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'tis the season...

13 TALES OF TERROR: BOOK 7

this is a surprisingly effective, briskly paced, nicely tense, and occasionally interesting bit of horror-thriller.

poor Mike Tyler has a problematic past: once a part of a group of pretentious college kids devoted to a pretentious professor slash guru slash svengali, these kids and their prof decided to take it to the next level by regular ingestion of the highly illegal drug The Host - which apparently induces both hallucinatory effects and shared empathic group connection. sadly, The Host is similar to that Blue Sunshine drug from the movie called, er, Blue Sunshine, and so zany murderous Manson Family-style slaughter-hijinks ensued. but all that is behind him. after all he didn't take part in the murders - he was merely an accomplice. after some hard time in both prison and a mental institution, and medicated to the gills, he's managed to carve out a decent living with a nice live-in girlfriend and her son. unfortunately for Mike, not only does The Host stay in your system permanently (thus the constant meds) but a member of the group has come out of the woodwork and is trying to recruit Mike back in - by kidnapping his supposedly long-dead son from Mike's once-vanished ex-wife. uh oh!

K.W. Jeter is a genre maverick, having paved the way for both cyberpunk and steampunk with novels like Dr. Adder and Morlock Night. at some point he apparently decided to make some cash by churning out a series of lurid horror novels that probably looked great on the shelves of various B Daltons and Waldenbooks across the nation. such is Dark Seeker. i hope he made some money off of this one.

Jeter has an individualistic vision that encompasses the Los Angeles landscape of freeways and strip malls, a grim and sour misanthropy, the need for his characters to escape from various dark pasts, and a fairly expert use of parallel narratives that comment on each other in intriguing ways. he clearly has writing chops (except for the overuse of various cringe-worthy parentheticals denoting thoughts-within-thoughts) and he just as clearly has the ability to outwrite more popular horror hacks. such is Dark Seeker. i hope he didn't beat himself up too much when seeing his novels shelved next to Koontz and Saul.

i was impressed with Jeter's skill at portraying what it feels like to be on hallucinogens. the taste in the mouth, the subtle colored outlines, the thrilling expansion of sound and vision. although now the idea of taking acid sounds about as fun to me as taking bleach, back in my college days i did it more times than i can remember. i used to love it so much that the idea of being on acid 24/7, of never coming down, was awesome to me... shudder! The Host is 24/7 and it also features visions of a pointy-teethed lil' guy who wants you to kill kill kill. my own hallucinogenic escapades tended to feature pleasant colored wavy things and the need to be in water and dreamy visions of the brotherhood of mankind. The Host's hallucinogenic qualities make participants want to tear limbs from bodies, bathe in blood and laugh like hyenas. different strokes for different folks i guess.