Once...

James Herbert
2001
ISBN 0 333 76140 5

This is a story about how fairytales are real, and how Thom Kindred rediscovers the faeriefolk living in the woods around his childhood home. After suffering a stroke, he puts the flashing lights and heightened awareness down to his brain misbehaving, but quickly realises that's not the case.

This was a very different story to what I'm used to from Herbert; this was a lot more adult, and much of it involved sex and sensuality. That said, I spent the first part of the book comparing it to the last book I read by the same author (The Secret of Crickley Hall), and it took a while before I could stop second-guessing what was going to happen next.

I did find Nell's transparency a little annoying - only fangs and a black cape seemed to be missing, but her story had a satisfactory ending (for me, definitely not so much for her). The rest of the ending, although just as neat, was much like a fairytale - very neatly packaged and very sappy. I would have liked to have gotten into Hugo's head one more time, but I guess that would have spoiled the mood.

I didn't feel this was a scary horror like Haunted or The Secret of Crickley Hall, and I found it a bit too light to what I was expecting.

Date Finished: 23/11/07
Year Total: 40