Sepulchre

Product Information

Not frightening in the sense most would take the emotion today, but a good, slow-moving character study. Interred in the Majdanek concentration camp for (reluctantly) bringing food to the Polish resistance, starvation drove him to eat the flesh of corpses. I have read lots of ancient Egyptian horror, Cabala horror, Babylonian horror, even Aztec horror, but this was my first Sumerian horror story. Through an underground secret passage, he found a concealed pit to hold the preserved heart of Bel-Marduk.

There was an extra chapter that was removed from the novel by Herbert himself, which you can read within Herbert's biography - Devil In The Dark. After a point, it's just too clear that there's a man behind the curtain doing the splatter painting.Some Herbert fans favouring his early more graphic horror work may possibly be easily frustrated or feel let down as it does take a long while for the story to get anywhere near to exhibiting any elements of horror, as it opens out a tale of this international company and their highly valuable secret asset, a bizarre Mr. Sepulchre follows the "hero" Halloran as he works to stop an unknown force from kidnapping or assassinating his client.

Halloran will combat men who thrive on physical corruptions; he will find love of a perverse nature; he will confront his soul's own darkness. With his third novel, the ghost story The Survivor, Herbert used supernatural horror rather than the science fiction horror of his first two books. there's no real explanation given for the lake 'monsters' (although horror fans can probably make up their own minds! Unfortunately, Sepulchre, my introduction to the man, nails the "not great" part of that better than the "fun" one. From what we actually see, Halloran thinks of nothing but being a professional and perfect bodyguard, acts in the most professional manner, and the only thing he works to prevent harder than security breaches is actual character development.

I haven't even read the book as this was just too good to listen too, and I highly recommend it too anyone even if your not a serious horror fan like myself. Structurally, one imagines that the horror portion's meant to be a slow building of atmosphere and dread, that the thriller is meant to be giving us time and subtle clues to work out some elaborate web of deception for ourselves. There is, by my count, a single plot twist in the novel, which makes me wonder if the London Free Press review ( presenting more plot twists and turns than one has fingers) was written by a no-fingered man.

Connections begin to slowly be made, linking together oddities to form a much larger and more elaborate picture than was initially visualised.

Not Me This Time: While Dieter Stuhr initially appears to have been tortured and killed just for the fun of it by some of Kline's warped followers, the real culprit is IRA hitman Danny Shay, to find Halloran. Typical Herbert novel where he lets you get inside the heads of multiple characters, which I particularly like. Also, those who prefer their horror along the lines of Shirley Jackson or Outer Limits should avoid it.