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7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Something Wilted This Way Comes, 19 Jan 1999
By A Customer
I really wanted to like this book. I really did. Written with more than a nod to Ray Bradbury's "Something Wicked This Way Comes" -- indeed, an out and out pastiche of it right down the style of the prose -- it could have been something wonderful. Instead it's just tacky, repetitive and makes you regret the time spent reading it. It fails, largely but not purely, because there is no rhyme or reason to the actions of the antagonists. They turn up at a tiny, idealised town out in the American hinterlands and, scarcely pausing to draw breath, start killing everyone. I'm quite aware that evil doesn't need to be rational but that's why real evil is banal. This is a story and was meant, I would guess, to entertain. It does not. Imagine a book about some young boys killing beetles in a variety of moderately imaginative ways and you have "Escardy Gap" in a nutshell. Add a few thousand words of characterisation beforehand so you actually quite like some of the beetles and you have this book precisely. No, it isn't quite that straightforward -- there is a story within a story here and a small point is made about the nature of fiction. Unfortunately, it really is a small point and not worth wading through most of the book to get to. If you want admittedly well written descriptions of people being dismantled, carbonised and otherwise done to death, fine. If you want a book with a similar theme that offers a great deal more and does it with wit, read the Bradbury or perhaps James P. Blaylock's "The Land of Dreams".
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