Once (Hardcover)

Trading on a grotesque reinvention of fairy stories, Herbert has his protagonist Thorn Kindred encountering witches, goblins and demons, and being obliged to turn to some very strange sources to save his soul. The new ambitiousness of Herbert's writing may be found in the underpinning of the narrative here: this is a grim and persuasively realised spin on Nietzsche's epigram: "When fighting monsters, beware of becoming one yourself." But long-time readers needn't worry about a lack of grisly chills: Herbert is too fine a writer not to keep us permanently on the edge of our proverbial seats. And he's better than ever at orchestrating his fear-filled climaxes, so that there is a carefully worked out structure to the book that never has the stop-and-start jerkiness of the early novels. Rather in the nature of Sondheim's musical Into the Woods, fairy tale motifs are exploded and reconstituted in this dark and erotic fable. After reading Once, fairy tales will never seem the same again. --Barry Forshaw

Review
Once upon a time there were faeries living in the woods of Castle Bracken. This is the story of Thom Kindred who returns to his childhood home in the woods to recuperate from an almost fatal heart attack. There are many mysteries for Thom to solve, including his heritage, friends who are not all they seem to be and, of course, the faerefolkis themselves. A wonderful read which shows Herbert to be a master of high fantasy as well as horror. Take heed, however, that this book is not for the squeamish or the easily offended as it contains bad language, sexually explicit material and horror of the Herbert kind. (Kirkus UK)

After ringing changes on Victor Hugo in Others (1999), Herbert now takes us to a fairyland decidedly not out of James M. Barrie. Yes, the author does provide some sweetness-and-light and pitter-pattering fairy laughter, but only as they contrast with dark forces of wiccans married to the boiling and shapeless father of darkness. His object is to create a total environment in which the reader can at least half-believe in fairies, elves, undines, and so on, not to mention witches. So he sets before us the Bracken estate with its castle, acres of lawn, deep woods, and rough lanes: an absolutely idyllic landscape for fairies. Thom Kindred, 27, is recovering from a crippling auto accident that resulted from a stroke while driving. His mother worked for Sir Russell Bleeth at Castle Bracken until Thom was seven years old; then she . . . hmm, died? . . . without ever telling Thom who his real father was. Sir Russell, twice a widower and father to big, shapeless, greedy Hugo, lies dying as Thom returns to the estate and takes up life in his mother's abandoned old cottage. He finds himself attended mornings by Nell Quick, a pretty wiccan, it turns out, whose attentions cause dishes to fly off shelves while some kind of elf or goblin scoots about the floor just out of sight. Soon Thom hears strange musical sounds and sees eerie golden lights floating about, and later he finds himself sucked into the world of little spirits and an affair with beautiful Jennet, an undine. But as his mother would have warned him, affairs between mortals and undines can't end happily. Leaf-clogged suspense until a slashing succubus appears to add stress to Thom's recovery. (Kirkus Reviews)

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