The Jonah’ is a well paced novel that draws the reader into the developing storyline with the mysterious events that are occurring. Kelso is written as a very human and easy to identify with character. The interlacing subplots that run parallel to the main thread of the storyline add a good depth to the novel as a whole, whilst fleshing out the characters and their respective pasts. A tad boring' is not a good thing to say about a horror book. It wasn't bad, but the writing was so eighties' thriller that it was slightly annoying. The characters were about as empty as empty can be. The plot itself, however, was not too bad. I mean, nothing really surprising, but still kept me reading one more chapter way more often than I'd care to admit. So it wasn't all bad. Just... you know, mostly bad.

He was the weirdest, the nastiest. The Fog and The Rats terrified me; Creed was spoken about in my school in almost mythological ways, being both horrifying and introducing us to sexual concepts we'd never contemplated before that point; and The Magic Cottage, when given to me aged 13 by an amazing English teacher, was one of the books that made me want to become a writer. I don’t think this book was James Herbert’s best, but it also wasn’t exactly terrible. It’s just that when he has a big hit, his books are next level and better than anything that most other authors can come up with. When he doesn’t connect, they’re just pretty average. But I kind of like that, because it makes his skill level seem more attainable and doesn’t leave me feeling as though I’ll never be anywhere near the writer that he is. At this point I want to jump in and point out however that along with many other authors, James Herbert's books developed and changed through the years - his early books where very visceral and tactile - sometimes at the expense of characterisation, but as the years went on he would mature and start to take on a more subtle and restrained approach and in some ways even more terrifying style. The Shrine was one of his early books and some of the scenes certainly reflect this.**. I really enjoyed the writing of this, but the story was a little underwhelming. Only I don't know if it was the story itself or just the 2020 bug. I think, from a distance, it should be a 4-star book, but my experience was a 3-star. So let's call it 3.5.

REVIEWS of CREED by James Herbert

Do we care? The final hysteria is a small price to pay - it is a meeting of the expectations of the fans of the genre - because we have more genuinely horrific set-pieces on the way, including a very nasty industrial disaster and a ghost incursion that is M R James with added terror. The actual reason for Alice having these "gifts" and the church property and and old oak tree is told through a journal and it was "ok" but I do wish they went into this alil more and provided more insight as to why Elnor had this power and how she came to be. Miracles or evil entity faking the miraculous cures....Great pace and buildup.

If that's the point, then okay. It makes sense but that just means we now have an unlikable main character surrounded on an island with other unlikeable characters. With his next novel, Lair (1979), Herbert regaled readers with the return of the rats, and he completed the trilogy with Domain (1984), set in a future where rats are now dominant following a nuclear war that has devastated civilisation. Herbert's The City (1994), a graphic novel illustrated by Ian Miller, was set in the same post-apocalypse world in which only a handful of people have survived.

Creed by James Herbert

Omdat ik, toen ik het boek las, nog geen (echte) beoordelingen en mening gaf over boeken is het voor mij niet mogelijk om nu een juiste waardering aan het boek te geven. Ik hoop in de aankomende jaren tijd te vinden om oude boeken weer op te pakken om opnieuw te lezen, zodat ik ook dit boek een juiste waardering kan geven.