All things considered, Herbert is, by generation and essentially by theme, a Stephen King to the European. With an extensive bibliography, with diverse plots in which to insert that hook of psychological terror that Herbert made his hallmark of, considerable symmetries can be sought on both sides of the Atlantic. Analogies from which the American genius ends up taking off towards higher imaginative heights ultimately.
Because while King is able to open the umbrella to offer us a glimpse of fuller psychological profiles in his countless characters, Herbert almost always focuses on the phobias of his protagonists, in their ancestral fears, in that internal forum at the base of which the dark waters of the subconscious remain stagnant.
As they say, everything is subjective. Neither better nor worse. For whatever reason, Herbert's bibliography is more easily unifiable while that of Stephen King splashes from terror to the fantastic through the mystery and even punctually in rehearsal, always with his gift to magnetize readers standing out greatly.
In rural areas of India, families in charge of a blind minor frequently isolate and deprive him/her of the care and attention they provide to their other children; such situation becomes even more severe among lower-caste families, orphans and if the blind child is a girl. Herbert novels we are faced with plots of maximum intensity about characters that revolve around fears, crimes, lurid fantasies or dark approaches that sometimes link with the noir genre. And he is certainly an author who is always enjoyed, with that taste of reading that seems to pull you forward one more chapter while you lose another hour of sleep.
3 best James Herbert novels
Between the walls of Crickley Hall
There are stories that are coming and in that reader omen, in that omen towards doom, we cling tightly to the seat while we undertake a reading with promises of large doses of terror.
Because although the beginning of the plot is not exactly convulsive, you have to let the reading settle a bit to end up fascinated by the walls of the Crickley Hall house.
An entire family leaves the great city of London, before it ends up devouring them in the misfortune of their lives due to a serious absence. But in the wasteland on which the house stands, nothing better awaits them either. The first night is already a declaration of intentions of whoever lives in the fourth dimension of that house.
They are not all there, little Cam is missing, lost in an absent-mindedness, as if swallowed by the dirt of that damned London park. Only the parallels between Cam's whereabouts and what they discover about the small inhabitants of the house, also lost among noises and voices, keep them there, with goose bumps and their heads invaded by the deepest fear.
The screaming children between the walls of the house will be the lost cause of Eve, the matriarch. In some way, he considers that by helping them he can close the wound of the loss of his son. But he does not know how far a connection with lost souls can go ...
The ghosts of Sleath
The ghosts and their contiguous spaces to our reality make up a recurring scenario in fear, with its times of greatest fondness for the popular imagination. This novel published in 1994 is one of the brightest examples of this subgenre that can be considered to be related to ghosts in fiction.
Because the setting, that Sleath emblem of a small and peaceful place, disrupted by the least desired visits, is transformed into an allegory of madness in the face of losses and guilt.
The protagonism of David, a skeptical type and yet a researcher of the paranormal, takes us from our own disbelief to psychological fear somatized to the point of chills. When David understands that he can do little to stop Sleath's transformation into hell, it will logically be too late for everyone.
The rats
Everyone has their phobias, no doubt. But if we consider which animal has earned the general rejection, the rat will come out among the first positions. They live in the most eschatological underworlds, between darkness and humidity, they corrode wood, walls and ceilings ... Nothing better than a good plague of rats to, taking advantage of its author's ability to scare us, subject a city like London to the worst of fantasies .
Giant rats that observe us as prey and that devour us as beings accessible to them. An unequal struggle in which all of London at the end of the XNUMXth century is threatened, besieged from the underworld.
Only a brave person will be able to come up with solutions and look for the origin of everything. Meanwhile the victims continue to shoot themselves. As if it were a Tarantino film, the plot offers us brilliant interventions of characters converted to grotesque by the circumstances, from the most powerful of the city to the inhabitants of other spaces more similar to the home of the rats, the suburbs of the capital. Perhaps only they will be able to survive and fight on a considerable level playing field.
Hello, good afternoon…. What was the name of the movie based on the book Ghosts of Sleath? … Because I can't find her by this name.
Well, you get me, Luz. I didn't even know they made a movie. You have already awakened my curiosity, to search ...