewers, I would have to agree that this is quite a bit like It, in terms of the general feel and presentation of the story, although Dragon was published before King’s novel.Floating Dragon is better paced than the other Straub novels I’ve read. It consists of three set pieces, each one building on the previous, which helps maintain momentum. The characters are, as always, extremely well developed. It is a disturbing novel and probably one of the scariest I’ve read. Yes, there is a lot of weird imagery, but it is because the line between reality and illusion becomes increasingly blurred as the story progresses. It is often up to the reader to decide “what the heck just happened?”It’s as complete a horror novel as you’re likely to lay your hands on, and quite clever, really. However, a word of warning, things get really, really weird towards the end. Total insanity and randomness might not be to everyone’s taste. If you only ever read one Straub novel it should probably be Ghost Story, but if you read another, perhaps it should be this one.
What do You think about Floating Dragon (2003)?
Peter Straub constructs a scary tale of chemistry gone mad and a returning evil, combining together to make the perfect (storm) cloud.I original read this book over 2 decades ago, and on the back of that thought that this was a 3 star read. Since re-reading this book I have re-evaluated this and given it a 4 star rating. Up until the last third of the book I was certain that I was going to give the book 5 stars. I loved the way that Straub built the story and the characters, mixing each of their worlds together to create a well rounded and multi-layered story. At around the final third everything became too messy, and the flipping between each story line, past and present seemed to get tangled up. It just stopped flowing right for me and felt like Straub had run out of steam.This was still an enjoyable read, but oh if that final third had followed in the same vein as what had come before it, what a masterpiece this would have been.
—Amanda
In this book a small, wealthy Connecticut town is subjected simultaneously to an ancient curse and a toxic chemical spill, whereupon hellish, hallucinatory hilarity ensues. Okay, fine, but the latter event is given too much emphasis for the runty subplot it is. Really in the end it just exacerbates the horror of the curse, and gives the outside world a mundane explanation for things. The main characters even end up dismissing the correlation of the two disasters as coincidental. How lazy is that? I like the chemical spill more as a source of horror, honestly. It has parameters that are established to hint at what problems it might cause. Not so with the amorphous and arbitrary nature of the curse and the vanquishing of it, which is very much your usual battle of wills that the heroes only win by the power of their friendship. (No, it's not any less lame in practice.)The edition of the book I got has an introduction by Straub where he explains his goal was to be as ridiculously over-the-top as possible. Mission accomplished, perhaps, but the result is a textbook example of "imaginative but undisciplined".
—Bad-at-reading
I've had this book for years, I've been saving it as a special treat read for a... whatever sometime where it might possibly rain.Anyway, I love Ghost story. LOVE IT! Ghost story this aint.Now I wasn't expecting the same story or anything lame like that, but I was expecting the same standard. It starts of OK, but it ends ridiculous. Now I don't need much to be able to suspend my disbelief, but one of the things I do need, is be able to believe that the characters believe the weird shit that's going on. Throughout this book my brow was furrowed in a "really?!" expression, because it's not like I didn't want to believe it's just that the way these people came to believe in these things that were happening, were just so unrealistic. I didn't care anymore when we got to the climactic ending... Which was over the top ridiculous and cringe worthy.
—Tanja
