Moon

I was expecting this to be a "not to be read in the evenings" kind of book. I was suprised to find it wasn't actually that scary - particularly compared with other books I have read by the same author. It was much more a crime thriller than a traditional horror story. Some aspects of it are pretty graphic and unpleasant but there isn't anything particularly frightening about it. As a crime thriller it's not bad, the psychic element makes it quite original. It is very dated, the main character is a computer science teacher and this book really shows how far we have come IT-wise in the last 25 years.

Jon Childes has found a peaceful life. He lives on one of the Channel Islands, working at three different schools teaching computer science. His ex-wife and daughter live in England, but he’s found a new relationship with a fellow teacher, Amy Sebire. He hopes the horror from his past is gone forever.

But it’s not. Once again, the psychic visions are occurring. Once again, he’s made a connection with the mind of a vicious murderer. When this happened before, Childes was able to convince a police detective that he was for real, and together they caught the killer. The visions and the stress they caused were the cause of his marriage collapsing. This time, not only is he seeing what the murderer is doing, but the killer is aware of show more Childes, too. And he wants to hurt him. He is making his way closer and closer to Childes, hurting the people he cares about.

There is an air of constant menace to this book. Despite a good number of scenes taking place in daytime, I felt it was always dark. The atmosphere was very well done. Sadly, I did not much like Childes, and the women in the story are not fleshed out at all- his ex-wife is frankly unbelievable. Good for a dark read but not great. show less

An interesting take on psychic powers, and some interesting twists to keep you guessing until the end of a fairly entertaining read. It does have the feeling of a 1980s BBC drama but there are some very good, very suspenseful sequences. It’s difficult to get any further into the characters because I don’t think they’re particularly well fleshed out nor deep but it’s still an enjoyable read.

Although I enjoyed this book which had a good plot I found it not to be one of my favourites from James Herbert. I thought the lead character to be a bit wishy-washy and that there was too much emphasis on the 'love' scenes. If I had wanted graphic sex descriptions I would have chosen a different type of book.

Why has it taken me so long to read anything by James Herbert? O thoroughly enjoyed this and will definitely be reading more of his works.

3.5

The second half was interesting and hard to put down, it was just the first part was hard to get into. Review soon.

Herbert delivers a great story. A must for any diehard fan!