The Hell of disharmony.” From your lips, Mr. Thomas, to God’s ears!! Welcome, everyone, to Cosmic Horror. Set in the future, the story centers around the final day of the annual Punktown Fair and its attendees. While the plot is original and creative in its conception, the delivery is a Lovecraftian mess. There is absolutely no realm of possibility and the story becomes completely irrelevant seeing as logic and reason are currently vacationing in the Caribbean and don’t even have the common courtesy to send a postcard. I understand this book falls under the “cosmic horror” label and that’s its purpose is to heighten your perception, but there is no there is no realism in the backdrop to keep you grounded. Thomas’ style of writing is tedious and distanced, but more importantly, pulpy. His descriptions are spectacular at first, but begin to grate after the third chapter. They go on for far too long, are difficult to follow, and go in depth too much. Riddled with grammatical errors, some of the sentences are written backwards with the adverb first; reminding me once again why I never liked Yoda. Although run-on sentences were seen the most, incomplete sentences were sprinkled in there as well. There's something wrong with the world when this much money and lavish attention is spent on a novel where they forget to do a line edit or three. Lifeless and empty, the characters are static and one-dimensional. Even though they are portrayed through endless description, dialogue and action, their vitality never comes off the page. Their behaviors were too predictable, their emotions unconvincing, and their bonds to each other were flimsy and transparent. In other words, the entire cast was weak. Oh, and speaking of weak, so was the pace. Molasses moves faster than the events in this book, people. I put this book down more times than I can count, wishing that the story would just hurry up already. It never did. Reviving what was almost kindling, the atmosphere does allow the reader to experience Thomas’ world. Palpable and lucid, the underlying feeling of what is going on is what carries you through the book. Here and only here, is where I felt the author’s talent and saw his vision. Had the book in its entirety been a little more concentrated on the characters' development, a little less focused on describing every nook and cranny, and flowed with the current instead of fighting the entire way, it could have been a remarkable story. My rating? I give it a 1. St. Augustine once said that “To know oneself is to know God”; I am here to tell you kids, that to read this book is to know hell. Avoid it and save your soul!! -As reviewed for Horror-Web.com
This is one of his Harrow novels, a series surrounding the supernatural occurrences at the abandoned Harrow mansion, a dark and sinister house. Teenagers go there to drink, party, and make out, but one summer night in June, a group of misfits gets more than they bargained for -- the mutilated body of a child's corpse stolen from the morgue is found in the family graveyard adjacent to Harrow Mansion. Some speculate it's an offering to open the gates to a world of nightmares in the Harrow mansion. In fact, if you live in the quiet town, you don't want to fall asleep. And make sure you don't wake up those sleeping soundly around you or you just might become part of the house's plot to maim, slaughter, and terrorize the good citizens of Watch Point, New York. I finished this book in less than a day and would read it again in a heartbeart.
What do You think about The Abandoned (2005)?
This was a very bizare book that I really didn't understand. Harrow is a mansion just outside of the town of Watch Point. 'Something' in the house doesn't want to be ignored, so it poisons the townfolk causing them to fall asleep and dream horrible things that go on in the house. Upon waking, the townfolk begin carrying out the horrible (and disgustingly sexual) things they were dreaming of, but as they're killing and mutilating others, they're dreaming of other things inside the dream that is making them kill. Yeah, can't even explain it to where it makes sense. Didn't care for this one.
—Beth
Let's see, salacious, lascivious, crude, lewd, graphic, gratuitous, violent, deviant, it's a horror movie brought to paper (or in this case audio) without the MPAA to tone it into even an NC17 rating. This was horror in more ways than one. Though I kept expecting Sam and Dean Winchester to make an appearance and I wondered why no one was bringing salt or burning the house down. But Harrow House seems to have a mind or perhaps heart of its own and it isn't necessarily here. Which is where the novel didn't work for me. I was fine with the psychic elements. They were needed. But the house's origins or rather the evil's origins weren't explained and outerspace or another dimension just doesn't cut for me. The reader was creepy. Really creepy. I suppose that's a good thing but I hope never to hear him again. While I hated the book in every way, I give Clegg a lot of credit for bizarre creativity. Every evil in the book was just a little different.
—Jodi
