Like most of laymons stuff, a fun quick read. The ending is kinda dissapointing. ( )

I'm really digging Richard Laymon. His stuff is fast paced, horroriffic and pervy. The Woods Are Dark is all that stuff and more! This is the 2nd Laymon book I've read, Traveling Vampire Show being the first. I'm definitely going to read more. ( )

The Woods are Dark opens with a bang. Two girls motoring their way to Yosemite in an MG slam on the brakes when something crawls out of the woods This monster turns and throws a severed hand into the car. Wow! Unfortunately Laymon immediately blows it. The girls take panicky flight down the road to the next town. Once there do they search out the police? No, they go to a diner and eat burgers while laughing over the onion breath they'll have. This is Richard Laymon folks. If you want rationality you are in the wrong place.

This is Laymon’s take on the ‘City folks go into the woods where Bad Things happen’ horror sub-genre (see Jack Ketchum’s Off Season and Ed Lee’s The Backwoods for other examples). I’m a sucker for this type of story so I have probably given this book a higher rating than it otherwise deserves.

In all honesty, the short version of this review would read ‘This is not a very good book’. All of Laymon’s worst predilections are on display here. The characters don’t react in any rational way to the situations they find themselves in. They decide that when being chased through the woods by bloodthirsty, murderous cannibals, a good idea is to get nude and stay that way. Really, the characters aren’t even characters. Except for a guy named Lander Dills, they don’t have any sort of individuality to them. The plotting gives the feeling that Laymon was making it up on the fly. Important plot elements are either unexplained or under explained. At least I only counted the word ‘rump’ five or six times.

So yeah, The Woods are Dark really is crap. But damned if it doesn't grab my attention anyway. At 250 pages I would have finished the book in a single read if life didn't intrude. The book managed to hook me. Richard Laymon was in many ways not a very good writer, but he was a master of breathless pacing and The Woods are Dark is Laymon firing on all cylinders. The characters' lives are constantly teetering on the edge. Unlike a lot of writers, Laymon won’t blink at bumping of a major character two thirds of the way through the book, so you never know what is going to happen next. I tore through the book, wanting to see what would happen.

It's sort of like the book version of one of those bad '80's slasher movies (a Dario Argento movie for instance) that really are terrible, but are fun if you have a taste for that sort of thing. ( )

Krull eat people. Krull bad. Book bad. Krull say, no read bad horror book.

Ugh. ( )

When two parties, Neala and Sherri, The Dill family and Cordelia’s boyfriend, get caught, they are chained up to six dead trees. But one of the capturers, Johnny Robins, comes back to save them. As soon as he finishes releasing them, the Krulls start attacking. They start getting separated. One of them, Ruth Dills, gets caught and here husband Lander Dills, goes back to save her. Meanwhile Cordelia Dills and her boyfriend Ben wait for there parents to catch up. Johnny, Neala, and Sherri go on ahead. But while separated people get killed and one gets captures. And more on the history and life of the Krulls is revealed.

What I liked best was the jam-packed suspense scenes. My favorite character was Lander Dill. He is funny, poetic, and is pretty good at killing Krulls.

Review by Jimmy D. Oldner

http://j-kaye-book-blog.blogspot.com ( )