5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Split personality., 31 Oct 2002
This review is from: Hybrid (Hardcover)
Hutson's latest is a skilfull blending of both horror and thriller genres. Not only does the master give us, essentially, three books in one, but we're also treated to a glimpse of what he can do with a quiet room, a dark night and an unstable mind, somthing that many fans would agree has been long missed in Hutson's work.
Christopher Ward is a struggling novelist whose early success has slowly but surely run away from him. Now he spends his days working on a book that nobody wants to read, or publish, and his despondancy and general bitterness towards a literary world that doesn't seem to need him anymore sends him spiralling into madness.
Or so it seems.
Pages of his latest opus churn out from his printer, but he has no knowledge of how they came to be. Hutson's eponymous protagonist, Sean Doyle, is lent to Ward as a fiction within a fiction, and goes about his Anti Terrorist business with the now expected, nay, ubiquitous, fervour, blasting away IRA gunmen, drawing the wrath of his long suffering superiors, and even finding time to fight a few Islamic Fundamentalists along the way.
But as Doyle's imagined life spews forth from a machine that Ward is sure he turns off every night before he retires, Ward's real one is falling apart like a badly structured plot; not something that Hybrid could be accused of.
The "apparitions" come at night. The madness gestates by day. The clever locking together of each story, with Doyle hurtling along at 100 miles an hour, only to be interrupted by Ward's more sedate, but equally intriguing, plotline, means that any fan (or indeed those unlucky enough to have never read a Hutson tale) just has to read that little bit more before putting the book down.
Criticism has been levelled at Hutson in the past for his stripped down prose, but the flowery efforts of other writers in the genre just couldn't match pace with Hutson's relentless bombardment of the reader's imagination. A quick glimpse into the mind of one who has just finished one of his books would no doubt show a landscape drenched in blood, sweat and testosterone with every cell grinning like a buffoon between the still smoking bullet holes, each on the size of a man's fist, naturally.
Simply put: Simply brilliant.
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3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Hybrid, 11 July 2003
By A Customer
This review is from: Hybrid (Hardcover)
Afte reading a number of Shaun Hutson books now, I was not surprised to find that Hybrid immediately captured me. This was instantly recognisable as a Hutson classic, due to its realism and engaging plot. Again, Hutson appears to put his heart and soul into this novel, which is full of exaggerated descriptive text, something I have come to expect from Hutson and become accustomed to. Hutson is truly a master in his genre.
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3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
2 For the price of 1!!!, 13 May 2003
Shaun Hutson is back with a bang and his latest offering is his best for a while. The book is about Christopher Ward,(based on Hutson himself at a guess) a washed up author whose publishers have abondoned him. Ward turns to drink, and all but gives up on his current novel. Mysteriously, Ward's book is still being written but by who?
This book is superb. U can actually read Ward's book which is Hutson's latest Sean Doyle offering. Another cut and thrust action novel where Doyle deals with the problems still facing Northern Ireland and the Good Friday agreement.
Hutson's novel with another novel works very well, and you'll want to know the end of both stories! All in all, an essential addition to your shopping basket!
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