3/12/04
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Ancient Images - Ramsey Campbell
Sandy Allens's friend Graham has managed, after a long search that was begining to seem impossible, to get his hands on a copy of a never before seen horror film. The 1938 film, made in England and starring both Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi, was so controversial that it was practically banned before it was even finished. Plagued with troubles on the set during filming it was a miracle even to have been completed, the political manoueverings not withstanding. Graham wants to see that the effort was not wasted, and that a peice of his country's history is perserved. Others still want the film to never see the light of day. Mysterious others that it seems will go to any length, even beyond the constraints of nature!
Ancient Images is an amazingly atmospheric novel that grabs the reader and drags them in, not kicking, but perhaps screaming. The story and the tension builds and builds until the reader is there in the thick of things and danger seems to loom just beyond the sight of wherever the reader is sitting. Even when the story is done, or perhaps forcibly put down to take a breather, the sense of tension doesn't totally leave and every shadow and partly seen movement sends chills up the spine. The characters are well drawn and the plot and pacing are excellent. The settings, and there are a lot of them around the British country side, are detailed and painted in just the right lighting and atmospheric conditions. On the surface the hearing noises and writing them off, and seeing fleeting sights and ignoring them got kind of repetitious, particularly in the middle third of the novel, but still it did nothing to spoil the mood which built up completely oblivious to the intrusion even as it obviously derived from it. This is one of Ramsey Campbell's best novels and that is saying a lot for this deservedly illustrious author.
(
Thank you for reading my review.
Bob Male)
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