What do you think?
Rate this book
Incarnate
Molly, a young television production assistant, and her lover, Martin, struggle for survival against a monstrous, diabolical force created by Molly and her fellow participants in a scientific experiment in prophetic dreaming
499 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1983
18 people are currently reading
4,207 people want to read
About the author
Ramsey Campbell
824Ìýbooks1,560ÌýfollowersRamsey Campbell is a British writer considered by a number of critics to be one of the great masters of horror fiction. T. E. D. Klein has written that "Campbell reigns supreme in the field today," while S. T. Joshi has said that "future generations will regard him as the leading horror writer of our generation, every bit the equal of Lovecraft or Blackwood."
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 80 reviews
August 1, 2022
Update 8/1/22: After this recent re-read, I'm upping my rating to 5 Stars. I still feel that it drags a bit in spots, but overall it's much closer to a 5 than a 4 for me.
--------------------------------------------
Other than Richard Laymon, I can't think of any horror writer who's as divisive as Ramsey Campbell. People seem to either "get" him or they don't. Myself, I'm somewhere in the middle. I believe his collections from the 70s-early 90s are among the very best the genre has to offer, but I haven't had nearly as much luck when it comes to his full-lengths. I've yet to read a novel of his that even approaches the masterful level of, say, 1982's . Until now.
Incarnate is the very definition of a mind-bender (or reality-bender). Eleven years ago, five people who'd shown undeniable signs of prophetic dreaming were brought together for a controlled experiment, in order to study this remarkable phenomenon. It ended in some mysterious, mostly unexplained disaster, but the subjects all eventually moved on with their lives and lost contact with each other.
But now, some very strange, seemingly supernatural occurrences are starting to invade their lives (i.e. fleeting glimpses of something(s) vile and hideous all around them; being trapped in endless dark alleys or stairways, etc), and it's becoming nearly impossible for these former subjects to separate dream from reality. Also, the horrible visions they'd experienced during the experiment seem to be coming true, and they all must find each other before their freaky-as-hell dream worlds take the place of "true reality."
This one especially affected me, I suppose, because I've always had the irrational fear that the world isn't real. The worst nightmare scenario I could conjure up for myself would be to discover that my whole life has been a dream or hallucination, and there's no way out. Which probably explains why Philip K Dick's The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch is one of my four or five all-time favorite novels (not really a spoiler, btw, as it's the main concept of that book. Plus the novel's over 50 years old, and I believe there's a statute of limitations for that sort of thing. So there).
Incarnate nearly approaches that level, but it suffers a bit from the fact that it's 500 pages long, which would be more like 600-plus if reprinted with today's larger typesetting. That's way too long for any horror novel, imo. It's nearly impossible to maintain the eerie tension and weirdness over such an epic length. There are some exceptions to that rule, of course (Straub's is a doorstop, and it's near-perfect to me), but I felt this book was overly padded to the point where several chapters at a time would go by where nothing of much interest happens, causing my own interest to wane periodically.
Still, the final third of the novel kicks it into high gear and more than makes up for all that, containing some of the most harrowingly surreal and nightmarish imagery I've come across in 80s horror, a handful of which will probably stick with me for a long, long time, even if Campbell's writing style can be a bit "blurry" and hard to follow at times. It's a book where my appreciation will only continue to grow over time, I feel, though for now I'm sticking with my 4-star rating.
But I reserve the right to raise it one day if it happens to strike my fancy.
October 27, 2022
I knew this would be no fast paced book... well it started interesting with the introduction of some participants in The Foundation for Applied Psychological Research, dreams to predict the future. Then we find ourselves 11 years later with a sticky plot to evolve. I liked the setting in London I know very well and the detailed description of the characters. But the action was far too slow and subtle for my taste. This was an extremely tedious, painfully slow and long winded read (like a neverending nightmare) with too many characters and too few pages fast forward. The cover is classic, the author a master of horror but this book somehow didn't do it for me. Only for diehard Ramsey Campbell fans
September 9, 2018
The central premise of Incarnate is that dreams are not meaningless, but are in fact as real and as powerful as anything we experience in waking life, and can potentially sweep the veneer of rationality we've imposed on the world aside to leave us adrift in chaos.
Ten years after a hastily-aborted experiment in prophetic dreaming, the former participants find themselves being slowly drawn together for a strange and terrible purpose.
The book won the British Fantasy Award in 1985.
Ten years after a hastily-aborted experiment in prophetic dreaming, the former participants find themselves being slowly drawn together for a strange and terrible purpose.
The book won the British Fantasy Award in 1985.
October 3, 2019
For a book about dreams it's pretty good, and check out that amazing Jill Bauman cover.
October 16, 2022
I have read a few novels by Campbell and was not too impressed, but after finishing Incarnate, I will definitely check out more of his opus. Incarnate is a difficult book to review, but it is one glorious mind fuck of a book. This begins with a short prologue, where five people are undergoing a dream study; all five have some 'precog' ability. The experiment ends in a disastrous way, with all five experiencing some sort of horrible group hallucination that leaves them screaming. Note-- as I read the book, I must have reread the prologue several times as it is key to the story.
Anyway, the main story takes place 11 years after the ill-fated study and Campbell rotates the POV among the five people from the experiment. Each of the five has their own story, but the common thread is how the fine line between dreams and reality begins to blur in various ways. It so happens that one of the doctors of the study sent each five a note asking about any possible effects they may be experiencing eleven years after the test; none of the five want anything to do with what happened up in Oxford those years ago and none of the five have been in contact since the experiment.
All five, however, are experiencing a blurring of dreams and reality, although they do not perceive it as such. This is a long book and exquisitely plotted and paced. You feel you know each character, warts and all and travel with each one going down a rabbit hole in their own way. The final dream they 'shared' in the experiment haunts the narrative and as a reader you know that it will feature somehow in the story down the road, but Campbell just dropped hints in the prologue regarding the actual content on the dream.
Molly, one of the fab five and our main protagonist, works for a TV station in London (MTV) as a production assistant. Danny still lives at home under the 'protective' care of his mother and works as a projectionist at the local cinema. Freda lives in a resort town and works at a department store. Hellen recently divorced her husband and moved to London with her daughter and works as a librarian. Finally, we have Joyce, who works with elderly folks in something like a day care center. For each of them, reality and dreams are starting to blur, even when they are awake. Is it possible to dream while being awake? Campbell gets a bit philosophical on this as the story progresses...
Incarnate is really a haunting book and pretty unique. As a reader, you often have a hard time sorting out dreams from reality and the eerie sense of foreboding just gets stronger as the novel progresses. Incarnate did remind me a bit of Straub's work, and he left a gushing blurb on the cover; I think any Straub fan would love this. Super read for Spooktober! 5 dreamy stars!
Anyway, the main story takes place 11 years after the ill-fated study and Campbell rotates the POV among the five people from the experiment. Each of the five has their own story, but the common thread is how the fine line between dreams and reality begins to blur in various ways. It so happens that one of the doctors of the study sent each five a note asking about any possible effects they may be experiencing eleven years after the test; none of the five want anything to do with what happened up in Oxford those years ago and none of the five have been in contact since the experiment.
All five, however, are experiencing a blurring of dreams and reality, although they do not perceive it as such. This is a long book and exquisitely plotted and paced. You feel you know each character, warts and all and travel with each one going down a rabbit hole in their own way. The final dream they 'shared' in the experiment haunts the narrative and as a reader you know that it will feature somehow in the story down the road, but Campbell just dropped hints in the prologue regarding the actual content on the dream.
Molly, one of the fab five and our main protagonist, works for a TV station in London (MTV) as a production assistant. Danny still lives at home under the 'protective' care of his mother and works as a projectionist at the local cinema. Freda lives in a resort town and works at a department store. Hellen recently divorced her husband and moved to London with her daughter and works as a librarian. Finally, we have Joyce, who works with elderly folks in something like a day care center. For each of them, reality and dreams are starting to blur, even when they are awake. Is it possible to dream while being awake? Campbell gets a bit philosophical on this as the story progresses...
Incarnate is really a haunting book and pretty unique. As a reader, you often have a hard time sorting out dreams from reality and the eerie sense of foreboding just gets stronger as the novel progresses. Incarnate did remind me a bit of Straub's work, and he left a gushing blurb on the cover; I think any Straub fan would love this. Super read for Spooktober! 5 dreamy stars!
March 19, 2013
-Mortal, sÃâ€�-
Género. Narrativa fantástica.
Lo que nos cuenta. Durante unos experimentos en Oxford sobre sueños pre-cognitivos, los cinco sujetos de prueba y los dos investigadores sufren unas experiencias que les llevan a detener la investigación y tratar de olvidar lo sucedido. Pero años después, el pasado vuelve a ellos.
¿Quiere saber más del libro, sin spoilers? Visite:
Género. Narrativa fantástica.
Lo que nos cuenta. Durante unos experimentos en Oxford sobre sueños pre-cognitivos, los cinco sujetos de prueba y los dos investigadores sufren unas experiencias que les llevan a detener la investigación y tratar de olvidar lo sucedido. Pero años después, el pasado vuelve a ellos.
¿Quiere saber más del libro, sin spoilers? Visite:
November 30, 2022
While horror fans are all set to watch "Black Christmas" again for their annual holiday tradition, what classic seasonal offerings are out there for the literature lovers with which to indulge their appetite for Yuletide macabre? I decided to turn to Ramsey Campbell for the answer. His novel "Incarnate" is a staple of 80s horror fiction and on every collector's shelf, and is centered around the Christmas season in London, when and where the supernatural has been celebrated long before the days of Dickens. But was this the right choice for winter chills?
Not for me, unfortunately. It seemed to me the writing was much more difficult than it had a right to be. Campbell's sentence structures left me often confused as to who was speaking, what was happening, or why we were reading about it in the first place. I've read my fair share of challenging work, but so far, I could see no artistic merit to the obtuse nature of Campbell's prose. The majority of the first act concerned our main character, Molly, and her job. It wasn't clear what her job was supposed to be. I know it had something to do with television or film. Maybe. That's a real problem, because Campbell feels so compelled to linger on her life on the clock, which largely seems to be flirting with an American documentary producer while fending off toxic male bosses.
And speaking of flirting, I can't for the life of me understand the attraction she has with the American. The way he is depicted, I couldn't help picturing a young Eugene Levy with a good ol' boy Southern accent and an irritating personality. He is extremely socially awkward, and spends their entire first date talking about what a failure he is, all the things he feels guilty about, and the death of his brother in Vietnam. When the date is over, he tells Molly he had a great time. Was the feeling mutual for Molly? Don't know. I can't imagine she felt anything but depressed. But Molly is the most wooden and stoic character I've read about in years, so we don't understand what's going on with her very clearly, and that hurts our ability to sympathize with her as the main protagonist.
We do know that as a young adult, she was the subject of some experiments with dreams. She seemed to be one of a select group that dreamed about tragedies that would take place in the near future, cursed with foresight, but helpless to be able to stop any bad outcomes. Or perhaps things in their dreams are leaking out into reality? We get a hint of that when we meet two other "dreamers" going about their own mundane lives in painful and unnecessary detail. The important piece is that while they sleep, the young daughter of one of the former test subjects sees a pink face reflected in a window, and the husband of the other sees a giant fat naked man baby waddling out of the house.
We've also got two of the most annoying characters ever put to pen, and when I say annoying, I mean that every time they appeared it felt my like someone was shoving shards of glass between my teeth. One is a dopey kid who works at an old fashioned movie theater, and another is the young daughter already mentioned. The latter is the worst. Capmbell clearly does not know how to write children. "We're having a great Christmas, aren't we Mummy?" Oh, zip it, Tiny Tim!
And that's about all I can say about this whole whopper of a book. It grated on my nerves. I can't articulate all the reasons why. But it did. Badly.
Which is a shame, because I really was looking forward to this one, as it has been recommended over the years by people whose tastes I share. Perhaps I just overloaded myself on horror paperbacks this fall and just wasn't in the mood for this kind of fare right now. But I just don't know if I could bring myself to revisit this again even in a different mindset. It was that irritating.
I can't rate it only one star, as Campbell clearly has some talent on display here, and seemed to have a lot to say. I just didn't understand what he was saying. Overall, I felt this was a bloated attempt with too many clashing elements of science fiction, horror, and melodrama, too many characters that I couldn't connect with, too many side plots, and too many odd sentence structures. If you choose to take a bite out of this one, watch for broken glass.
Not for me, unfortunately. It seemed to me the writing was much more difficult than it had a right to be. Campbell's sentence structures left me often confused as to who was speaking, what was happening, or why we were reading about it in the first place. I've read my fair share of challenging work, but so far, I could see no artistic merit to the obtuse nature of Campbell's prose. The majority of the first act concerned our main character, Molly, and her job. It wasn't clear what her job was supposed to be. I know it had something to do with television or film. Maybe. That's a real problem, because Campbell feels so compelled to linger on her life on the clock, which largely seems to be flirting with an American documentary producer while fending off toxic male bosses.
And speaking of flirting, I can't for the life of me understand the attraction she has with the American. The way he is depicted, I couldn't help picturing a young Eugene Levy with a good ol' boy Southern accent and an irritating personality. He is extremely socially awkward, and spends their entire first date talking about what a failure he is, all the things he feels guilty about, and the death of his brother in Vietnam. When the date is over, he tells Molly he had a great time. Was the feeling mutual for Molly? Don't know. I can't imagine she felt anything but depressed. But Molly is the most wooden and stoic character I've read about in years, so we don't understand what's going on with her very clearly, and that hurts our ability to sympathize with her as the main protagonist.
We do know that as a young adult, she was the subject of some experiments with dreams. She seemed to be one of a select group that dreamed about tragedies that would take place in the near future, cursed with foresight, but helpless to be able to stop any bad outcomes. Or perhaps things in their dreams are leaking out into reality? We get a hint of that when we meet two other "dreamers" going about their own mundane lives in painful and unnecessary detail. The important piece is that while they sleep, the young daughter of one of the former test subjects sees a pink face reflected in a window, and the husband of the other sees a giant fat naked man baby waddling out of the house.
We've also got two of the most annoying characters ever put to pen, and when I say annoying, I mean that every time they appeared it felt my like someone was shoving shards of glass between my teeth. One is a dopey kid who works at an old fashioned movie theater, and another is the young daughter already mentioned. The latter is the worst. Capmbell clearly does not know how to write children. "We're having a great Christmas, aren't we Mummy?" Oh, zip it, Tiny Tim!
And that's about all I can say about this whole whopper of a book. It grated on my nerves. I can't articulate all the reasons why. But it did. Badly.
Which is a shame, because I really was looking forward to this one, as it has been recommended over the years by people whose tastes I share. Perhaps I just overloaded myself on horror paperbacks this fall and just wasn't in the mood for this kind of fare right now. But I just don't know if I could bring myself to revisit this again even in a different mindset. It was that irritating.
I can't rate it only one star, as Campbell clearly has some talent on display here, and seemed to have a lot to say. I just didn't understand what he was saying. Overall, I felt this was a bloated attempt with too many clashing elements of science fiction, horror, and melodrama, too many characters that I couldn't connect with, too many side plots, and too many odd sentence structures. If you choose to take a bite out of this one, watch for broken glass.
October 23, 2018
During a psychological study on prophetic dreaming, something goes wrong, the study is closed, everyone involved in left shaken. Eleven years later, something is beginning to happen again, as reality loosens its hold.
And we're off. The blurring of dream and reality is a great horror premise, or postmodernist premise, but this really gets its hooks into me through its surprising social conscience. The cast, now distributed about greater London, are used to approach a spectrum of urban ills, those of Thatcher England and, all too often, of clear contemporary relevance -- class, race, urban renewal, police brutality, gender inequality in the workplace, the difficulty of being believed as a women. Campbell's sense of place, careful plotting, and creep of nightmarish dislocation are effective, but I was surprised to find that it was this attention all-too-sordid reality pulled me along so well. Journalist Molly Wolfe's a great lead here, with believable troubles, and despite the uncertainty of the world throughout, the story never undermines her credibility or forces the reader to question her sanity (all too common in this era of genre fiction, whether films or books).
By the end, many of the social-realist threads are subsumed by the meta-arc, as they probably must be in a mass-market horror paperback like this, so I wished somewhat for a more direct intertwining of those threads, but the fact that I even cared says something about the unique feel of this book.
And we're off. The blurring of dream and reality is a great horror premise, or postmodernist premise, but this really gets its hooks into me through its surprising social conscience. The cast, now distributed about greater London, are used to approach a spectrum of urban ills, those of Thatcher England and, all too often, of clear contemporary relevance -- class, race, urban renewal, police brutality, gender inequality in the workplace, the difficulty of being believed as a women. Campbell's sense of place, careful plotting, and creep of nightmarish dislocation are effective, but I was surprised to find that it was this attention all-too-sordid reality pulled me along so well. Journalist Molly Wolfe's a great lead here, with believable troubles, and despite the uncertainty of the world throughout, the story never undermines her credibility or forces the reader to question her sanity (all too common in this era of genre fiction, whether films or books).
By the end, many of the social-realist threads are subsumed by the meta-arc, as they probably must be in a mass-market horror paperback like this, so I wished somewhat for a more direct intertwining of those threads, but the fact that I even cared says something about the unique feel of this book.
February 21, 2018
Ramsey Campbell is one horror author with whom I have a confused relationship. Even though I find his stories extremely disturbing, his style of not quite opening the door on the final horror always leaves me a tad frustrated.
However, that said, Incarnate is one novel which I really liked. I don't remember anything of the story now, other than it was about the surreal and frightening country of dreams. But I remember the sleepless nights and the sense of delicious nightmare.
However, that said, Incarnate is one novel which I really liked. I don't remember anything of the story now, other than it was about the surreal and frightening country of dreams. But I remember the sleepless nights and the sense of delicious nightmare.
December 5, 2017
A psychological experiment that gives five dreamers access to the future may have opened up more trouble than the researchers or participants bargained for.
This book has probably put me off Ramsey Campbell novel-length stories for good. How he does fear: 1) Whip up people's ugliest fears. 2) Say, "Aha! I write about people's ugliest fears!" 3) Profit. The fears here are things like that people with mental illness will hurt you, that some man will be falsely accused of a crime, that your adult children will never leave the house, that a con will rip you off using spiritualism, that your mom will be mean to you and not listen, that the police will hurt you, that your boss will take sexual advantage of you, etc., etc.
In a short story, the effect is pretty cool, but in a novel, it wears thin, because the characters just hunker down and live with it. The characters don't face their fears or grow or listen, just complain. It's hard to enjoy being around these people, let alone love them.
Also, the promise of the plot, that these characters will all meet again, doesn't happen until the very end, at which point Bob's your uncle, two pages of wrapup, the end.
A short story with 485 extra pages in the middle. I probably would have liked the short story, tho.
This book has probably put me off Ramsey Campbell novel-length stories for good. How he does fear: 1) Whip up people's ugliest fears. 2) Say, "Aha! I write about people's ugliest fears!" 3) Profit. The fears here are things like that people with mental illness will hurt you, that some man will be falsely accused of a crime, that your adult children will never leave the house, that a con will rip you off using spiritualism, that your mom will be mean to you and not listen, that the police will hurt you, that your boss will take sexual advantage of you, etc., etc.
In a short story, the effect is pretty cool, but in a novel, it wears thin, because the characters just hunker down and live with it. The characters don't face their fears or grow or listen, just complain. It's hard to enjoy being around these people, let alone love them.
Also, the promise of the plot, that these characters will all meet again, doesn't happen until the very end, at which point Bob's your uncle, two pages of wrapup, the end.
A short story with 485 extra pages in the middle. I probably would have liked the short story, tho.
November 26, 2016
I'm having a hard time deciding if I really liked this book. I have a feeling that months or even years from now I will think back on my experience of reading Incarnate and perhaps appreciate it more. I find that is often the case with books that don't make an immediate impression on me. There's quite a bit to digest in this story, but I like to write reviews as soon as I can upon finishing a novel, since it's still so fresh in my mind.
Incarnate is an incredibly slow burn. A group of strangers volunteer for a research study on prophetic dreaming. We get a small glimpse of the study and it's participants at the beginning of the novel, but then it jumps forward 11 years into the future, and I pretty much had to go back and reread the first chapter so that I could remember all of the characters.
The novel mainly centers around one of the participants named Molly, but there are multiple narrators throughout, including all of the other participants in the study, as well as their significant others. Keeping track of all the characters and how they relate to the main research group is a slog at first, and I almost felt as if I needed a chart to keep track of them all. Every person is an unreliable narrator, and for most of the novel the reader has no idea if something is real or a dream. This is obviously intentional on Campbell's part, as we are meant to feel the same bewilderment and frustration as the characters. The novel drags in places though, and often makes you feel as if you are wandering the same endless hallways and corridors as the people in the book.
It's also interesting to note that on several occasions I would take this book to bed, only to fall asleep just a few chapters in. This rarely happens to me, and I thought it was rather funny that a book about nightmarish shared dreaming would put me to sleep almost every time I picked it up. I kept thinking I was getting close to the ending, but then I would nod off, and I felt like I was trapped in the book the same way the characters were trapped in their shared dream.
Like I said, there is a lot to process with this one, and it was slow going the entire way. There are some good moments of unease and tension, but it does drag quite a bit. These are really just my first impressions, so I'm interested to see how I feel about Incarnate after I have had some time to think about it.
Incarnate is an incredibly slow burn. A group of strangers volunteer for a research study on prophetic dreaming. We get a small glimpse of the study and it's participants at the beginning of the novel, but then it jumps forward 11 years into the future, and I pretty much had to go back and reread the first chapter so that I could remember all of the characters.
The novel mainly centers around one of the participants named Molly, but there are multiple narrators throughout, including all of the other participants in the study, as well as their significant others. Keeping track of all the characters and how they relate to the main research group is a slog at first, and I almost felt as if I needed a chart to keep track of them all. Every person is an unreliable narrator, and for most of the novel the reader has no idea if something is real or a dream. This is obviously intentional on Campbell's part, as we are meant to feel the same bewilderment and frustration as the characters. The novel drags in places though, and often makes you feel as if you are wandering the same endless hallways and corridors as the people in the book.
It's also interesting to note that on several occasions I would take this book to bed, only to fall asleep just a few chapters in. This rarely happens to me, and I thought it was rather funny that a book about nightmarish shared dreaming would put me to sleep almost every time I picked it up. I kept thinking I was getting close to the ending, but then I would nod off, and I felt like I was trapped in the book the same way the characters were trapped in their shared dream.
Like I said, there is a lot to process with this one, and it was slow going the entire way. There are some good moments of unease and tension, but it does drag quite a bit. These are really just my first impressions, so I'm interested to see how I feel about Incarnate after I have had some time to think about it.
February 21, 2012
One of Campbell's finest novels. The lines of dream and reality are patiently twisted into a savage nightmare, a world where the dreamer is imprisoned in their own hallucinations. It's up to the reader to figure out what is tactile. Not many other writers can get under my skin like Campbell, and here he did without overtly painting the grotesque page after page. Surely, the brass-knuckled approach is one he avoids, however, the bruises he leaves behind linger long after closing the book. While he fumbles with one climactic moment, he regains steam and paints a horrific vision of the eternal nightmare (the snake knowingly eating its own tail), closing one of the most important horror novels of the 80s.
February 27, 2022
This had an interesting premise but unfortunately it didn't work for me. Found myself wanting to finish it more badly than find out what was going to happens. By the end of it I completely lost my focus on the story
January 31, 2015
This book takes a few hundred pages to lay its groundwork. While it's well-written, nothing happens until the final 100 pages or so, and then what does happen is largely a plot device, impossible to envision or feel because even the characters themselves are scratching their heads, wondering what the heck is going on.
The central questions: how will you ever really know you're still in a dream, whose dream are you in, and what happens if dreams spill out into our waking hours? One could do a lot of interesting things with this premise, but Campbell instead decided to do very little. Loose ends abound; in particular, I had a problem with the presence of a handful of vague characters who sat in peoples' houses emitting a soporific dream influence on the main characters. What purpose did they serve? Unclear.
I'm a little frustrated I put two weeks of reading time into this. Given the slow buildup, I was hoping for a more explosive ending. Oh well.
The central questions: how will you ever really know you're still in a dream, whose dream are you in, and what happens if dreams spill out into our waking hours? One could do a lot of interesting things with this premise, but Campbell instead decided to do very little. Loose ends abound; in particular, I had a problem with the presence of a handful of vague characters who sat in peoples' houses emitting a soporific dream influence on the main characters. What purpose did they serve? Unclear.
I'm a little frustrated I put two weeks of reading time into this. Given the slow buildup, I was hoping for a more explosive ending. Oh well.
December 11, 2017
This is the eighth Campbell novel I've read, this is also his longest, and often cited as his best. I think it's one of his most developed and wide-ranging, and yet I thought both "Ancient Images" and "The Hungry Moon" were more "fun" reads.
It does take this novel a lot of time to get going, but it holds the attention better than most slow-burn horror novels. This is partly because the story is more complex, it follows several protagonists instead of just one or two, as is usually the case in Campbell's novels. This keeps us bouncing around between characters, and has the feel of one of Stephen King's sprawling works, without endless character development.
The novel follows Molly, Joyce, Danny, Freda and Helen who participated in a dream study (gone wrong) over a decade ago. Their experience is now coming back to haunt them, drawing them together and making their waking lives increasingly nightmarish.
Dreams and reality start to meld together and this causes utter chaos in their lives. It also makes for a really unpredictable reading experience, we think something is real, only to find out later it wasn't. And some characters see things other's seemingly cannot.
Perhaps most of all, this is a paranoid novel. Each of the main characters has someone enter their lives who appears as a friend at first, but is actually a scout from the dream world, sent to influence them. Everyone around the characters' starts to persecute them and make their lives a living hell. At times this constant persecution can become a bit overdone. This is especially the case with Susan, the daughter of the Helen. Helen falls under the influence of a strange girl named Eve who Susan befriends when they move to a poorer side of town. Helen becomes so hateful to her daughter you'll want to strangle her yourself. This persecution is also true of Danny who has twisted sexual revenge fantasies against various other characters. We know he's crazy, but we're never quite sure if he has the strength to carry out his fantasies.
I love the gritty urban feel of this, there's graffiti on the walls, neon-spangled sex shops everywhere. It's a wintry novel too, where despite being urban, nature is an ever-hostile force. It's definitely the 80's too, what with children walking the streets and taking the subway alone. Oh the humanity! But it's not as gritty as his bleak "The Face That Must Die" or "The Doll Who Ate His Mother" (underrated in my opinion).
I had two main problems with this novel...
First, there's several points of the plot that just didn't make a lot of sense. We never fully understand what is going on, which I'm OK with, but there's a lot of freaky things that seem to just happen without having connection to the main plot idea. And the end especially didn't feel too satisfying, being a bit deus ex machina.
Second, in some of his work Campbell can overplay the suggestive "hints" of the horrific, where characters try to convince themselves that they didn't really see the menacing thing they saw. I'd say this is overdone in "The Grin of the Dark," but here I really would have liked to have seen a bit more of this. When these suggestive hints of the horrific appear they're quite effective, but most of the novel focuses on this uneasy paranoia and persecution between characters that I mentioned earlier, instead of these suggestive touches of something more nebulous.
Despite this, it's still one of the better novels I've read by him, even if it's not my absolute favorite.
It does take this novel a lot of time to get going, but it holds the attention better than most slow-burn horror novels. This is partly because the story is more complex, it follows several protagonists instead of just one or two, as is usually the case in Campbell's novels. This keeps us bouncing around between characters, and has the feel of one of Stephen King's sprawling works, without endless character development.
The novel follows Molly, Joyce, Danny, Freda and Helen who participated in a dream study (gone wrong) over a decade ago. Their experience is now coming back to haunt them, drawing them together and making their waking lives increasingly nightmarish.
Dreams and reality start to meld together and this causes utter chaos in their lives. It also makes for a really unpredictable reading experience, we think something is real, only to find out later it wasn't. And some characters see things other's seemingly cannot.
Perhaps most of all, this is a paranoid novel. Each of the main characters has someone enter their lives who appears as a friend at first, but is actually a scout from the dream world, sent to influence them. Everyone around the characters' starts to persecute them and make their lives a living hell. At times this constant persecution can become a bit overdone. This is especially the case with Susan, the daughter of the Helen. Helen falls under the influence of a strange girl named Eve who Susan befriends when they move to a poorer side of town. Helen becomes so hateful to her daughter you'll want to strangle her yourself. This persecution is also true of Danny who has twisted sexual revenge fantasies against various other characters. We know he's crazy, but we're never quite sure if he has the strength to carry out his fantasies.
I love the gritty urban feel of this, there's graffiti on the walls, neon-spangled sex shops everywhere. It's a wintry novel too, where despite being urban, nature is an ever-hostile force. It's definitely the 80's too, what with children walking the streets and taking the subway alone. Oh the humanity! But it's not as gritty as his bleak "The Face That Must Die" or "The Doll Who Ate His Mother" (underrated in my opinion).
I had two main problems with this novel...
First, there's several points of the plot that just didn't make a lot of sense. We never fully understand what is going on, which I'm OK with, but there's a lot of freaky things that seem to just happen without having connection to the main plot idea. And the end especially didn't feel too satisfying, being a bit deus ex machina.
Second, in some of his work Campbell can overplay the suggestive "hints" of the horrific, where characters try to convince themselves that they didn't really see the menacing thing they saw. I'd say this is overdone in "The Grin of the Dark," but here I really would have liked to have seen a bit more of this. When these suggestive hints of the horrific appear they're quite effective, but most of the novel focuses on this uneasy paranoia and persecution between characters that I mentioned earlier, instead of these suggestive touches of something more nebulous.
Despite this, it's still one of the better novels I've read by him, even if it's not my absolute favorite.
January 7, 2020
I'm giving this 4 stars because I couldn't put it down for the last 100 pages. However, I do think I respected it more than I enjoyed it. Ramsey Campbell is a master craftsman, there's no doubt about that. Just wiki all the awards and honors that he's received for horror writing. He also writes in a way that makes me feel like I'm going insane.
But there are times where the complexity can become a hindrance, slowing down the pacing to a crawl. About halfway through though, a switch flipped and the overall plot started to gain momentum, bringing the sense of wrongness to its natural boiling point in an ending that was fully satisfactory. I recommend it for those who enjoy horror that takes it's time, masticating its characters before swallowing them whole.
But there are times where the complexity can become a hindrance, slowing down the pacing to a crawl. About halfway through though, a switch flipped and the overall plot started to gain momentum, bringing the sense of wrongness to its natural boiling point in an ending that was fully satisfactory. I recommend it for those who enjoy horror that takes it's time, masticating its characters before swallowing them whole.
April 29, 2015
Incredible, incredible supernatural/sci-fi horror novel. A group of college-age people meet at a sleep/dream experiment which goes disturbingly wrong. Years later, most of them are going about their mundane lives with mundane work and family problems (except for one troubled young man who has ) when each of them is visited by unusual strangers (a bedridden old woman, a mysterious occultist, an attractive and sexually aggressive woman) who insinuate themselves into their lives. Waking life and dream begins to blur together, reality shifts in surreal and alarming ways, and soon the heroine begins to put together what's going on...
A sprawling multiple-protagonists epic in the true '80s big-fat-horror-novel style, Incarnate ties together its various psychological storylines with a big reveal that's truly disturbing. Readers for whom all the different weird 'incarnations' at first seem unrelated -- such as my own teenage self when I first read this book -- will appreciate a chapter midway through where one character basically explains everything, but knowing the specific nature of the threat () doesn't make the book or the conclusion any less scary. The climax is one of the most existentially disturbing (as well as slimy) scenes of any horror novel I've read, and would have made an awesome movie directed by David Cronenberg or the like. A really, really wonderful book with a nail-biting final showdown, transdimensional shifting, and slime. Lots of slime.
A sprawling multiple-protagonists epic in the true '80s big-fat-horror-novel style, Incarnate ties together its various psychological storylines with a big reveal that's truly disturbing. Readers for whom all the different weird 'incarnations' at first seem unrelated -- such as my own teenage self when I first read this book -- will appreciate a chapter midway through where one character basically explains everything, but knowing the specific nature of the threat () doesn't make the book or the conclusion any less scary. The climax is one of the most existentially disturbing (as well as slimy) scenes of any horror novel I've read, and would have made an awesome movie directed by David Cronenberg or the like. A really, really wonderful book with a nail-biting final showdown, transdimensional shifting, and slime. Lots of slime.
April 20, 2013
Excellent. Long but worth it. There's no one who does it better than Ramsey Campbell.
October 10, 2019
No offense but I'm SO grateful this is over! I loved it in bursts (hence three stars) but it really felt like a 200 page novel padded out to be 370. There are five different perspectives / plot threads it alternates between and two of them were very tedious and boring! I kept trudging through those chapters just to get to the real juicy ones, but even in the more fun chapters there were some major plotlines that just kind of vanished towards the end of the book in a really unsatisfying way. Love all the weird spooky surreal stuff, did not love all the frustrating irrational character decisions and clunky storytelling.
March 23, 2024
Interesting premise, some cool strangeness between dreams and reality, but I'll be damned if it doesn't take forever to get from one thing to the next. Too much unnecessary dialog and backstory that serves to only hold back the narrative from taking off and keeping the reader interested.
February 11, 2016
Structurally, Incarnate most resembles early Stephen King novels that include Salem's Lot and The Stand insofar as it follows multiple third-person POVs that gradually dovetail as the novel moves to its climax. And this structure works beautifully, suspense being generated from both the narratives and the moments in which we leave one POV for another.
Superficially, Incarnate also falls into the sub-genre of horror novels in which events are set in motion by an ill-advised experiment that unleashes either telepathic or supernatural powers in those who were experimented upon. But it's not really much like Firestarter or any of a dozen other 'wild-talent' novels of the 1960's, 70's, and 80's.
This time around, an Oxford study of several people who seem to have prophetic dreams disintegrates as the subjects seemingly start to go collectively insane. Eleven years later, one of the scientists in charge of the experiment writes to the subjects to enquire if any of them have suffered long-term problems as a result of the study. Well, maybe they have. Or maybe they simply drew the attention of Something to themselves and our little world. The next 450 pages of the novel will be spent examining what happened, what continues to happen, and what may happen next.
Campbell's strength at creating horrors that are always just a bit undefined even when they take center stage is in full evidence throughout the novel. There are glimpses of odd things that suddenly disappear. There are flashes of vaguely remembered cityscapes. There's a loathsome, terrible, needy thing sleeping in someone's bed. There are stairways that go on forever and crucifixes that move and leer. Through it all, Campbell's command of characterization is first-rate. We may not like all the characters, but even for the worst of them is aroused a fearful pity for what broke them, and why.
Incarnate gradually builds towards a Sublime and mysterious climax. There's a refreshing ruthlessness at points when it comes to the fate of some of the characters, though that ruthlessness works in concert with mystery: we don't really know what happens once certain people wander out of the light. It's a grand novel, minutely observed and gigantic in its revelations. Highly recommended.
Superficially, Incarnate also falls into the sub-genre of horror novels in which events are set in motion by an ill-advised experiment that unleashes either telepathic or supernatural powers in those who were experimented upon. But it's not really much like Firestarter or any of a dozen other 'wild-talent' novels of the 1960's, 70's, and 80's.
This time around, an Oxford study of several people who seem to have prophetic dreams disintegrates as the subjects seemingly start to go collectively insane. Eleven years later, one of the scientists in charge of the experiment writes to the subjects to enquire if any of them have suffered long-term problems as a result of the study. Well, maybe they have. Or maybe they simply drew the attention of Something to themselves and our little world. The next 450 pages of the novel will be spent examining what happened, what continues to happen, and what may happen next.
Campbell's strength at creating horrors that are always just a bit undefined even when they take center stage is in full evidence throughout the novel. There are glimpses of odd things that suddenly disappear. There are flashes of vaguely remembered cityscapes. There's a loathsome, terrible, needy thing sleeping in someone's bed. There are stairways that go on forever and crucifixes that move and leer. Through it all, Campbell's command of characterization is first-rate. We may not like all the characters, but even for the worst of them is aroused a fearful pity for what broke them, and why.
Incarnate gradually builds towards a Sublime and mysterious climax. There's a refreshing ruthlessness at points when it comes to the fate of some of the characters, though that ruthlessness works in concert with mystery: we don't really know what happens once certain people wander out of the light. It's a grand novel, minutely observed and gigantic in its revelations. Highly recommended.
July 16, 2014
A book that concerns a group of people who underwent a controlled experiment in prophetic dreaming. The experiment eventually went wrong and had to be called off due the ominous nature of what was beginning to take place on those involved. The story takes place eleven years later, when a dark force as a result from the dream experiment, is driving the participants insane and their sense of reality is affected to the point that the lines between dreams and reality become one and very blurred, in which events and people take on a nightmare scenario of a frightening otherworld of darkness and imprisonment in this dead existence, that also brings them together. Campbell explores the themes of reality and dreams very well, along with a dose of feminist issues to boot. Furthermore,the book explores the possibility that there could exist another world and dimension parallel to what we know and think of as reality. Campbell does not fully explore his characters in dept, just enough for the story to flow. His use of image is creepy and how reality is seriously mixed up, which gives a very claustrophobic feeling to proceedings and the antagonists wellbeing and life. Overall, a good read which should appeal to horror fans of H.P Lovecraft and other greats of horror in general.
February 16, 2019
170417: forgot to add review: blurb calls him 'Britain's answer to Stephen King'. perhaps so. there are some great images, some effective weirdness, multiple viewpoints. it is probably of its place and time, such is ordinary life disrupted by horror. the characters are real, identifiable, concerns and lives modern, convincing, simple. from the single mother struggling with the visiting other daughter, the woman journalist who is the one who acts...
it is a. long. book. but easily read in two big gulps. the idea of dreams investigation and five special dreamers is good, somehow familiar: is there a subgenre of dangerous medical experiments summoning horror? takes a while to read horror. that events could be seen as shit rather than evil... i do like the metaphysics, the force of dreams lying in wait behind commonly agreed waking life, but would rather have more on that than ultimate explanations. good if not great...
it is a. long. book. but easily read in two big gulps. the idea of dreams investigation and five special dreamers is good, somehow familiar: is there a subgenre of dangerous medical experiments summoning horror? takes a while to read horror. that events could be seen as shit rather than evil... i do like the metaphysics, the force of dreams lying in wait behind commonly agreed waking life, but would rather have more on that than ultimate explanations. good if not great...
March 30, 2011
A good central idea, but something of a slow-boil to the point where the damned egg just melted away when I finally cracked the shell open. Campbell definitely seems to have been padding this one out, and all too often his prose is the featureless, unobjectionable, unmemorable grey of the competent British mid-list author, plodding along when it should be racing, ambling gently when it should be soaring. Style is an important part of what I look for in effective weird fiction and unfortunately the style here is too generic, watered-down and anonymous to do justice the concept and situations.
August 31, 2016
Campbell brings the full strength of his ability to create terror and intrigue once again. The vivid cast of characters are both sympathetic and aloof, mysterious with motives not even they are sure of. What impressed me most about Incarnate was how uncomfortable this book made me. Time and time again, our protagonists find themselves in terrible situations, stripped of all their power, and abused. This book moved me, elicited a visceral response that I absolutely admire. Cheers, Mr. Campbell! You've done it again! A terrific book through and through.
November 17, 2014
A great horror novel, filled with the disturbing and strange but eschewing the gratuitous gore that seems to constitute "scary" these days. This was a supremely British book (slow-moving, dry, trading more on a feeling of deep unease than outright shock), so if you like "The Turn of the Screw" and old Masterpiece Theater productions on a rainy day then this, my friend, is the book for you. If, however, you're a "Saw" enthusiast and enjoy seeing intestines, you might want to shuffle on along.
January 31, 2016
I couldn't put it down. The hapless woman just gets drawn deeper and deeper into this bizarre situation, will she or nil she. Great Campbellosity in this one -- you always come away with the feeling that you spent the evening flirting with a psychosis, but never -- quite -- kissed it on the mouth.
April 21, 2018
“Incarnate� follows the aftereffects of an experiment on prophetic dreaming. It is full of characters and various points of view. All of the dreamers, the researchers, a stamp collector and a documentary director (at least nine characters) take turns narrating. This gives the reader a sense of the universality of the experience but can be confusing.
The first chapter takes place in Oxford during the abandoned experiment and the rest, eleven years later. It starts slowly, with a couple of side stories, some creepy happenings and confusing sinister relationships, while building disassociation and madness. From about half way through, it becomes extremely intense. Terrible and frightening things are happening to everyone and the reader has no way to escape. Shutting the book at this point becomes a matter of will and almost impossible. A book following a single character could never be this frenetic. We are certain at least some of them will die horribly and there is nothing we can do but keep reading. It is a harrowing ride.
Campbell can be hammy at times � the describing characters using a mirror technique and the first chapter that hovers over us waiting to be explained, but boy can the man write horror.
The first chapter takes place in Oxford during the abandoned experiment and the rest, eleven years later. It starts slowly, with a couple of side stories, some creepy happenings and confusing sinister relationships, while building disassociation and madness. From about half way through, it becomes extremely intense. Terrible and frightening things are happening to everyone and the reader has no way to escape. Shutting the book at this point becomes a matter of will and almost impossible. A book following a single character could never be this frenetic. We are certain at least some of them will die horribly and there is nothing we can do but keep reading. It is a harrowing ride.
Campbell can be hammy at times � the describing characters using a mirror technique and the first chapter that hovers over us waiting to be explained, but boy can the man write horror.
July 3, 2018
I wouldn't say this transcends the genre but it certainly fulfills the promise of good, kitschy horror. Without that element of kitsch, this would probably have been a little too upsetting for me!
It's one of those books that makes you empathize with unreliable narrators until you start to question your own sanity. I think Ramsey Campbell really does understand people and their fears—mostly about themselves—and that makes the book effective despite its flaws.
It's one of those books that makes you empathize with unreliable narrators until you start to question your own sanity. I think Ramsey Campbell really does understand people and their fears—mostly about themselves—and that makes the book effective despite its flaws.
December 22, 2019
3 stars only because Campbell's prose is very good. Unfortunately, the main plot takes its sweet time and comes to the fore in the last 100 pages, with 300+ pages of character drama that while interesting isn't what I'd picked up the novel for. And even when it finally starts it's underwhelming. The back cover lies through its teeth re: wrenched souls and ultimate horrors. All in all, not a Campbell novel I'll be recommending.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 80 reviews
Can't find what you're looking for?
Get help and learn more about the design.