Prince of Nightmares
By John McNee
Publisher: Blood Bound Books
Pub Date: January 1, 2016
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
Prince of Nightmares by John McNee goes for the slow
burn at first. Multi-millionaire Victor Teversham is to spend a few
days in a hotel with an unusual reputation. Those who stay overnight
tend to have very vivid nightmares. The nightmares often involve similar
characters who are thought of as ghosts haunting the hotel. The reason
Teversham has a reservation at this most sought after "vacation" spot is
because his wife booked a reservation for him just before she killed
herself.
It is an interesting premise that, with a few explicit nightmares, quietly starts building up the tension and heightens the mystery. By the middle of the novel it is going full speed into scare-the-hell-out-of-me territory. But this is no ordinary haunted house story and the author has a lot more in store for the reader bedsides things that go bump in the night. As Victor has his nightmares and meets the other guests, his assistant Harry is attempting to discover the mystery of the inn and finds more than just haunts and spirits.
This is a nice twist on the haunted house theme. McNee knows how to write some vivid and scary scenes. One of the tricks here is to separate the reality from the dreams but have just enough uncertainty in the reader's mind to keep them off balance. The author does this perfectly. You can feel the confusion and fear of the characters as they experience the strange horrors of the house., just as we can understand the seriousness of Harry's revaluation that the house is more than it appears.
If the popularity of the haunted house novel can be gauged by the numerous books of that kind that is making it to my review pile, I would say it is not only very popular butis making a bit of a comeback. But like any often used idea, it needs to be revamped occasionally. Prince of Nightmares is the kind of novel that those looking for more than the usual in this genre would like. I would recommend this to all readers of horror . John McNee manages to put his own signature on the plot and gives us something else. Prince of Nightmares is a nice horror novel to start the year off with. I would recommend it to any reader of horror, and not just of the haunted house variety.
It is an interesting premise that, with a few explicit nightmares, quietly starts building up the tension and heightens the mystery. By the middle of the novel it is going full speed into scare-the-hell-out-of-me territory. But this is no ordinary haunted house story and the author has a lot more in store for the reader bedsides things that go bump in the night. As Victor has his nightmares and meets the other guests, his assistant Harry is attempting to discover the mystery of the inn and finds more than just haunts and spirits.
This is a nice twist on the haunted house theme. McNee knows how to write some vivid and scary scenes. One of the tricks here is to separate the reality from the dreams but have just enough uncertainty in the reader's mind to keep them off balance. The author does this perfectly. You can feel the confusion and fear of the characters as they experience the strange horrors of the house., just as we can understand the seriousness of Harry's revaluation that the house is more than it appears.
If the popularity of the haunted house novel can be gauged by the numerous books of that kind that is making it to my review pile, I would say it is not only very popular butis making a bit of a comeback. But like any often used idea, it needs to be revamped occasionally. Prince of Nightmares is the kind of novel that those looking for more than the usual in this genre would like. I would recommend this to all readers of horror . John McNee manages to put his own signature on the plot and gives us something else. Prince of Nightmares is a nice horror novel to start the year off with. I would recommend it to any reader of horror, and not just of the haunted house variety.
No comments:
Post a Comment