From Publishers Weekly
A forest haunted by a horror older than time and channeled by one unfortunate family is the foundation of this gripping horror extravaganza, Campbell's first novel of the supernatural in six years. Set in environs fans will recognize from his early Lovecraftian fiction, it focuses on the Price family, who have had an uneasy association with Goodmanswood since patriarch Lennox migrated to England to study its dark legends and succumbed to belief in them. With Lennox institutionalized and serving as cult leader to some of the asylum's creepier inmates, the responsibility to hold the family together has fallen to daughter Heather, a library archivist who traces her father's cryptic remarks about the woods' history to accounts of Nathaniel Selcouth, an alchemist who resided there and who schemed "to create a messenger or servant that would mediate between him and the limits of the universe, both spiritual and physical." Heather's investigations dovetail with sightings by frightened neighborhood children of a grotesque "sticky man" glimpsed among the trees, and strange events that bedevil the family. Campbell (Obsession) is at the top of his form here, infusing every scene and scrap of dialogue with a sense of inescapable menace and manipulating nature imagery in such a way as to give it a malignant supernatural character. A richly textured tale of modern horror with classic roots, it confirms Campbell's reputation as one of the most formidable dark fantasists working today.Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Booklist
The inmates of Mercy Hill in England have visions--the remnants of their 1960s experiences with the hallucinogens growing in Goodmanswood, to which Dr. Lennox Price, intending to study them, fell victim instead. The rest of his family wasn't immune to the woods' allure, either. His younger daughter, just returned from the Americas, went there ostensibly for research for her next book. His grandson discovered himself unable to leave the area, even for a job interview. His ex-wife wandered the woods in search of objects for her art and, after Lennox's death, saw him in the woods' shadows. His elder daughter, though, seems resistant to the madness that plagues the family, yet something in Goodmanswood awaits her, too. At the woods' heart stand the ruins of a tower that once belonged to an alchemist contemporary to the infamous Elizabethan magician John Dee, and there is something far older and more powerful there, as well. This satisfyingly nasty mood piece has one starting at shadows and attending to odd noises in the dark. Regina Schroeder
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Review
"His stories take place in a world full of threat and insinuation, where even the most contemporary objects shine with a sinister light. The world Ramsey Campbell takes for granted is the world of our darkest nightmares."
--Peter Straub
"Ramsey Campbell writes quiet, precise, grim psychological novels--literary cousins of M. C. Escher's disturbing mathematical images. Campbell writes vividly and convincingly about the existence of evil. He continues to break new ground, advancing the style and thematic content of horror fiction far beyond the works of his contemporaries."
--The Washington Post
"Ramsey Campbell distills the sort of pure quiet terror few other writers even know exists. Like Stephen King at his very best, Campbell plumbs the depths of what humans can do to each other. A terrifying, ferocious, and deeply compassionate book."
--Sarah Smith, author of The Knowledge of Water and The Vanished Child
"Campbell continues to produce fiction that astonishes, unsettles, and-in its deeply perverse fashion-delights. No one is better than Campbell at creating-and maintaining-a sense of nebulous, impending doom. Pact of the Fathers is the clear product of a master craftsman with a grim, unflinching vision of the world and of our precarious positions in it. Like the best contemporary horror fiction, Pact of the Fathers is exhilarating and unsettling in equal measure, and leaves a lingering aftertaste behind."
-Locus
"Ramsey Campbell is highly regarded for his sensitive use of the language and his ability to create psychologically complex characters."
--Dean Koontz
"He provides the reader with insights and chills only a master of dark fantasy could achieve." --Clive Barker
Review
"His stories take place in a world full of threat and insinuation, where even the most contemporary objects shine with a sinister light. The world Ramsey Campbell takes for granted is the world of our darkest nightmares."
--Peter Straub
"Ramsey Campbell writes quiet, precise, grim psychological novels--literary cousins of M. C. Escher's disturbing mathematical images. Campbell writes vividly and convincingly about the existence of evil. He continues to break new ground, advancing the style and thematic content of horror fiction far beyond the works of his contemporaries."
--The Washington Post
"Ramsey Campbell distills the sort of pure quiet terror few other writers even know exists. Like Stephen King at his very best, Campbell plumbs the depths of what humans can do to each other. A terrifying, ferocious, and deeply compassionate book."
--Sarah Smith, author of The Knowledge of Water and The Vanished Child
"Campbell continues to produce fiction that astonishes, unsettles, and-in its deeply perverse fashion-delights. No one is better than Campbell at creating-and maintaining-a sense of nebulous, impending doom. Pact of the Fathers is the clear product of a master craftsman with a grim, unflinching vision of the world and of our precarious positions in it. Like the best contemporary horror fiction, Pact of the Fathers is exhilarating and unsettling in equal measure, and leaves a lingering aftertaste behind."
-Locus
"Ramsey Campbell is highly regarded for his sensitive use of the language and his ability to create psychologically complex characters."
--Dean Koontz
"He provides the reader with insights and chills only a master of dark fantasy could achieve." --Clive Barker
Book Description
Ramsey Campbell is the world's most honored living horror writer, with more than twenty World Fantasy, British Fantasy, Bram Stoker, and other awards to his credit. Hailed as one of the most literate and literary writers of our time, in genre and out, Campbell has been acclaimed as a "master of dark fantasy" by Clive Barker, one of today's "finest writers of supernatural horror and psychological suspense" by the Charleston Post & Courier, the "master of a skewed and exquisitely terrifying style" by Library Journal, "one of the world's foremost horror writers" by the San Francisco Examiner-Chronicle, and a "master of mood" by Publishers Weekly.
In The Darkest Part of the Woods, Campbell introduces readers to the Price family, whose lives have for decades been snarled with the fate of the ancient forest of Goodmanswood. Here, Dr. Lennox Price discovered a hallucinogenic moss that quickly became the focus of a cult-and though the moss and the trees on which it grew are long gone, it seems as if the whole forest can now affect the minds of visitors.
After Lennox is killed trying to return to his beloved wood, his widow seems to see and hear him in the trees-or is it a dark version of the Green Man that caresses her with leafy hands? Lennox's grandson heeds a call to lie in his lover's arms in the very heart of the forest-and cannot help but wonder what the fruit of that love will be.
And Heather, Lennox's daughter, who turned her back on her father's mysteries and sought sanctuary in the world of facts and history? Goodmanswood summons her as well . . .
From the Inside Flap
"His stories take place in a world full of threat and insinuation, where even the most contemporary objects shine with a sinister light. The world Ramsey Campbell takes for granted is the world of our darkest nightmares."
--Peter Straub
"Ramsey Campbell writes quiet, precise, grim psychological novels--literary cousins of M. C. Escher's disturbing mathematical images. Campbell writes vividly and convincingly about the existence of evil. He continues to break new ground, advancing the style and thematic content of horror fiction far beyond the works of his contemporaries."
--The Washington Post
"Ramsey Campbell distills the sort of pure quiet terror few other writers even know exists. Like Stephen King at his very best, Campbell plumbs the depths of what humans can do to each other. A terrifying, ferocious, and deeply compassionate book."
--Sarah Smith, author of The Knowledge of Water and The Vanished Child
"Campbell continues to produce fiction that astonishes, unsettles, and-in its deeply perverse fashion-delights. No one is better than Campbell at creating-and maintaining-a sense of nebulous, impending doom. Pact of the Fathers is the clear product of a master craftsman with a grim, unflinching vision of the world and of our precarious positions in it. Like the best contemporary horror fiction, Pact of the Fathers is exhilarating and unsettling in equal measure, and leaves a lingering aftertaste behind."
-Locus
"Ramsey Campbell is highly regarded for his sensitive use of the language and his ability to create psychologically complex characters."
--Dean Koontz
About the Author
Ramsey Campbell has won more awards than any other living author of horror or dark fantasy, including four World Fantasy Awards, nine British Fantasy Awards, three Bram Stoker Awards, and two International Horror Guild Awards. Critically acclaimed both in the US and in England, Campbell is widely regarded as one of the genre's literary lights for both his short fiction and his novels. His classic novels, such as The Face that Must Die, The Doll Who Ate His Mother, and The Influence, set new standards for horror as literature. His collection, Scared Stiff, virtually established the subgenre of erotic horror.
Ramsey Campbell's works have been published in French, German, Italian, Spanish, Japanese, and several other languages. He has been President of the British Fantasy Society and has edited critically acclaimed anthologies, including Fine Frights. Campbell's best known works in the US are Obsession, Incarnate, Midnight Sun, and Nazareth Hill.
The Darkest Part of the Woods FROM THE PUBLISHER
Ramsey Campbell is the world's most honored living horror writer, with more than twenty World Fantasy, British Fantasy, Bram Stoker, and other awards to his credit. Hailed as one of the most literate and literary writers of our time, in genre and out, Campbell has been acclaimed as a "master of dark fantasy" by Clive Barker, one of today's "finest writers of supernatural horror and psychological suspense" by the Charleston Post & Courier, the "master of a skewed and exquisitely terrifying style" by Library Journal, "one of the world's foremost horror writers" by the San Francisco Examiner-Chronicle, and a "master of mood" by Publishers Weekly.
In The Darkest Part of the Woods, Campbell introduces readers to the Price family, whose lives have for decades been snarled with the fate of the ancient forest of Goodmanswood. Here, Dr. Lennox Price discovered a hallucinogenic moss that quickly became the focus of a cult-and though the moss and the trees on which it grew are long gone, it seems as if the whole forest can now affect the minds of visitors.
After Lennox is killed trying to return to his beloved wood, his widow seems to see and hear him in the trees-or is it a dark version of the Green Man that caresses her with leafy hands? Lennox's grandson heeds a call to lie in his lover's arms in the very heart of the forest-and cannot help but wonder what the fruit of that love will be.
And Heather, Lennox's daughter, who turned her back on her father's mysteries and sought sanctuary in the world of facts and history? Goodmanswood summons her as well . . .
FROM THE CRITICS
Publishers Weekly
Readers will hesitate to visit their favorite chain bookstore after finishing this horror tour de force from British author Campbell (The Darkest Part of the Woods). Texts, an American bookseller, has just opened its first U.K. outlet in newly built Fenny Meadows retail park, and manager Woody Blake is struggling to whip the store into shape, despite such perplexing setbacks as computers spitting out flyers with embarrassing typos and books nightly disarranging themselves on the shelves and oozing grubby residues. You might think that something from the boggy terrain was corrupting the store environment and indeed that's what a local author suggests when he recounts the site's ancient history of draining itself, then swallowing up villages built on it. The stage is set for shocking revelations when Woody calls for a work all-nighter and the staff finally see what's patronizing their store after hours. Eldritch horrors are Campbell's forte, and he does a brilliant job of insinuating them into the modern work environment through computers, cell phones and security cameras whose apparent malfunction is an index to the indescribable forces they channel. His rich and evocative prose serves, like the Fenny Meadows fog, to wrap scenes in a dense miasma of disturbing images and shadowy shapes. Nearly plotless, this novel is one of his most sustained exercises in atmosphere and a high water mark of horror. Agent, Kay McCauley. (Apr. 1)FYI: Campbell has won more than 20 World Fantasy, British Fantasy, Bram Stoker and other major awards. Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.
Library Journal
Since Dr. Lennox Price's discovery of a hallucinogenic moss growing nearby his family home, the Price family has been inextricably linked with the ancient forest known as Goodmanswood. As family members hear the call of the wood and answer it in their own way, the forest works its eerie spell on them, changing their lives to suit its own dark purposes. A master storyteller of horror fiction, Campbell brings his landscapes to life, imbuing them with personalities and motives that are as inhuman as they are beautiful and terrible. Eloquent and complex, this dark fantasy belongs in most horror collections. Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.
Kirkus Reviews
Campbell's masterpiece. As ever, Campbell places believable characters into fabulously dark situations and lets the situation become more memorable than the characters (Midnight Sun, 1990, etc.). Although this time they're an agreeable group of interesting folks, they too fade once the fun-ride is over. The strongest invention here remains the horror out of space and time that's centered in Goodmanswood, outside Brichester. When the American professor of popular delusions hears of the madness of crowds in Brichester, he goes there and hasn't left since-indeed, he winds up as an inmate of the Arbours, a home for the mentally bombed. Lennox is married to Margo, a painter/sculptor, and they have two daughters: Sylvia, a pregnant vegan who writes books about the weird stuff her father wrote about; and older daughter Heather, who works in a bookstore and is divorced mother to Sam, Lennox's grandson, who hopes to go into publishing (to us Sam would be better off saving trees from publishers). In fact, Sam limps from an ankle he broke while living in a tree and trying to save it from being cut down for a bypass. But-the horror. Some time ago it was noted that a mound existed in Goodmanswood with strange lighted insects flying around it, while several trees around the mound held a lichen that, if touched, gave a person lasting hallucinations-the madness Lennox came to write about. Every now and then, Lennox and a group of fellow hallucinators escape from the Arbours and go off to the mound, along "the path that led to itself." What is the secret of the mound? Far better than the secret, when it's at last revealed in eye-scraping gothic type, is the buildup of a living darkness within the woods, adarkness blacker than night itself, with falling leaves that circle about and return as bits of blackness to their trees. And this is magically fresh and memorable. What happens when you go into the woods, children.
Art & Photography
Book Info
