Fear is such a subjective phenomenon. What frightens me is very different than what frightens my wife or some of my friends. Some are chilled by tales of the supernatural yet completely innured to the horrifying thiings happening in the real world around them.

L. Ron Hubbard's novel places the hero of the tale into a predicament where he can't tell whether the terrifying visions he is having are real or imagined. His rational mind dismisses what he sees as malaria produced hallucinations. But he is baffled by the real world evidence of the visions, such as the bruises and marks on his body, his torn clothing, and, most of all, his lost fedora. Hubbard clears things up with his twist ending. Or does he?

Reading this Hubbard was an experience quite distinct from reading [Battlefield Earth]. But both were surprising. In this horror yarn, Hubbard reads much like Robert Louis Stevenson or H. G. Wells. I may not read many of his other works, but this was worth the time.

Bottom Line: A sold psychological thriller, in the tradition of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. ( )

Fear is one of those mind-twisting kinds of books I like so much. Here, L. Ron Hubbard tells us the story of a college professor's decent in to hell after writing an article decrying the belief in supernatural evil. It turns out that his article brought him to the attention of some evil beings who want to teach him differently. This is not, of course, a comfortable experience.

Hubbard's not one of my favorite writers, but Fear is quite good. His characters are interesting, and I really like the imagery he uses when he's leading us through the more surreal experiences. And his ending really stops the reader short and makes the whole book suddenly twist into something larger. ( )

I started reading this just to try it and see what it was about. It was on the list for a Halloween group reading in which I was participating, but I planned to quickly abandon the book if I didn't like it.

I really didn't think that it would be my cup of tea. I didn't expect to like it, even though the dust jacket contained glowing recommendations from Stephen King, Ray Bradbury, and Isaac Asimov -- all favorite writers of mine.

The writing style seemed somehow odd to me, from the start. Other than the seemingly odd style (the nature of which I can't quite explain), the story seemed normal enough for the first chapter. Then it got really, really weird in a hurry. It was bizarre, it was unreal, it was madness . . .

I couldn't put it down; read straight through to the end, way past midnight.

I can't exactly say I enjoyed it, but I needed to see where the heck he was going with this crazy story. Then the ending really threw me for a loop, and I had to look back for a few minutes and try to re-think the story with the ending in mind.

A quick, suspenseful read with a killer of a surprise ending. ( )

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Fear, such a subjective thing, and yet, Hubbard manages here to, at times, make fear a shared and culumative experience. To those experienced in unbased terror, panic attacks, and sudden fits of horror brought on by seemingly nothing in our own reality, "Fear" will be a trip down a familiar lane. The main character, Mr. Lowry turns from a man who refutes the existence of demons and devils, to one who is reduced by the seeming manifestations of evil to a superstitious quivering non-effectual entity. Slowly the fear is faced and conquered, but to what end? Sanity returns but a new reality has beset Mr. Lowry! "Fear" is an entertaining ride, most assuredly, as I, as many have, I'm sure, read it in one sitting, which as we know, only the decent books are able to provide such a mode for concentrated energies. In the end, I felt like I had read a mystery novel that concluded evil, or more precisely invisible evil, meaning devils, in the end, manifest evil by temporal and natural mean. ( )