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Enter, Night
Welcome to Parr's Landing, Population 1,528... and shrinking. The year is 1972. Widowed Christina Parr, her daughter Morgan, and her brother-in-law Jeremy have returned to the remote northern Ontario mining town of Parr's Landing, the place from which Christina fled before Morgan was born, seeking refuge. Dr. Billy Lightning has also returned in search of answers to the mystery of his father's brutal murder. All will find some version of what they seek - and more. Built on the site of a decimated 17th-century Jesuit mission to the Ojibwa, Parr's Landing is a town with secrets of its own buried in the caves around Bradley Lake. A three-hundred-year-old vampire is slumbering there, calling out to the insane and the murderous for centuries, begging for release - an invitation that has finally been answered. One man is following that voice, cutting a murderous swath across the country, bent on a terrible resurrection of the ancient horror... plunging the town and all its people into an endless night.
407 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2011
About the author
Michael Rowe
61 books86 followersMichael Rowe is an independent international journalist who has lived in Beirut, Havana, Geneva, and Paris.
His work has appeared in the National Post, The Globe & Mail, The United Church Observer and numerous other publications. He has been a finalist for both the Canadian National Magazine Award and the Associated Church Press Award in the United States. The author of several books, including Writing Below the Belt, a critically acclaimed study of censorship, pornography, and popular culture, and the essay collections Looking For Brothers and Other Men's Sons, which won the 2008 Randy Shilts Award for Nonfiction, he has also won the Lambda Literary Award. He is currently a contributing writer to The Advocate and a political blogger for The Huffington Post.
--from the author's website
His work has appeared in the National Post, The Globe & Mail, The United Church Observer and numerous other publications. He has been a finalist for both the Canadian National Magazine Award and the Associated Church Press Award in the United States. The author of several books, including Writing Below the Belt, a critically acclaimed study of censorship, pornography, and popular culture, and the essay collections Looking For Brothers and Other Men's Sons, which won the 2008 Randy Shilts Award for Nonfiction, he has also won the Lambda Literary Award. He is currently a contributing writer to The Advocate and a political blogger for The Huffington Post.
--from the author's website
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 163 reviews
June 5, 2017
4.5 stars!
A friend of mine in the Amazon Horror Forum recommended that I read this book. It took me a while, but I finally did. It was amazing!
Parr's Landing. The recently widowed Christina is headed there, with her daughter Morgan and brother-in-law Jeremy. The town from which Christina and her husband Jack fled when Christina realized she was pregnant, 15 some odd years ago. I loved the characters of Christina, Jeremy and Morgan. I loved this passage:
"Christina had been dreaming of Jack almost nightly in the nine months since the accident. The dreams varied in scale and intensity like music, from the highest soprano pitch of remembered fragments of joy, to the deepest, lowest basso profundo of grief and loss. From the latter, she would wake up sobbing, her throat dry and raw as though she had been swallowing graveyard dirt, feeling as if she were buried alive, and the darkness of her bedroom a sealed, airless coffin."
Christina and Jeremy HATE Parr's Landing, mostly due to Jeremy's mother, Adeline Parr. A harsher bitch you could not find. Her lofty airs and her superior attitude made her a character I could hardly stand to read about. The town is named after her and she won't let anyone ever forget it. Unfortunately, between them Jeremy and Christina can barely scrape together a dime, so they have no choice but to go back home to the town and the woman they both hate.
Once they all arrive, the weirdness begins. I don't want to spoil anything, but I will throw out the words Wendigo, Ojibwa, vampires and ancient evil. The story accelerates quickly at this point and it was quite difficult to put this book down. The prose is outstanding as is the character development.
As the story progresses, one can't help but think about other books that are similar. Salem's Lot for instance. However, the ideas in this book are unique and in my opinion, it gives Salem's Lot a run for its money.
Overall, I am jacked about this book! Thanks to my friend J.K, over at Amazon for bringing this book to my attention. I will definitely be reading the next book from this author. I highly recommend Enter, Night. You won't be disappointed.
A friend of mine in the Amazon Horror Forum recommended that I read this book. It took me a while, but I finally did. It was amazing!
Parr's Landing. The recently widowed Christina is headed there, with her daughter Morgan and brother-in-law Jeremy. The town from which Christina and her husband Jack fled when Christina realized she was pregnant, 15 some odd years ago. I loved the characters of Christina, Jeremy and Morgan. I loved this passage:
"Christina had been dreaming of Jack almost nightly in the nine months since the accident. The dreams varied in scale and intensity like music, from the highest soprano pitch of remembered fragments of joy, to the deepest, lowest basso profundo of grief and loss. From the latter, she would wake up sobbing, her throat dry and raw as though she had been swallowing graveyard dirt, feeling as if she were buried alive, and the darkness of her bedroom a sealed, airless coffin."
Christina and Jeremy HATE Parr's Landing, mostly due to Jeremy's mother, Adeline Parr. A harsher bitch you could not find. Her lofty airs and her superior attitude made her a character I could hardly stand to read about. The town is named after her and she won't let anyone ever forget it. Unfortunately, between them Jeremy and Christina can barely scrape together a dime, so they have no choice but to go back home to the town and the woman they both hate.
Once they all arrive, the weirdness begins. I don't want to spoil anything, but I will throw out the words Wendigo, Ojibwa, vampires and ancient evil. The story accelerates quickly at this point and it was quite difficult to put this book down. The prose is outstanding as is the character development.
As the story progresses, one can't help but think about other books that are similar. Salem's Lot for instance. However, the ideas in this book are unique and in my opinion, it gives Salem's Lot a run for its money.
Overall, I am jacked about this book! Thanks to my friend J.K, over at Amazon for bringing this book to my attention. I will definitely be reading the next book from this author. I highly recommend Enter, Night. You won't be disappointed.
August 10, 2018
Michael Rowe crafts a vampire tale. he's not trying to reinvent the wheel, so the narrative and characters are pretty standard: small town with a dark history; vampire issues a siren call to a psychotic Renfield type; wise outsider warns of danger to come; a troubled family in peril; isolated murders are followed by wholesale slaughter. Rowe is a skilled writer so the story is very well-told. his strongest talent: depth of characterization.
that strength is also at the root of the novel's greatest weakness. Rowe spends so much time giving so many different characters a deep and often (unnecessarily) tragic background, usually right before they are dispatched. it was surprising the first time it happened - a bus driver killed within the initial pages - and then it happened again. and again. and again. honestly it became ridiculous. of course stakes are raised (lol) when we care about characters who are in danger or who die... but there's a limit. the unusually in-depth characterization given to nearly every minor and major character went from odd to absurd to wearying to depressing to objectionable and sorta disgusting. e.g. I'm not the kind of reader who wants to read all about - because that shit's not only over the top sadistic, it's revolting to read on a human level. pointlessly cruel. ugh, Rowe, ugh! why?? and that's just one of many examples.
despite its strong start and the obvious talents of the author, this would be a 1 star read for me. except for one big thing: a thrilling novella tacked on at the end. this is the origin story, of sorts, for the vampire. it takes place in 17th century Canada and describes the ordeals suffered by a Catholic missionary ("black robe") searching for a fellow priest, last seen at a desolate and now abandoned Native village. this was an awesome story! eerie, atmospheric, genuinely scary at times, perfectly accomplished.
this rather traditional tale had one thing I've never read in a vampire story: anyway, that was a first!
that strength is also at the root of the novel's greatest weakness. Rowe spends so much time giving so many different characters a deep and often (unnecessarily) tragic background, usually right before they are dispatched. it was surprising the first time it happened - a bus driver killed within the initial pages - and then it happened again. and again. and again. honestly it became ridiculous. of course stakes are raised (lol) when we care about characters who are in danger or who die... but there's a limit. the unusually in-depth characterization given to nearly every minor and major character went from odd to absurd to wearying to depressing to objectionable and sorta disgusting. e.g. I'm not the kind of reader who wants to read all about - because that shit's not only over the top sadistic, it's revolting to read on a human level. pointlessly cruel. ugh, Rowe, ugh! why?? and that's just one of many examples.
despite its strong start and the obvious talents of the author, this would be a 1 star read for me. except for one big thing: a thrilling novella tacked on at the end. this is the origin story, of sorts, for the vampire. it takes place in 17th century Canada and describes the ordeals suffered by a Catholic missionary ("black robe") searching for a fellow priest, last seen at a desolate and now abandoned Native village. this was an awesome story! eerie, atmospheric, genuinely scary at times, perfectly accomplished.
this rather traditional tale had one thing I've never read in a vampire story: anyway, that was a first!
October 4, 2014
Vampire fiction. Just whisper the words and they’re likely to evoke groans from horror readers, writers and editors across the globe. Let’s face it, the vampire is a character which—pardon the expression—has been done to death. Of course, every once in a while, a King or a Rice or a Brite comes along and unexpectedly re-invents the old vamp, giving him back his teeth and his terror, but then hundreds of sub-par copycats inevitably follow, flooding the market with sparkly, erotic or just plain pornographic vampires who lack bite as well as literary merit. Understandably, respect for vampires falls dormant and the welcome mat at publishing houses is withdrawn. Despite this cycle, there are always those authors unafraid of tackling the subject; luckily, for readers, Michael Rowe is one of them, his debut novel Enter, Night beautifully capturing a feeling and horror and dread long absent from most vampire fiction.
Built on the blood of the displaced Native population and the backs of generations of its residents, Parr’s Landing, in 1972, is a ghost of a community, its gold mines long run dry, opportunities scarce and the people wanting nothing more than to find a way out. Fifteen years earlier, Christina Parr and her husband were one of the few to escape the suffocating confines of the town, one ruled with an iron fist by matriarch Adeline Parr. Not long after, Christina’s brother-in-law Jeremy also escaped after a gruesome attempt at gay reparative therapy forced upon him by the controlling Adeline. Following the death of her husband, however, Christina, her teenage daughter Morgan, and Jeremy have no other choice but to return to the Landing to live under the roof and constant eye of the woman from whom they had once fled. But Adeline Parr isn’t the only thing Christina and her family has to fear; for far beneath the ruined mines of Parr’s landing lurks a horrific being who has just been awakened after 300 years.
Enter, Night may be Michael Rowe’s debut novel, but Rowe is far from a neophyte. A life-long devotee of all things horror, a seasoned editor, short-story writer and journalist, Rowe has numerous awards under his belt for both his fiction and non-fiction work; so it’s not surprising that Rowe’s freshman outing has a maturity and style about it that puts other first time novelists to shame. His prose is lean but at the same time lush, evoking not only a sense of time and place, but also an atmosphere of intense suspense. In his hands, Parr’s Landing and the surrounding countryside come alive, transforming into characters in their own right.
At night, Parr’s Landing breathes in its population and doesn’t exhale them until morning.
This skill isn’t limited to the setting. Rowe likewise has a deft hand when it comes to creating characters whom we understand. We may find them endearing or infuriating, but never boring or one-dimensional. And this applies evenly to all the characters, not just our “leads.” Even the most minor of characters are rich and deep; while they may be little more than vampire fodder within the plot, they are never, ever disposable in Rowe’s hands. We feel each of their “deaths” immensely because Rowe finds the details in their lives that resonate with the reader. He opens them up (sometimes literally) so that we see all of them. And it is this penchant for making the reader care about each and every character that makes the horror and tension more palpable. Because in this novel, every single character is at risk. We feel it almost from the moment we meet them and the loss of each one—even those we fear will disappear—is felt deeply. Take, for example, the following, which reveals a relatively minor character, Jordan:
Late at night, Jordan sometimes heard his parents arguing through the wall of his bedroom. His father’s voice would rise and Jordan would catch words like normal and wrong and dreamer and other boys in between his father’s raw profanity...His mother’s voice would rise in answer. Jordan heard words like someone and out of this town and success. And dreams, which sounded like a completely different word when his mother said it.
That passage tells us a lot about Jordan and while we may think we know where the author is taking the character, Rowe always manages to throw in a bit of a curve. And this extends to the major characters as well. Though matriarch Adeline may at first seem a stock horror character, Rowe imbues her with a depth and history that manages to endear even this cold-hearted bitch to the reader. Christina is a woman shrouded in grief, but hardly in a shambles or a pushover. Jeremy, who has experienced the freedom of gay life back in Toronto, is forced to confront not only the homophobia of small towns, but also the reality of a long lost love whose time may have passed. Add to the mix, young outcast, Finnegan, a comic book nerd whose strength surprises even himself, the aging but appealing Donna and her closeted “beau” Elliot, and the sadistic and insane Richard Weal and you have a brilliant mix of characters that are rich, darkly humorous at times and fascinating through and through.
Rowe also manages to work in a bit of social commentary within the novel, though he does so with a subtle hand. He expertly captures the realities of small time life: how such a life traps one but also how the residents also seem to take comfort in their captivity. He touches on bullying, homophobia, the repercussions and collateral damage of living in the closet and, with the most fascinating character (Dr. William Lightning), the treatment of the Native Canadians and the stereotypes of them that infect small-minded people. Rowe never beats us over the head with it; it’s all there, though, skimming the surface.
Rowe draws on the entire history of classic vampires, from Stoker’s Dracula to the better vampire films and, most importantly, from the amazing work of writers and illustrations like Marv Wolfman, Gene Colan and Tom Palmer—and connects it all both regionally and theoretically to the legend of the Wendigo. But perhaps what Rowe does best of all is to resist the urge so many authors who tackle vampire cannon fail to. Rowe isn’t interested in reinventing the vampire, on putting his “unique stamp” on the lore by creating new abilities or making them little more than whining, introspective gadabouts. You’ll find no vampires walking around in the daylight, or eating meals at the local malt shop, or getting married to their high school sweetheart. His vampires aren’t interested in discovering why they are they way they are, what great sins lead them to their lot in life. Rowe’s vampires still fear the symbols of Christianity, still must be invited into a house, still fall prey the slings and arrows affecting the most historic of vampires. They are fierce, brutal, enigmatic, appealing and terrifying.
In the end, Rowe manages to do what so many others writing “vampire fiction” fail to...he creates an astoundingly creepy, violent, atmospheric and frightening novel that not only pays homage to the literary and cinematic past, but also manages to restore the vampire to his former and deserving glory. Highly, highly recommended. (4.5 stars)
Built on the blood of the displaced Native population and the backs of generations of its residents, Parr’s Landing, in 1972, is a ghost of a community, its gold mines long run dry, opportunities scarce and the people wanting nothing more than to find a way out. Fifteen years earlier, Christina Parr and her husband were one of the few to escape the suffocating confines of the town, one ruled with an iron fist by matriarch Adeline Parr. Not long after, Christina’s brother-in-law Jeremy also escaped after a gruesome attempt at gay reparative therapy forced upon him by the controlling Adeline. Following the death of her husband, however, Christina, her teenage daughter Morgan, and Jeremy have no other choice but to return to the Landing to live under the roof and constant eye of the woman from whom they had once fled. But Adeline Parr isn’t the only thing Christina and her family has to fear; for far beneath the ruined mines of Parr’s landing lurks a horrific being who has just been awakened after 300 years.
Enter, Night may be Michael Rowe’s debut novel, but Rowe is far from a neophyte. A life-long devotee of all things horror, a seasoned editor, short-story writer and journalist, Rowe has numerous awards under his belt for both his fiction and non-fiction work; so it’s not surprising that Rowe’s freshman outing has a maturity and style about it that puts other first time novelists to shame. His prose is lean but at the same time lush, evoking not only a sense of time and place, but also an atmosphere of intense suspense. In his hands, Parr’s Landing and the surrounding countryside come alive, transforming into characters in their own right.
At night, Parr’s Landing breathes in its population and doesn’t exhale them until morning.
This skill isn’t limited to the setting. Rowe likewise has a deft hand when it comes to creating characters whom we understand. We may find them endearing or infuriating, but never boring or one-dimensional. And this applies evenly to all the characters, not just our “leads.” Even the most minor of characters are rich and deep; while they may be little more than vampire fodder within the plot, they are never, ever disposable in Rowe’s hands. We feel each of their “deaths” immensely because Rowe finds the details in their lives that resonate with the reader. He opens them up (sometimes literally) so that we see all of them. And it is this penchant for making the reader care about each and every character that makes the horror and tension more palpable. Because in this novel, every single character is at risk. We feel it almost from the moment we meet them and the loss of each one—even those we fear will disappear—is felt deeply. Take, for example, the following, which reveals a relatively minor character, Jordan:
Late at night, Jordan sometimes heard his parents arguing through the wall of his bedroom. His father’s voice would rise and Jordan would catch words like normal and wrong and dreamer and other boys in between his father’s raw profanity...His mother’s voice would rise in answer. Jordan heard words like someone and out of this town and success. And dreams, which sounded like a completely different word when his mother said it.
That passage tells us a lot about Jordan and while we may think we know where the author is taking the character, Rowe always manages to throw in a bit of a curve. And this extends to the major characters as well. Though matriarch Adeline may at first seem a stock horror character, Rowe imbues her with a depth and history that manages to endear even this cold-hearted bitch to the reader. Christina is a woman shrouded in grief, but hardly in a shambles or a pushover. Jeremy, who has experienced the freedom of gay life back in Toronto, is forced to confront not only the homophobia of small towns, but also the reality of a long lost love whose time may have passed. Add to the mix, young outcast, Finnegan, a comic book nerd whose strength surprises even himself, the aging but appealing Donna and her closeted “beau” Elliot, and the sadistic and insane Richard Weal and you have a brilliant mix of characters that are rich, darkly humorous at times and fascinating through and through.
Rowe also manages to work in a bit of social commentary within the novel, though he does so with a subtle hand. He expertly captures the realities of small time life: how such a life traps one but also how the residents also seem to take comfort in their captivity. He touches on bullying, homophobia, the repercussions and collateral damage of living in the closet and, with the most fascinating character (Dr. William Lightning), the treatment of the Native Canadians and the stereotypes of them that infect small-minded people. Rowe never beats us over the head with it; it’s all there, though, skimming the surface.
Rowe draws on the entire history of classic vampires, from Stoker’s Dracula to the better vampire films and, most importantly, from the amazing work of writers and illustrations like Marv Wolfman, Gene Colan and Tom Palmer—and connects it all both regionally and theoretically to the legend of the Wendigo. But perhaps what Rowe does best of all is to resist the urge so many authors who tackle vampire cannon fail to. Rowe isn’t interested in reinventing the vampire, on putting his “unique stamp” on the lore by creating new abilities or making them little more than whining, introspective gadabouts. You’ll find no vampires walking around in the daylight, or eating meals at the local malt shop, or getting married to their high school sweetheart. His vampires aren’t interested in discovering why they are they way they are, what great sins lead them to their lot in life. Rowe’s vampires still fear the symbols of Christianity, still must be invited into a house, still fall prey the slings and arrows affecting the most historic of vampires. They are fierce, brutal, enigmatic, appealing and terrifying.
In the end, Rowe manages to do what so many others writing “vampire fiction” fail to...he creates an astoundingly creepy, violent, atmospheric and frightening novel that not only pays homage to the literary and cinematic past, but also manages to restore the vampire to his former and deserving glory. Highly, highly recommended. (4.5 stars)
December 20, 2020
4.5 Stars
But first on earth, as Vampyre sent,
Thy corpse shall from its tomb be rent,
Then ghastly haunt thy native place,
And suck the blood of all thy race;
- Byron, The Giaour
I love vampire novels. I love the short stories, the tomes, the tales and I loved this book.
This story blends a lot of the traditional vampire myths with a good 70's horror movie feel. We get the isolation; small town hokies, scenes from the past and a mounting fear of what will happen next; and an ending.
There was a nice build-up of the vampire infiltration with a nice backstory at the end of the book. I like that stuff.
I no longer get creeped out by or scared of books and could read this with minimal lighting, but I can see where others would be. I think it is just my cold, dark heart.
But first on earth, as Vampyre sent,
Thy corpse shall from its tomb be rent,
Then ghastly haunt thy native place,
And suck the blood of all thy race;
- Byron, The Giaour
I love vampire novels. I love the short stories, the tomes, the tales and I loved this book.
This story blends a lot of the traditional vampire myths with a good 70's horror movie feel. We get the isolation; small town hokies, scenes from the past and a mounting fear of what will happen next; and an ending.
There was a nice build-up of the vampire infiltration with a nice backstory at the end of the book. I like that stuff.
I no longer get creeped out by or scared of books and could read this with minimal lighting, but I can see where others would be. I think it is just my cold, dark heart.
March 31, 2013
I like horror, I really do. I'm not a literary snob. I don't frown upon vampires or zombies or ghouls. That said, there is a lot of awful stuff being published in the genre, and I don't get it. Genre fiction can be well-written and original, it doesn't have to be clichéd and formulaic, so why is it? Finding quality horror - or supernaturalistic fiction, or speculative fiction or whatever you want to call it - is hard. When I do find it, I'm excessively excited and grateful and keep chirping about it for anyone who'll listen. "See, it can be done! And this is how!"
I had high hopes for Enter, Night, having read some glowing reviews. It had so much potential: the 70's small town setting in rural Ontario, a couple of interesting characters and a nice, creepy atmosphere, but it all added up to nothing. Rowe tries hard to give his characters a back story and some depth, but then lets them dissolve into shrill, overblown stereotypes (the sarcastic gay man, the noble Native American, the super-evil matriarch, the lovable nerdy kid and his faithful labrador). The metaphors are heavy-handed and the dialogue clunky. Much is made of the intolerant small-town mentality and the abuse suffered by the main players, but there is no catharsis or development. No horror, either - just a campy bloodfest that made me chuckle. The vampires are comic book vamps who obediently crumble when faced with religious artefacts and wooden stakes, and go poof when touched by daylight.
Perhaps it would work better as a movie. Or a horror musical, where the kitschiness could be safely unleashed.
I had high hopes for Enter, Night, having read some glowing reviews. It had so much potential: the 70's small town setting in rural Ontario, a couple of interesting characters and a nice, creepy atmosphere, but it all added up to nothing. Rowe tries hard to give his characters a back story and some depth, but then lets them dissolve into shrill, overblown stereotypes (the sarcastic gay man, the noble Native American, the super-evil matriarch, the lovable nerdy kid and his faithful labrador). The metaphors are heavy-handed and the dialogue clunky. Much is made of the intolerant small-town mentality and the abuse suffered by the main players, but there is no catharsis or development. No horror, either - just a campy bloodfest that made me chuckle. The vampires are comic book vamps who obediently crumble when faced with religious artefacts and wooden stakes, and go poof when touched by daylight.
Perhaps it would work better as a movie. Or a horror musical, where the kitschiness could be safely unleashed.
April 19, 2014
This is an ambitious homage to Stephen King’s Salem’s Lot, with some effectively gruesome setpieces. Michael Rowe does a Game of Thrones on his large, varied cast. The fact that so many of the main characters’ fates conclude in the wings of the story was very frustrating, as it negates the reader’s emotional investment.
I was also quite alarmed at the particularly diabolical treatment of the two lonely gay characters in the novel, which read uncomfortably like some kind of infernal judgement of their sexuality, seen as being as abnormal as vampirism. But that is probably my own interpretation.
Apart from the gay storyline, Rowe has gone out of his way to write as ploddingly conventional a vampire novel as he could, with none of the tricks or inversions so beloved of modern horror. The entire Bram Stoker checklist is resolutely signposted, from the aversion to crosses and holy water to the nest and changing into bats.
There is a lot of Stephen King in here, from the quite gorgeous nature writing to the presence of saintlike children and animals, who get to save the day (but who survive as haunted adults, doomed to return to their loss of innocence).
For me, strangely enough, the best part of the book was one of the addenda, ‘Being the Last True Testament and Relation of Father Alphonse Nyon’, which is an effective (and affecting) pastiche of Black Robe by Brian Moore.
What puzzled me about this ending, which portrays the beginning of the story, as it were, is that Father Nyon clearly gets bitten by a vampire urchin, but does not become a vampire himself. Heck, even the family dog becomes a vampire, so this seems a strange lapse of Rowe’s strict logic.
Still, there is great potential here. I would love to see Rowe unfetter himself from the horror genre, which can be deeply formulaic and conservative, and write about what truly terrifies him, no holds barred. Now that would be a great tribute to Stephen King.
I was also quite alarmed at the particularly diabolical treatment of the two lonely gay characters in the novel, which read uncomfortably like some kind of infernal judgement of their sexuality, seen as being as abnormal as vampirism. But that is probably my own interpretation.
Apart from the gay storyline, Rowe has gone out of his way to write as ploddingly conventional a vampire novel as he could, with none of the tricks or inversions so beloved of modern horror. The entire Bram Stoker checklist is resolutely signposted, from the aversion to crosses and holy water to the nest and changing into bats.
There is a lot of Stephen King in here, from the quite gorgeous nature writing to the presence of saintlike children and animals, who get to save the day (but who survive as haunted adults, doomed to return to their loss of innocence).
For me, strangely enough, the best part of the book was one of the addenda, ‘Being the Last True Testament and Relation of Father Alphonse Nyon’, which is an effective (and affecting) pastiche of Black Robe by Brian Moore.
What puzzled me about this ending, which portrays the beginning of the story, as it were, is that Father Nyon clearly gets bitten by a vampire urchin, but does not become a vampire himself. Heck, even the family dog becomes a vampire, so this seems a strange lapse of Rowe’s strict logic.
Still, there is great potential here. I would love to see Rowe unfetter himself from the horror genre, which can be deeply formulaic and conservative, and write about what truly terrifies him, no holds barred. Now that would be a great tribute to Stephen King.
November 26, 2011
From my blog, The Devil's Exercise Yard:
I remember when I first read Salem's Lot. I suspect that most of you do - at least those of you in your 40s, who grew up in the 1970s and 80s and were immune to the not-so-subtle charms of disco, citizens band radios and pet rocks.
I picked up the paperback of Stephen King's early vampire novel in the lineup of a supermarket -- drawn in by its gloriously monochrome, sparkle-free, embossed cover depicting a little girl with a single red drop of blood leaking out of her mouth. Diving into King's terrifying, humane, and ever-so-slightly flawed tale of blood suckers and small town living was a seminal reading experience for me. After finishing it, I remember walking the streets of Richmond Hill, Ontario, deliciously imagining how I would fight the vampire infestation in the same way that zombie hobbyists these days try to figure out how to cope with a world where the dead walk.
Other vampire novels read subsequently didn't really do the job for me in the same way. Interview With A Vampire was more saddening than terrifying in its vampires'-eye view of the world; I Am Legend, which is sort of a vampire novel, was certainly relentless as anything that King set down, but Richard Matheson's tale didn't convey to me the richness of character and setting that let Salem's Lot so colonize my imagination. Stoker's novel came closest -- and yes, yes, I will concede it -- Dracula is formally superior to Salem's Lot. But there is something in King's rubbing of that old tombstone that enlarges the original.
All of this is a round-about way to start telling you about another vampire novel that is very definitely a loving tribute to the vampires and vampire hunters in Salem's Lot, and is also very much more than that.
I'm talking here about Michael Rowe's new novel, just out - Enter, Night. As a caveat: Michael and I go back a long way, and it does all start with vampires. In the late 1990s, he commissioned a story from me for an anthology of queer-themed vampire stories, and encouraged me to write stories for his ground-breaking queer horror anthologies, Queer Fear. In 2009, he penned a gracious introduction to my story collection Monstrous Affections.
Enter, Night is also out from my own publisher, Toronto's ChiZine Publications. Like all of ChiZine's novels and collections, it is very beautifully put together.
So with all that: you might think that I would be predisposed to rave, on the basis of both friendship and brand loyalty. Fair enough. But please, please, don't let your skepticism get in the way of picking up Enter, Night. Because in addition to all those caveats, the other one is that Michael has written the vampire novel that I have been waiting for. There is no sparkle in his vampires. They are monstrous -- more fearsome, even, than the feral creatures in The Passage, because these vampires aren't just predators. They're appropriately diabolical. They are Evil with a capital E.
But let's not get too tied up with how the vampires live and feel and think. That, I'd say, has been one of the great mis-steps of vampire literature in the last part of the 20th century. The great strength of King's novel, and Rowe's rethinking, is that the real characters that we ought to be concerned about are the humans who haven't yet fallen under the vampires' sway.
In Enter, Night those humans live in and around the small northern Ontario mining town of Parr's Landing, in the early 1970s. The town is built on both a rich vein of silver, and of bloody history: prior to the miners, the area was a draw for Jesuits, and is the site of an abandoned Jesuit mission, now reduced to an archeological site, and a resting place of a Dracula-calibre vampire who's been waiting for the right moment...
Michael gives the vampires their due, but the novel is really about the people. There are a lot of points of view to juggle, but the core of the novel is the Parr family, and how it morphs with the return of Christina Parr, the widow of the family's favourite son, her daughter Morgan, and Jeremy Parr, the homosexual second son. They're dead broke, and that is the only reason they're back, to live in the mansion of Adeline, the far-from-sweet matriarch of the family, and the town. There are others of note: Elliot, closeted police officer with whom Jeremy has unfinished business; Finnigan, a sweet, nerdy boy who comes by his vampire lore from old Tomb of Dracula comics; and Billy Lightning, an aboriginal university professor who comes to Parr's Landing to investigate his adopted father's murder and ultimately charm Christina.
Michael writes these characters from the heart, and they're like a vampire's gaze: once you meet them it's impossible to look away. The long-game strategy of focusing on the living rather than the undead means that when the vampires show up, we as readers feel every bite. The conclusion, when it comes, delivers an emotional payoff that's quite wrenching and very satisfying. If I were to deliver any criticism, it would be to say that the emotional finish overshadows the business of the plot. But because it's so effective, I'm more than willing to call feature rather than bug on this one.
Right before diving into Enter, Night, I had occasion to reread Salem's Lot, aloud. And on that recent reading, the novel's bugs are more apparent. The characters there spend a very long time shuffling their feet and expositing strategy at one another. King writes from the heart too, but sometimes a bit too near to it: in particular, Ben Mears, his prodigal vampire hunter, falls precipitously near Mary-Sue territory. Michael is, to my mind, tugging heart-strings with far greater maturity and discipline, and at points, much deeper resonance.
This is Michael Rowe's first novel. He is now at work on a ghost story. I am intensely curious to see what he does with that. But I'll pass the time waiting, pressing Enter, Night into as many hands as I can.
http://davidnickle.blogspot.com/2011/...
I remember when I first read Salem's Lot. I suspect that most of you do - at least those of you in your 40s, who grew up in the 1970s and 80s and were immune to the not-so-subtle charms of disco, citizens band radios and pet rocks.
I picked up the paperback of Stephen King's early vampire novel in the lineup of a supermarket -- drawn in by its gloriously monochrome, sparkle-free, embossed cover depicting a little girl with a single red drop of blood leaking out of her mouth. Diving into King's terrifying, humane, and ever-so-slightly flawed tale of blood suckers and small town living was a seminal reading experience for me. After finishing it, I remember walking the streets of Richmond Hill, Ontario, deliciously imagining how I would fight the vampire infestation in the same way that zombie hobbyists these days try to figure out how to cope with a world where the dead walk.
Other vampire novels read subsequently didn't really do the job for me in the same way. Interview With A Vampire was more saddening than terrifying in its vampires'-eye view of the world; I Am Legend, which is sort of a vampire novel, was certainly relentless as anything that King set down, but Richard Matheson's tale didn't convey to me the richness of character and setting that let Salem's Lot so colonize my imagination. Stoker's novel came closest -- and yes, yes, I will concede it -- Dracula is formally superior to Salem's Lot. But there is something in King's rubbing of that old tombstone that enlarges the original.
All of this is a round-about way to start telling you about another vampire novel that is very definitely a loving tribute to the vampires and vampire hunters in Salem's Lot, and is also very much more than that.
I'm talking here about Michael Rowe's new novel, just out - Enter, Night. As a caveat: Michael and I go back a long way, and it does all start with vampires. In the late 1990s, he commissioned a story from me for an anthology of queer-themed vampire stories, and encouraged me to write stories for his ground-breaking queer horror anthologies, Queer Fear. In 2009, he penned a gracious introduction to my story collection Monstrous Affections.
Enter, Night is also out from my own publisher, Toronto's ChiZine Publications. Like all of ChiZine's novels and collections, it is very beautifully put together.
So with all that: you might think that I would be predisposed to rave, on the basis of both friendship and brand loyalty. Fair enough. But please, please, don't let your skepticism get in the way of picking up Enter, Night. Because in addition to all those caveats, the other one is that Michael has written the vampire novel that I have been waiting for. There is no sparkle in his vampires. They are monstrous -- more fearsome, even, than the feral creatures in The Passage, because these vampires aren't just predators. They're appropriately diabolical. They are Evil with a capital E.
But let's not get too tied up with how the vampires live and feel and think. That, I'd say, has been one of the great mis-steps of vampire literature in the last part of the 20th century. The great strength of King's novel, and Rowe's rethinking, is that the real characters that we ought to be concerned about are the humans who haven't yet fallen under the vampires' sway.
In Enter, Night those humans live in and around the small northern Ontario mining town of Parr's Landing, in the early 1970s. The town is built on both a rich vein of silver, and of bloody history: prior to the miners, the area was a draw for Jesuits, and is the site of an abandoned Jesuit mission, now reduced to an archeological site, and a resting place of a Dracula-calibre vampire who's been waiting for the right moment...
Michael gives the vampires their due, but the novel is really about the people. There are a lot of points of view to juggle, but the core of the novel is the Parr family, and how it morphs with the return of Christina Parr, the widow of the family's favourite son, her daughter Morgan, and Jeremy Parr, the homosexual second son. They're dead broke, and that is the only reason they're back, to live in the mansion of Adeline, the far-from-sweet matriarch of the family, and the town. There are others of note: Elliot, closeted police officer with whom Jeremy has unfinished business; Finnigan, a sweet, nerdy boy who comes by his vampire lore from old Tomb of Dracula comics; and Billy Lightning, an aboriginal university professor who comes to Parr's Landing to investigate his adopted father's murder and ultimately charm Christina.
Michael writes these characters from the heart, and they're like a vampire's gaze: once you meet them it's impossible to look away. The long-game strategy of focusing on the living rather than the undead means that when the vampires show up, we as readers feel every bite. The conclusion, when it comes, delivers an emotional payoff that's quite wrenching and very satisfying. If I were to deliver any criticism, it would be to say that the emotional finish overshadows the business of the plot. But because it's so effective, I'm more than willing to call feature rather than bug on this one.
Right before diving into Enter, Night, I had occasion to reread Salem's Lot, aloud. And on that recent reading, the novel's bugs are more apparent. The characters there spend a very long time shuffling their feet and expositing strategy at one another. King writes from the heart too, but sometimes a bit too near to it: in particular, Ben Mears, his prodigal vampire hunter, falls precipitously near Mary-Sue territory. Michael is, to my mind, tugging heart-strings with far greater maturity and discipline, and at points, much deeper resonance.
This is Michael Rowe's first novel. He is now at work on a ghost story. I am intensely curious to see what he does with that. But I'll pass the time waiting, pressing Enter, Night into as many hands as I can.
http://davidnickle.blogspot.com/2011/...
July 14, 2017
Something has awakened in the small town of Parrs Landing. And it’s hungry.
This one really had 70’s early 80’s horror vibe to it. I liked the eccentric cast of characters and the pacing was spot on. Interestingly, the ending was a flashback to the beginning and had a much different feel to it as if they were 2 separate stories. Should have been distracting, but somehow managed to stay cohesive.
My first from Mr. Rowe, but not my last.
This one really had 70’s early 80’s horror vibe to it. I liked the eccentric cast of characters and the pacing was spot on. Interestingly, the ending was a flashback to the beginning and had a much different feel to it as if they were 2 separate stories. Should have been distracting, but somehow managed to stay cohesive.
My first from Mr. Rowe, but not my last.
October 19, 2016
Really, really good and when the action kicked in it was great, but... I still have two problems with this story.
One, the opening scene went into way too much detail about a character that had nothing to do with the rest of the novel. Strange and a waste of time.
Two, there are so many unanswered questions at the end. I need a sequel, please! I need to know more of what happens to this town.... now!
One, the opening scene went into way too much detail about a character that had nothing to do with the rest of the novel. Strange and a waste of time.
Two, there are so many unanswered questions at the end. I need a sequel, please! I need to know more of what happens to this town.... now!
April 28, 2012
Wonderful first novel.
Michael Rowe's freshman novel, Enter Night, hearkens back to the modern Golden Age of horror literature of the eighties and early nineties. Though essentially an intimate story, Rowe has managed to impart a much broader scope to the book, creating an epic ambiance reminiscent of King and McCammon in their early years.
Though it opens like a serial killer novel, it soon becomes clear that Enter Night is a vampire piece. Writing in that genre in a post-Twilight world takes both courage and skill and Rowe is admirably up to the task. Rowe's vampires are evil creatures of the night and he cleverly keeps them out of focus throughout; the reader will find no sympathetic cursed ex-aristocrats or tragically handsome and sexually frustrated teeny-boppers with pointy teeth in Rowe's universe!
Perhaps the strongest indication that the reader is in the hands of a budding master novelist is Rowe's amazing prose. At times, the language can only be described as gorgeous if not downright poetic. Yet the author never once oversteps the border into pretense. He marvelously captures the isolation and back-woods mentality of Parr's Landing, the Canadian boon-dock town where the book is set, in such a way as to communicate its bleakness to the reader on an emotional level. When the main characters are forced by circumstances to return there, we share much of their despair and frustration.
Michael Rowe is emphatically not a "safe" writer. He has no compunction about drawing us in while leading us to believe he's introducing us to a main character only to kill him or her off a few pages later. It's a disturbing literary tactic, to be sure and, at first, it can be disconcerting. However, in the end it may help instill in the reader a sense of uncertainty and instability which seems to form part of Enter Night's theme.
It was lovely to figuratively sink my teeth into a good old fashioned vampire novel for a change and I enjoyed it immensely. If the book has a flaw, it is a minor one. It ends far too abruptly for my taste. I would have preferred more of a wind-down after the action's climax. Even so, if you are a fan of more traditional vampire novels, Enter Night is a must read.
Michael Rowe's freshman novel, Enter Night, hearkens back to the modern Golden Age of horror literature of the eighties and early nineties. Though essentially an intimate story, Rowe has managed to impart a much broader scope to the book, creating an epic ambiance reminiscent of King and McCammon in their early years.
Though it opens like a serial killer novel, it soon becomes clear that Enter Night is a vampire piece. Writing in that genre in a post-Twilight world takes both courage and skill and Rowe is admirably up to the task. Rowe's vampires are evil creatures of the night and he cleverly keeps them out of focus throughout; the reader will find no sympathetic cursed ex-aristocrats or tragically handsome and sexually frustrated teeny-boppers with pointy teeth in Rowe's universe!
Perhaps the strongest indication that the reader is in the hands of a budding master novelist is Rowe's amazing prose. At times, the language can only be described as gorgeous if not downright poetic. Yet the author never once oversteps the border into pretense. He marvelously captures the isolation and back-woods mentality of Parr's Landing, the Canadian boon-dock town where the book is set, in such a way as to communicate its bleakness to the reader on an emotional level. When the main characters are forced by circumstances to return there, we share much of their despair and frustration.
Michael Rowe is emphatically not a "safe" writer. He has no compunction about drawing us in while leading us to believe he's introducing us to a main character only to kill him or her off a few pages later. It's a disturbing literary tactic, to be sure and, at first, it can be disconcerting. However, in the end it may help instill in the reader a sense of uncertainty and instability which seems to form part of Enter Night's theme.
It was lovely to figuratively sink my teeth into a good old fashioned vampire novel for a change and I enjoyed it immensely. If the book has a flaw, it is a minor one. It ends far too abruptly for my taste. I would have preferred more of a wind-down after the action's climax. Even so, if you are a fan of more traditional vampire novels, Enter Night is a must read.
January 19, 2012
I have a lot to say about this book and at the same time nothing at all. I'm worried that exploring all my feelings will lead me to be overly critical, but I guess that's part of the point of a personalized review, isn't it? I'm going to ignore any blatant comparison to 'Salem's Lot, except for when I don't. I will point out that King wrote 'Salem's Lot as the standalone novel and the short story Jerusalem's Lot as the kind of historic precursor wherein we read someone's diary as they describe events that have transpired. Rowe gave us both of those in one book, with the novel first and the short story at the end. I found myself wishing for the two to have been cut together - a technique I usually don't care for, honestly - because I didn't feel that anything in the short would have ruined anything in the novel and as a closing device it lacked a lot of the power of the rest of the story.
There is a certain amount of leeway that I automatically give to anything approaching a horror novel in that I don't expect real character development, I just expect some cardboard cutouts thrown into situations and allowed to act or react. I certainly got that in spades here. What I didn't expect was that Rowe would be so heavy-handed with the tropes and the metaphor.
For example, the bit about the "grizzled and tired veteran, out for one last job, just waiting to finish so he can get home to his family and retire forever" has been parodied so often that to even bring it up is parody, right? So immediately in the book Rowe gives us a bus driver that's worn down and weary, ready to finish up his last drive before finally leaving this nowhere job and retiring forever. To do anything to this character other than kill him immediately would be refreshing, so what does Rowe do? Kill him immediately. I felt like looking around and saying, "Am I missing a joke here?" Unfortunately I was not. Maybe it was meta-meta-commentary.
Other overused, threadbare, or otherwise blunt tools in this novel:
1.) The small insular and xenophobic town itself acting as a vampire, draining people of their energy.
2.) The harridan mother trying to emotionally castrate her son for years, and in failing that, eventually physically castrates him. Okay, so it's the penis not the testicles, but she's removing his ability to be sexual one way or the other.
3.) The racist small-town deputy.
4.) The Native American man being bigger, stronger, and certainly more noble than anyone else around him, and able to sense that something is wrong.
5.) The Jesuit priest talking about vampirism as a plague that they brought to the new world, the unspoken comparison with Christianity.
Occasionally Rowe's dialogue felt stilted, and certainly suffered from timing issues. The most egregious example:
"My father was murdered," he said. "Someone sneaked in and killed him and took all his papers and ran away and now I'm thinking maybe the killer has crossed the country and perhaps he's here or maybe not."
"MURDERED?!" she gasped.
I also took offense with the police saying, "You know that guy you're looking for? We hear he's dead. They found his clothes in a pile and then a car with a burned body in it, and an old old copy of his ID sitting on top of the body, and as far as we're concerned that is an open-and-shut case. Nothing suspicious about it, seems like good police work to us. Now stop asking us about this guy, because obviously he's dead."
GUH.
Okay, but! I still give this thing three stars, almost four, because overall it was fun to read.
Things that were good:
1.) The police (all two of them) were taken out of the picture almost as soon as the action started. That was a beautiful departure from all of King's storylines. It left me with a definite sense of, "Well, shit. They may have been ineffective idiots but at least they had guns. Who's going to shoot things now? Who will act as The Protector?"
2.) At about two-thirds of the way through the book everything comes to a rapid boil. All of the sudden it transforms into quite the page-turner. I don't know if the pace of the earlier part of the book was deliberate or not, but still. When it picked up it really kicked in.
3.) There was no discussion about the particulars of vampirism, nor were the affected omnipresent. Rowe took great pains to only drag them out occasionally, when they could be used to great effect. They're traditional vampires, too. Holy water, crosses, and sunlight were all used to great effect.
4.) The newly-turned vampires retained some sense of humanity for a little while which gave extra grit to their scenes.
5.) No one ever got dragged off by the creatures only to fight their way out triumphant and grinning. No, if they got carried off, well, that was it for them. Sorry.
6.) Towards the end everything spiraled into this big maelstrom with heavy things being thrown about and bones breaking and characters being taken out left and right, and it actually left me wondering who, if anyone, was going to survive. It's a nice change not to think, "Well, Joe Competent will be fine, for sure, and let's see how many he can save on his way out."
See? It's not all bad. Overall, yeah. I liked it. If you enjoy traditional "evil scary ugly monstrous vampire" stories I would be glad to recommend it. Just be prepared to put up with some bumps along the way.
There is a certain amount of leeway that I automatically give to anything approaching a horror novel in that I don't expect real character development, I just expect some cardboard cutouts thrown into situations and allowed to act or react. I certainly got that in spades here. What I didn't expect was that Rowe would be so heavy-handed with the tropes and the metaphor.
For example, the bit about the "grizzled and tired veteran, out for one last job, just waiting to finish so he can get home to his family and retire forever" has been parodied so often that to even bring it up is parody, right? So immediately in the book Rowe gives us a bus driver that's worn down and weary, ready to finish up his last drive before finally leaving this nowhere job and retiring forever. To do anything to this character other than kill him immediately would be refreshing, so what does Rowe do? Kill him immediately. I felt like looking around and saying, "Am I missing a joke here?" Unfortunately I was not. Maybe it was meta-meta-commentary.
Other overused, threadbare, or otherwise blunt tools in this novel:
1.) The small insular and xenophobic town itself acting as a vampire, draining people of their energy.
2.) The harridan mother trying to emotionally castrate her son for years, and in failing that, eventually physically castrates him. Okay, so it's the penis not the testicles, but she's removing his ability to be sexual one way or the other.
3.) The racist small-town deputy.
4.) The Native American man being bigger, stronger, and certainly more noble than anyone else around him, and able to sense that something is wrong.
5.) The Jesuit priest talking about vampirism as a plague that they brought to the new world, the unspoken comparison with Christianity.
Occasionally Rowe's dialogue felt stilted, and certainly suffered from timing issues. The most egregious example:
"My father was murdered," he said. "Someone sneaked in and killed him and took all his papers and ran away and now I'm thinking maybe the killer has crossed the country and perhaps he's here or maybe not."
"MURDERED?!" she gasped.
I also took offense with the police saying, "You know that guy you're looking for? We hear he's dead. They found his clothes in a pile and then a car with a burned body in it, and an old old copy of his ID sitting on top of the body, and as far as we're concerned that is an open-and-shut case. Nothing suspicious about it, seems like good police work to us. Now stop asking us about this guy, because obviously he's dead."
GUH.
Okay, but! I still give this thing three stars, almost four, because overall it was fun to read.
Things that were good:
1.) The police (all two of them) were taken out of the picture almost as soon as the action started. That was a beautiful departure from all of King's storylines. It left me with a definite sense of, "Well, shit. They may have been ineffective idiots but at least they had guns. Who's going to shoot things now? Who will act as The Protector?"
2.) At about two-thirds of the way through the book everything comes to a rapid boil. All of the sudden it transforms into quite the page-turner. I don't know if the pace of the earlier part of the book was deliberate or not, but still. When it picked up it really kicked in.
3.) There was no discussion about the particulars of vampirism, nor were the affected omnipresent. Rowe took great pains to only drag them out occasionally, when they could be used to great effect. They're traditional vampires, too. Holy water, crosses, and sunlight were all used to great effect.
4.) The newly-turned vampires retained some sense of humanity for a little while which gave extra grit to their scenes.
5.) No one ever got dragged off by the creatures only to fight their way out triumphant and grinning. No, if they got carried off, well, that was it for them. Sorry.
6.) Towards the end everything spiraled into this big maelstrom with heavy things being thrown about and bones breaking and characters being taken out left and right, and it actually left me wondering who, if anyone, was going to survive. It's a nice change not to think, "Well, Joe Competent will be fine, for sure, and let's see how many he can save on his way out."
See? It's not all bad. Overall, yeah. I liked it. If you enjoy traditional "evil scary ugly monstrous vampire" stories I would be glad to recommend it. Just be prepared to put up with some bumps along the way.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
February 2, 2012
Now this is how you write a book about vampires!
For the first 50 pages or so I thought I wouldn't like this book. Especially after chapter 4 when *spoilers*
But then suddenly I was hooked by this gripping terrifying story.
Maybe it's because I such a city girl, or maybe it was too many dreadful holidays in remote parts of Ireland, but small rural towns utterly horrify me. Even before anything started to go wrong I was screaming at Christina, Morgan, and Jeremy to get in the car and drive back to Toronto. Rowe paints such a vivid portrait of Parr's Landing, a claustrophobic, bigoted, former mining town population less than 2000, that I was squirming in my seat with dread, again before the real horror show started.
And when it did start, well, this is not for the faint of heart or the weak of stomach. Genuinely scary vampires for the first time in ages. Rowe manages dodge to most of the truly irritating horror cliches. The characters were all solidly competent, albeit flawed, and, aside from moving to Parr's Landing in the first place, no one did anything egregiously stupid to heighten the tension. I was about three quarters through before it occurred to me that the Parr family was completely screwed, how the hell were they going to get out of this town alive?
And I'm not going to say any more than that.
For the first 50 pages or so I thought I wouldn't like this book. Especially after chapter 4 when *spoilers*
But then suddenly I was hooked by this gripping terrifying story.
Maybe it's because I such a city girl, or maybe it was too many dreadful holidays in remote parts of Ireland, but small rural towns utterly horrify me. Even before anything started to go wrong I was screaming at Christina, Morgan, and Jeremy to get in the car and drive back to Toronto. Rowe paints such a vivid portrait of Parr's Landing, a claustrophobic, bigoted, former mining town population less than 2000, that I was squirming in my seat with dread, again before the real horror show started.
And when it did start, well, this is not for the faint of heart or the weak of stomach. Genuinely scary vampires for the first time in ages. Rowe manages dodge to most of the truly irritating horror cliches. The characters were all solidly competent, albeit flawed, and, aside from moving to Parr's Landing in the first place, no one did anything egregiously stupid to heighten the tension. I was about three quarters through before it occurred to me that the Parr family was completely screwed, how the hell were they going to get out of this town alive?
And I'm not going to say any more than that.
February 21, 2019
I received this book as a part of NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
I loved this book. It reminds me of 'Salem's Lot by Stephen King. I am a big fan of vampire books in general, but this book qualifies as so much more. The story is so lifelike that I almost believe that something like this can happen. The book supports the idea that this is a real legend with actual supporting documents at the end.
It's the story of a woman who loses her husband and is forced to move in with her mother in law to support her family. Her mother in law is a wealthy ice queen who is hellbent on making her family's lives miserable. There are mysterious disappearances in this book, and ultimately the reader finds that everything comes together. There are a lot of characters in this book and in the beginning it seemed like they were unrelated. However, it comes together nicely in the end. It didn't end as I expected and I loved the twists and turns. The characters are so relatable and I grew quite attached to them throughout.
If you like creepy books that make you think with an element of horror, then you will like this book. It's a page turner- only took me about a day and a half to read! I will read other books from this author.
I loved this book. It reminds me of 'Salem's Lot by Stephen King. I am a big fan of vampire books in general, but this book qualifies as so much more. The story is so lifelike that I almost believe that something like this can happen. The book supports the idea that this is a real legend with actual supporting documents at the end.
It's the story of a woman who loses her husband and is forced to move in with her mother in law to support her family. Her mother in law is a wealthy ice queen who is hellbent on making her family's lives miserable. There are mysterious disappearances in this book, and ultimately the reader finds that everything comes together. There are a lot of characters in this book and in the beginning it seemed like they were unrelated. However, it comes together nicely in the end. It didn't end as I expected and I loved the twists and turns. The characters are so relatable and I grew quite attached to them throughout.
If you like creepy books that make you think with an element of horror, then you will like this book. It's a page turner- only took me about a day and a half to read! I will read other books from this author.
December 2, 2013
This one is a rollicking, old-fashioned, kick-ass vampire novel. The best pure vampire novel since George R. R. Martin's Fevre Dream.
August 16, 2017
Storia traballante e lentissima....personaggi a cui vorresti solo dare calci nel sedere e schiaffoni...
questo libro mi ha fatto partire un istinto omicida...da dimenticare!
questo libro mi ha fatto partire un istinto omicida...da dimenticare!
October 14, 2011
Christina Parr (née Monroe) fled Parr’s Landing with her fiancé Jack Parr 16 years ago in order to escape Jack’s dominating mother and allow the two lovers to get married and have their baby in peace. Five years later, Jack’s brother Jeremy joined them after the boys’ mother sent Jeremy to an asylum where he was basically tortured for six months in an attempt to “cure” his homosexuality. Now, in 1972, with Jack having been killed in an accident, Christina, Morgan (her daughter) and Jeremy have no choice left but to return to Parr’s Landing. The problem is that something else is already in Parr’s Landing – something has been sleeping in the caves under the town. And it’s about to wake up and fill the streets of Parr’s Landing with blood … Is it the mythical Wendigo of Native legends? Or is it something more recent – perhaps dating back to the destruction of the first Jesuit Mission in 1630?
Just after Halloween, this amazing horror novel is being released by ChiZine Publications, the leader in speculative fiction. “Enter, Night” will be available on November 1, 2011, and if you are a fan of horror books, especially those relating to vampire-type creatures, you will definitely want to be on the look-out for this terrific, creepy novel. The characters are fabulous, the plot moves with a brutal efficiency, and the writing is superb. There are a few editing problems – nothing too obtrusive, but there are a few instances of the wrong name/pronoun being used, and a few grammatical mistakes and missing words. But the story, the writing, the plot, the characters – they all make up for it. I was also well pleased with the scholarly nature of the writing – several times I had to look up words, and I have a pretty decent vocabulary. I should mention that about 80% of the book is the actual story – after the end of the story, a copy of a manuscript described in the text is provided that gives the background of the area and the genesis of the monster. I found this particularly interesting and it seems pretty well-researched. Michael Rowe is definitely a name to watch for in the horror/speculative fiction field and I hope to see some more novels by this amazing writer!
Just after Halloween, this amazing horror novel is being released by ChiZine Publications, the leader in speculative fiction. “Enter, Night” will be available on November 1, 2011, and if you are a fan of horror books, especially those relating to vampire-type creatures, you will definitely want to be on the look-out for this terrific, creepy novel. The characters are fabulous, the plot moves with a brutal efficiency, and the writing is superb. There are a few editing problems – nothing too obtrusive, but there are a few instances of the wrong name/pronoun being used, and a few grammatical mistakes and missing words. But the story, the writing, the plot, the characters – they all make up for it. I was also well pleased with the scholarly nature of the writing – several times I had to look up words, and I have a pretty decent vocabulary. I should mention that about 80% of the book is the actual story – after the end of the story, a copy of a manuscript described in the text is provided that gives the background of the area and the genesis of the monster. I found this particularly interesting and it seems pretty well-researched. Michael Rowe is definitely a name to watch for in the horror/speculative fiction field and I hope to see some more novels by this amazing writer!
August 27, 2016
The story is good but the writing style and the characterization lack subtlety to the point of frustration. The denouement occurs quite abruptly for the amount of time spent leading up to it. By the end, I didn't care about any of the characters or who survived. I just felt like the whole book could have been so much better, but instead felt so rushed.
Strangely, the strongest and most compelling part of the novel is the last, historical fiction, section. The writing is stronger and the pacing benefits a horror novel more justly. I would have rather that the last section stretched out into an entire novel rather than just a chapter.
Strangely, the strongest and most compelling part of the novel is the last, historical fiction, section. The writing is stronger and the pacing benefits a horror novel more justly. I would have rather that the last section stretched out into an entire novel rather than just a chapter.
November 15, 2015
This story had promise but was poorly executed. This was barely good enough to be a first draft. The narrative was plodding, the dialogue had no flow (people just don't talk like that), and the complete lack of suspense resulted in a entirely predictable sequence of events. There were facets of the book I did like but only to the point where they were just enough to keep me reading. The overall writing was not great and it overshadowed the few good things this book had going for it.
Kill your darlings, kill them all! Or find an editor who will kill them for you.
Kill your darlings, kill them all! Or find an editor who will kill them for you.
February 23, 2017
What a great novel! I had to add this one immediately to my favorites shelf.
Enter, Night is not only a story about vampires, but also a thriller and a family drama, a story about outsiders and loners, not to forget the appended historical tale. I immediately fell in love with the well-drawn characters, especially Finn and Sadie, who's fate made me swallow real hard. Parr's landing, where the story takes place, reminded me of places like Castle Rock and the early stories of Stephen King.
This novel revives the genre of old-school horror novels where genuine people are confronted with a world of horror and madness and have to fight it as best they can. No leather-clad vampire hunters with superhuman powers or weapons, no dazzling vampires. This is the real thing, being as down-to-earth and touchable as it can get.
Highest recommendations - read it NOW!
Enter, Night is not only a story about vampires, but also a thriller and a family drama, a story about outsiders and loners, not to forget the appended historical tale. I immediately fell in love with the well-drawn characters, especially Finn and Sadie, who's fate made me swallow real hard. Parr's landing, where the story takes place, reminded me of places like Castle Rock and the early stories of Stephen King.
This novel revives the genre of old-school horror novels where genuine people are confronted with a world of horror and madness and have to fight it as best they can. No leather-clad vampire hunters with superhuman powers or weapons, no dazzling vampires. This is the real thing, being as down-to-earth and touchable as it can get.
Highest recommendations - read it NOW!
January 23, 2015
I was sorry to have to give this one only two stars. It started out so well! The first four chapters about Richard Weal were terrific; they reminded me of 'Salem's Lot, as others here have said, and I thought this was going to be one of the scariest books I've ever read. And there's always good (that is, horrific) atmosphere, especially for anyone who knows the Northern Ontario forests and the Superior shore area. But, sadly, the book devolves into pure kitsch and unintentional (I think!) humor. By the time the now-a-vampire bitch mother of the gay son bit off his penis and spit it out at her daughter-in-law (the other son's wife) I was chuckling (surely not the intended effect) and when the 12-year-old vampire burned in the sun and was reunited with his similarly transformed dog Sadie and her red rubber ball, I was laughing out loud. Too bad!
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
February 28, 2017
Enter, Night is a very very slow story with a somewhat interesting, albeit misleading, start. But as the story progresses, it feels more like a boring family drama instead of a vampire novel. Nothing really happens except for the pace slowing down with every subsequent chapter and the constant self-pitying of the protagonists.
There is a chapter at the end of the book which tells the history the vampire's arrival to the town during colonial era, and it is the only part which is a proper vampire story.
How this book got praised as a genre standout is beyond my understanding!!
There is a chapter at the end of the book which tells the history the vampire's arrival to the town during colonial era, and it is the only part which is a proper vampire story.
How this book got praised as a genre standout is beyond my understanding!!
August 24, 2021
My first book by Michael Rowe; I love his writing style, the maturity in his choice of words, and his ability to create feelings toward his characters. Rowe has taken the classic human turns into a blood-sucking creature storyline and made it his own.
I was left a bit confused by why the last two chapters were put at the end of the book and not the first where they may have given a bit more explanation to the story. But overall a good read for anyone that likes vampiresque storylines.
I was left a bit confused by why the last two chapters were put at the end of the book and not the first where they may have given a bit more explanation to the story. But overall a good read for anyone that likes vampiresque storylines.
January 21, 2015
This took a long time for me to get into, I was close to abandoning it several times. But it did come into its own around 100 pages in. It has a classic horror feel which I like, but the ending sort of petered out and left me wanting... not more, but something else. And what's with all the fifty cent words? Someone's making good use of their thesaurus.
Want to read
January 22, 2017I think everybody should read Char's most EXCELLENT review:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Thank you, my friend. You always deliver the best recommendations, and your tastes in books is outstanding.
May 2, 2012
There is much to be said for Michael Rowe’s novel, Enter, Night. It is a refreshingly traditional vampire story. No eco-friendly, glittering, James Dean vampires here. Rowe harks back to Bram Stoker’s original vampire incarnation, which in turn borrowed heavily from ancient legends.
Overall, the novel clips along with aggressively spare and gritty prose. No poetic metaphors here. Every word, every scene, every character is crafted to make you take notice.
And therein, for me, lies part of the problem.
The novel opens with an introduction to a vampire through the point of view of a bus driver. The vampire is nameless. That first chapter then abruptly shifts point of view to the vampire. Nothing wrong with choosing an omniscient point of view, in general.
Our interest in the following chapter is invested in a runaway adolescent male who makes a desperate journey back to an abusive household to save his mother. We are rather heavily invested in his story when three chapters later he’s dead.
By chapter five we’re introduced to yet another cast of characters, in this case Christina (grieving wife), Morgan (grieving daughter) and Jeremy (grieving brother). For the most part the novel remains about their journey, and retains a fairly tight and consistent point of view. Their stories are heart-breaking, particularly Jeremy’s, and if for no other reason the novel is worth time because of this clear, incisive narrative.
Throughout the following chapters, Rowe deftly tells the story of a vampiric relationship of another sort, that of a soul-sucking matriarch in a Northern Ontario mining town and the three people (Christina, Morgan and Jeremy) who are forced to throw themselves upon her non-existent compassion and agenda-packed charity.
What follows, vampires aside, is a truly insightful, raw tale that takes centre stage (part Oedipal, part Brokeback Mountain), a taut counterpoint to the subtext of the secondary story that’s introduced in the town of Parr’s Landing, that of Billy Lightning who is searching for his father’s murderer, none other than the vampire from the introduction, Richard Weal.
Lightning’s story is another very human, tragic tale, one that revolves around the horrors of Northern Ontario residential schools, and backwoods bigotry.
Together these two tales intertwine to create a psychological thriller that is extremely poignant.
However, by the time we reach the denouement, the mayhem, gore and death become somewhat predictable. We know that cop should not go down to the dark, dank basement. We know that boy should not go out and look for his dog. We know all these caveats from hundreds of horror novels and movies that have filled modern minds for decades, so that after several chapters of this character being killed off, and that character smearing all over the landscape, it seems the catastrophe is never going to end. And when it does end, there are of course only two survivors (well at least it wasn’t just one).
But the story doesn’t end there. Instead, Rowe introduces us at the very end of his novel to the historical back-story of the evil that dogged the town of Parr’s Landing, that of the doomed Jesuit settlement of St. Bathélemy. By now, we know exactly what this story is and how it’s going to end, because history repeated itself in the first part of the novel. And it is here that I felt Rowe made his most fatal artistic mistake.
Instead of tacking the historical back-story on to the ending like an afterthought, I couldn’t help but feel the suspense, the tension and interest of the novel could only have been heightened had Rowe woven this historical narrative throughout the modern story. By doing so, he would have eliminated the feeling of an enormous information dump at the end, and he would have given historical context to the entire narrative.
Overall, a good read. But, for me, not a great one.
Overall, the novel clips along with aggressively spare and gritty prose. No poetic metaphors here. Every word, every scene, every character is crafted to make you take notice.
And therein, for me, lies part of the problem.
The novel opens with an introduction to a vampire through the point of view of a bus driver. The vampire is nameless. That first chapter then abruptly shifts point of view to the vampire. Nothing wrong with choosing an omniscient point of view, in general.
Our interest in the following chapter is invested in a runaway adolescent male who makes a desperate journey back to an abusive household to save his mother. We are rather heavily invested in his story when three chapters later he’s dead.
By chapter five we’re introduced to yet another cast of characters, in this case Christina (grieving wife), Morgan (grieving daughter) and Jeremy (grieving brother). For the most part the novel remains about their journey, and retains a fairly tight and consistent point of view. Their stories are heart-breaking, particularly Jeremy’s, and if for no other reason the novel is worth time because of this clear, incisive narrative.
Throughout the following chapters, Rowe deftly tells the story of a vampiric relationship of another sort, that of a soul-sucking matriarch in a Northern Ontario mining town and the three people (Christina, Morgan and Jeremy) who are forced to throw themselves upon her non-existent compassion and agenda-packed charity.
What follows, vampires aside, is a truly insightful, raw tale that takes centre stage (part Oedipal, part Brokeback Mountain), a taut counterpoint to the subtext of the secondary story that’s introduced in the town of Parr’s Landing, that of Billy Lightning who is searching for his father’s murderer, none other than the vampire from the introduction, Richard Weal.
Lightning’s story is another very human, tragic tale, one that revolves around the horrors of Northern Ontario residential schools, and backwoods bigotry.
Together these two tales intertwine to create a psychological thriller that is extremely poignant.
However, by the time we reach the denouement, the mayhem, gore and death become somewhat predictable. We know that cop should not go down to the dark, dank basement. We know that boy should not go out and look for his dog. We know all these caveats from hundreds of horror novels and movies that have filled modern minds for decades, so that after several chapters of this character being killed off, and that character smearing all over the landscape, it seems the catastrophe is never going to end. And when it does end, there are of course only two survivors (well at least it wasn’t just one).
But the story doesn’t end there. Instead, Rowe introduces us at the very end of his novel to the historical back-story of the evil that dogged the town of Parr’s Landing, that of the doomed Jesuit settlement of St. Bathélemy. By now, we know exactly what this story is and how it’s going to end, because history repeated itself in the first part of the novel. And it is here that I felt Rowe made his most fatal artistic mistake.
Instead of tacking the historical back-story on to the ending like an afterthought, I couldn’t help but feel the suspense, the tension and interest of the novel could only have been heightened had Rowe woven this historical narrative throughout the modern story. By doing so, he would have eliminated the feeling of an enormous information dump at the end, and he would have given historical context to the entire narrative.
Overall, a good read. But, for me, not a great one.
April 28, 2012
Enter, Night is a remarkable book. Initially, it is a classic vampire tale. It has many of the required tropes, being on the surface a tale of the distant castle at the end of a desperate journey where an ancient and patient evil waits to crush our heroes' spirits for no other reason than its insatiable lust for power. On another level, it is a Canadian story, of a single-industry town dominated by a powerful family, a kind of North American fiefdom where the cruelty and greed of its nobility exercise control over its captive workforce, and on how the misfits within it are destroyed by this weight of impunity. But at its core, and throughout its compelling narrative, it is the story of human delicacy and tenderness in the face of monstrosity brought about through perverse morality, ignorance, and prejudice.
In a classic modern horror tale, there is a kind of football-game of moral points, where failings on the part of the characters are exacted in a kind of revenge by the monsters. Points are scored, and only the few, the honest, and the human will survive to the end, if at all. There is often, also, a deep attraction between the monster and the victim, a Stockholm syndrome at best or a sparkling boyfriend at worst which resonates with some echo of the excitement and fear of discovering one's own sexuality. There is also, often, the vindication of the loner, the one person who saw the axe before it fell and either Cassandra or Noah, strove to mitigate its effects. Enter Night has all these elements, but brings them gently into the story with a fresh retelling that brings the triumph of human frailty to the centre, with all the dime-store props of modern horror serving as the setting, not the focus.
And it accomplishes this feat despite Rowe's vampires being a celebration of the luric comic-book and Christopher Lee variety: bizarre creatures that are so powerful and violent and yet are as delicate as jellied eel—easily turned aside with a crucifix, a prayer, or mason-jar of holy water. Yet in the same manner that our most vulnerable human frailties are creased by the current of societal scorn into monstrous versions of themselves, the dying heroes fight alien evil on our own terms and so succumb to its power. In the end, in a scene that is one of the most heart-wrenching I have read in or out of the genre, the acceptance of the alien and the assertion of tenderness, there is a beautiful kind of redmption, a secular statement of the nature of goodness against an ancient evil that cloaks itself in the self-rightous cassock of religious morality.
A forth tale is also offered, almost as an appendix or exhibit to the main work. Rowe uses a clever device similar to Chrichton's Eaters of the Dead, where a "modern translation" of a first-person narrative given in testimony wraps up the novel with a rich backstory which tells a second Canadian tale: one of a good-intentioned corruption of the New Land with an evil from Europe's past. The novel stands on its own without this second part, but I found it an equally well-told (though unnecessary) contrast between one moral world-view and another one both more ancient and modern in its acceptance of temporal limits.
Although affiliated in a technical way with the publisher, CZP, I speak for myself when I strongly recommend this novel, especially in the light of the tacky direction the vampire tale has taken of late. The Audible version of this book, from which this review is derived, is compelling, with a reader sensitive to and appreciative of the story's narrative qualities. Although, privately, I wish he had learned the "proper" pronunciation of Canadian place-names like Guelph and Sault-St.-Marie, but that's a tiny quibble against an excellent performance by Kevin Stillwell.
In a classic modern horror tale, there is a kind of football-game of moral points, where failings on the part of the characters are exacted in a kind of revenge by the monsters. Points are scored, and only the few, the honest, and the human will survive to the end, if at all. There is often, also, a deep attraction between the monster and the victim, a Stockholm syndrome at best or a sparkling boyfriend at worst which resonates with some echo of the excitement and fear of discovering one's own sexuality. There is also, often, the vindication of the loner, the one person who saw the axe before it fell and either Cassandra or Noah, strove to mitigate its effects. Enter Night has all these elements, but brings them gently into the story with a fresh retelling that brings the triumph of human frailty to the centre, with all the dime-store props of modern horror serving as the setting, not the focus.
And it accomplishes this feat despite Rowe's vampires being a celebration of the luric comic-book and Christopher Lee variety: bizarre creatures that are so powerful and violent and yet are as delicate as jellied eel—easily turned aside with a crucifix, a prayer, or mason-jar of holy water. Yet in the same manner that our most vulnerable human frailties are creased by the current of societal scorn into monstrous versions of themselves, the dying heroes fight alien evil on our own terms and so succumb to its power. In the end, in a scene that is one of the most heart-wrenching I have read in or out of the genre, the acceptance of the alien and the assertion of tenderness, there is a beautiful kind of redmption, a secular statement of the nature of goodness against an ancient evil that cloaks itself in the self-rightous cassock of religious morality.
A forth tale is also offered, almost as an appendix or exhibit to the main work. Rowe uses a clever device similar to Chrichton's Eaters of the Dead, where a "modern translation" of a first-person narrative given in testimony wraps up the novel with a rich backstory which tells a second Canadian tale: one of a good-intentioned corruption of the New Land with an evil from Europe's past. The novel stands on its own without this second part, but I found it an equally well-told (though unnecessary) contrast between one moral world-view and another one both more ancient and modern in its acceptance of temporal limits.
Although affiliated in a technical way with the publisher, CZP, I speak for myself when I strongly recommend this novel, especially in the light of the tacky direction the vampire tale has taken of late. The Audible version of this book, from which this review is derived, is compelling, with a reader sensitive to and appreciative of the story's narrative qualities. Although, privately, I wish he had learned the "proper" pronunciation of Canadian place-names like Guelph and Sault-St.-Marie, but that's a tiny quibble against an excellent performance by Kevin Stillwell.
March 16, 2013
With shades of the masters of horror, Stephen King and Dean Koontz, `Enter, Night' is a spine-tingling tale of terror wreaking havoc in Parr's Landing, a small town in Canada. From its bloody outset, this is a chilling tale that draws heavily on the infamous Wendigo legends where men, and in this case women as well, are dehumanised and seek to drain the blood of their hapless victims spurred on by an all controlling demonic figure. Not only is this a truly terrifying read, but there is also a very interesting `human' story running parallel to the horror as three individuals, previously exiled from the town due to the actions of the wonderfully scaberous matriarch, Adeline Parr, who dominates the lives of the people within the community, return and face her scorn and acidity. As they seek to assimilate themselves back into the community, they cross paths with the brilliantly named Native American professor, William Lightning, who is seeking answers to the unexplained deaths in the town both now and in the past and who firmly believes that supernatural forces are at work. I really enjoyed this accomplished and well-paced tale of terror that kept me reading into the wee small hours and if you like to give yourself the shivers this is well worth a read...
October 26, 2013
Winter is coming. The days grow shorter, the rain grows colder, but this late autumn there is something else in the frigid air. A monster is waking, and nothing is safe from its evil clutches.
If you enjoyed Stephen King’s Salem’s Lot, you’ll still like Salem’s Lot better. If you read Elizabeth Kostova’s The Historian and thought it was really good but dragged on a little, this will hit a satisfactory note. Michael Rowe did a superb job of taking us back to vampire classics the way these monsters were meant to be enjoyed.
Likes:
Traditional vampire story
Great historical element
Great small-town setting
Good character development
Dislikes:
The first five or so chapters could have been deleted
The novella at the end could have been better woven into the main plot
Loose ends left unanswered
I don’t think you’ll be disappointed if you’ve been craving for a vampire book that does not follow contemporary vampire style. There are scary scenes, and although the mechanics felt awkward at times, the book largely succeeds at taking your hand and holding firm until the very last page.
If you enjoyed Stephen King’s Salem’s Lot, you’ll still like Salem’s Lot better. If you read Elizabeth Kostova’s The Historian and thought it was really good but dragged on a little, this will hit a satisfactory note. Michael Rowe did a superb job of taking us back to vampire classics the way these monsters were meant to be enjoyed.
Likes:
Traditional vampire story
Great historical element
Great small-town setting
Good character development
Dislikes:
The first five or so chapters could have been deleted
The novella at the end could have been better woven into the main plot
Loose ends left unanswered
I don’t think you’ll be disappointed if you’ve been craving for a vampire book that does not follow contemporary vampire style. There are scary scenes, and although the mechanics felt awkward at times, the book largely succeeds at taking your hand and holding firm until the very last page.
November 1, 2016
I feel bad DNFing this because I got it from NetGalley and it started out really cool and gory and dark. And then began the infodump on how awful these people's lives had been, and how a lot of their problems were wrapped in "issues," and the root of these problems was essentially one woman who you then discover you are going to spend the next three hundred pages with. Thanks, but no thanks. Sorry.
September 7, 2014
Book Review originally published here: http://www.iheartreading.net/mini-rev...
A great debut. If you thought vampires couldn’t be scary anymore, then think again, because Michael Rowe shows vampires are definitely terrifying. The small town setting causes an almost claustrophic feeling. The terror creeps up slowly at the start, and then turns into full-on horror.
A great debut. If you thought vampires couldn’t be scary anymore, then think again, because Michael Rowe shows vampires are definitely terrifying. The small town setting causes an almost claustrophic feeling. The terror creeps up slowly at the start, and then turns into full-on horror.
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