3/10/04
Book
House of Pain - Sephera Giron
A house that contained within its walls a string of gruesome perverted murders is torn down so that the wickedness it was witness to could not carry on. Three boys were witnesses to the destruction and to something more that would haunt their dreams. Years later, one of the boys, Tony, returns to the town where the ruins lie and buys the property. He intends to build a new house on the foundation of the old one, but he has neglected to tell his soon to be fiancee Lydia about the area's history. Tony and Lydia move into their dream home once it's built, but soon she discovers something is not quite right in the basement. It seems to be haunted, and even more than that might be going on.
House of Pain is a fast read. Maybe one of the fastest I have come across. For all that speed though it does not lack in descriptiveness, a strong voice, or a lack of pacing. Most of the novel is smooth flowing, engaging, and well written. The characters have excellent depth to them. The settings are well described and easily visualised. The plot borrows elements from a couple of sources and then twists them around a bit and takes them in their own direction. It makes for a nice blending of the familiar and the new though it is a touch heavy toward the familiar.
There are some notable rough patches where there is an inexplicable sudden switch to a stiff contractionless mode of writing in the narrative. There are some questionable point of view errors regarding who should know what about mystic symbology. The climax is also similarly distracting in its narrow descriptions, which unintentionally trivialises what is happening. One other specific puzzle surfaces with just a little research and that is the reference of the uroboros symbol (a snake eating itself) as being the ubuoris.
The narrative flows without warning from the past to the present to dreams which might confuse or disgruntle some people, but is actually done with a fair bit of flair. The jarring sensation is actually a good thing the way it's done. The horror suffers a bit of flatness. Some of it goes a bit over the top and then kind of disregards itself. Some of it just sort of lacks oomph. There is a small lacking in emotional push as well. Overall though, House of Pain is a good book, but maybe more so for readers with less experience in the horror genre.
(
Thank you for reading my review.
Bob Male)
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