From the book blurb -

Remember the faery stories you were told when you were a child? Tales of tiny, magical, winged beings and elves, wicked witches and goblins, Demons...

what if one day you found they were true? What if, when you because an adult, you discovered they were all based on fact? What if you met the fantasy and it was all so very real?

That's what happened to Thom Kindred. the wonders were revealed to him. But so were the horrors, for not far behind the Good, there always lurks the Bad And the Bad had designs on Thom. The Bad would show him real evil.

He would see the hellhagges and the demons. He would be touched by perverted passion. And corruption. And he would encounter his own worst nightmare.

The Bad would seek to destroy him. And only the magic of the little beings would be able to help him.

Once, James Herbert's masterful new novel of erotic love and darkest horror, will take you to a realm where fantasy and reality collide, where faerytales really can come true. From Britain's Number One bestselling author of chiller fiction, this is James Herbert's finest novel to date.

Going to be sending this out on an international ray -

Molekilby (UK)
Giz-angel (UK)
CheriePie (US)
Hshah (India)


I am still looking for participants for this ray, please let me know if you are interested.

Posted to molekilby second class this morning.

Received in the post today, thanks abrokenstarr for sharing. Lined up to be next will read and send on.

I liked this book, but I don't know if I would have called it his best work. The story was certainly believable and I did enjoy the names of some of the fairies (very imaginitive) will pass this on as soon as I have the details.

Got this today - thanks! I will pay special attention when I read it..... I'll be back to journal, hope to do this within the week :-)

Didn't really enjoy this - I was disappointed as the most recent one of James Herbert's I read (Nobody True I think it was) was just brilliant. I'm not a huge fan of fantasy which didn't help, and I found the characters irritation and the writing a bit sloppy. Still, I'm sure it will be enjoyed by other readers :-)
As soon as I hear from CheriePie I will send this off. Thanks abrokenstar for sharing this with me.

Arrived today. This is my first James Herbert book. (I've got Haunted on my TBR but I haven't had a chance to read it yet.) I've got a couple other rings ahead of this but should be able to start on it within the next couple weeks. Thanks for sending it on. :)

Hmmm... how did I feel about this book? Well, I think it could've been a lot better in some regards, but I really liked the underlying story. For starters, I didn't like the author's frequent use of parenthesis and dashes, in the middle of a thought, where he'd go off on a tangent in another direction, just to return to the original thought of the sentence. For instance, dashes should be used for short thoughts inserted into the stream of thought, but when that inserted stream of thought goes on for 5 or 6 lines, before returning to finish the sentence... well, I found myself having to go back and reread the sentence without the inserted text to understand what the author was trying to say. He sometimes used parenthesis in the same way. So all that got annoying after awhile.

Secondly, speaking as a practicing Witch and Pagan, I disliked the use of the word Wiccan to refer to what Nell was. A Wiccan is a very specific denomination of Witchcraft, and what Nell practiced was definitely not Wicca. Nell was a Witch, but she was not a Wiccan. A Wiccan is a Witch, but a Witch is not necessarily a Wiccan. I think the author should spend a bit more time researching the subject of Wiccans and Witchcraft before throwing around terminology he obviously knows nothing about.

Now that all that nasty stuff is out of the way, I found the underlying story interesting and hard to put down. I particularly liked the sex scenes; they were pretty hot for a non-erotica book! :-P I also liked author's portrayal of the Faerie world, and the characters of Jennet and Rigwit. But found Hugo, Thom's longtime friend, to be particularly annoying and spineless.

Overall, a fairly decent read, though it lost points because of the points I mentioned above. I'll certainly look for and read more by this author though, particularly since others have stated this wasn't even one of his better books.

I'm PMed hshah for her address and will get this in the mail shortly and update this journal entry when I do.

UPDATE 06-APR-2006: I put this in the mail to hshah in India today. Can you believe $6.00 to send this Surface mail, and it only weighed 9 oz. too! Freakin' P.O.! (The fit seemed a bit too tight for the sm. GPM envelope, which would've cost only $5.25 and got it there within 2 weeks. Oh well!)

thanks CheriePie for sending the book!

RELEASE NOTES:

Along with a few books, this one is going to a children's charity in mumbai.