Florida Death Row Advocacy Group

Not being a lover of horror stories in any shape or form, I was encouraged to read the book ‘Once’ with the promise of just a touch of gothic horror within its pages. I had to agree the story seemed innocuous enough for a novice like me. Having read the publishers blurb: ‘Remember the fairy stories you were told when you were a child? Tales of tiny, magical, winged beings and elves, wicked witches and goblins. Demons…. What if one day you found they were true? What if, when you become an adult, you discovered they were all based on fact? What if you met the fantasy and it was all so very real? That’s what happened to Thom Kindred. The wonders were revealed to him. But so were the horrors, for not far behind the Good, there always lurks the Bad. And the Bad had designs on Thom. The Bad would show him real evil. He would see the hellhagges and the demons. He would be touched by perverted passion. And corruption. And he would encounter his own worst nightmare. The Bad would seek to destroy him. And only the magic of the little beings would be able to help him. ‘Once’ Herbert’s new novel of erotic love and darkest horror, will take you to a realm where fantasy and reality collide, where fairytales really can come true.….. I wondered what I was actually going to come across, but Once is a very well written story that has great depth, yet flows along nicely, as only an author of James Herbert’s caliber can create – you feel the years of experience in the writing and the visual images created are unhindered by broken prose. It is a curious mix of the horror genre with fairy story, making it an adult fairytale. The tale starts when Thom Kindred, 27 years old, returns to the house of his childhood, Little Bracken, to recover from a stroke induced by a car accident. Little Bracken is a woodland retreat in the Castle Bracken Estate that has many memories for Thom, most of which have been unknowingly suppressed. Thom’s mother had been tutor and governess to Hugo Bleeth, son of the castle’s owner. During his rehabilitation strange events unfold that have a lot to do with his past and even more to do with his future. A future that looks pretty grim at times especially when the housekeeper at the Bracken Estate is sent to help him settle in, but instead is the evil sent to destroy him. The paperback runs to 420 pages, so this is no simple childish tale. Surprisingly I found the scenes of horror sat comfortably alongside the fantastical. The characters are wonderful, erotic devious and evil, a nice original idea and a fantastic introduction into horror for the previously uninitiated.

Published by Macmillan $10

‘State of Fear’ by Michael Crichton
Michael Crichton has always used the latent but, in his view, under appreciated dangers associated with scientific advancement as a theme in his books - microbiology in the Andromeda Strain, genetic engineering in Jurassic Park, and so on. In State of Fear he reverses field and uses the incorrectly perceived threats of global environmental disaster as the underlying impetus for a novel. In Crichton’s view, the whole global warming argument is false. His view is that environmentalism has degenerated into a quasi-religious system, devoid of scientific honesty. Thus, the proponents of the global warming hysteria are pushing faith over fact, many of them have lost their moorings and the inevitable result is a grand conspiracy.
The story starts out with a series of seemingly disconnected events in Paris where a physicist dies after performing a laboratory experiment for a beautiful visitor. In the jungles of Malaysia a mysterious buyer purchases deadly cavitation technology, built to his specification.

In Vancouver a small research submarine is leased for use in the waters off New Guinea, and in Tokyo an intelligence agent tries to understand what it all means. California also comes into focus as we discover the National Environment Resource Centre, a fictitious environmental organization, is planning a gigantic world-wide conspiracy incorporating catastrophes to simulate imagined impacts of a sudden climate change. At the heart of this conspiracy is Nick Drake, head of a radical environmentalist group. Outraged that a significant source of funding has been closed by the donors, getting Drakes science debunked by a MIT professor, Drake sets out on a murderous course that is designed to both do away with his detractors and enemies while concomitantly creating a profound state of fear about global warming among the public. Our heroes, male and female, led by John Kenner, manage to scotch the evil doings of their egomaniac chief, Nicholas Drake – but just barely. Drake and his followers trigger a series of natural disasters, including a super-size hurricane and gigantic 60 foot tsunami-like waves that would hit California; these disasters would be timed to occur at the time of a big media conference, thereby awakening the public to the dangers of climate change by Global Warming. In the process, Kenner and company survive all sorts of perils, from frostbite and death by multiple lightening strikes to captivity by cannibals in the South Pacific. As is generally the case with Crichton, an avalanche of scientific data is conveyed in his usual informative yet entertaining manner. Many, as I did, will debate the validity of Crichton’s ‘science’ as regards the issue of global warming. In fact I’ve since spent hours researching global warming, comparing and contrasting Crichton’s theory against scientific fact, although it may sound boring it’s fascinating reading as many influences on the climate are so poorly known.
As Crichton so deftly displays in this novel, this issue has become more political than scientific in many ways and there is no reason this novel wont be analyzed in that light.
The story has all the traditional strengths and weakness of a Crichton novel, he is an accomplished technician and that comes through. It can justifiably be called a page-turner, and although I was on holiday recently I read this book transfixed, until I had finished every page. I suspect that Crichton is motivated by the same anger of so many of us – to see a science misused for political purposes or just to gain grants from government foundations.
However, the methodology of using characters to do the education creates a scenario wherein the characters become somewhat robotic and predictable, not truly fully fleshed out human beings and at times I felt Crichton was using this story purely as a vehicle for his own theories.
However that’s me quibbling. This is a very fine novel. I suspect one’s enjoyment will be colored to a degree with how one leans to, or away from Crichton’s premise. It may also, hopefully, cause many of us to research the ‘truth’ on global warming. I hope this book is read by Senators like McCain and Lieberman in the US, and in my country, England; by Britain’s science advisor Sir David King who says that cities like London, New York and New Orleans will be among the first to go if the Greenland ice cap and Antarctica melted. Although Crichton displays no political agenda, his book will strengthen the position of President Bush in turning down the Kyoto Protocol. That aside this ranks as one of his better works.
Published by Harper Collins in paperback price: $7.99