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The Devil's Auction
Owlswick Press, 1988. Trade Edition, Hardbound, 8vo (9.25 inches tall), 155 pages.
Mass Market Paperback
First published June 1, 1988
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78 people want to read
About the author
Robert Weinberg
193 books55 followersAlso published as Harrison Denmark.
Robert Weinberg (also credited as Bob Weinberg) was an American author. His work spans several genres including non-fiction, science fiction, horror, and comic books.
Weinberg sold his first story in 1967. Most of his writing career was conducted part-time while also owning a bookstore; he became a full time writer after 1997.
Weinberg was also an editor, and edited books in the fields of horror, science fiction and western. In comics, Weinberg wrote for Marvel Comics; his first job was on the series Cable, and he later created the series Nightside.
Wikipedia entry: Robert Weinberg
Robert Weinberg (also credited as Bob Weinberg) was an American author. His work spans several genres including non-fiction, science fiction, horror, and comic books.
Weinberg sold his first story in 1967. Most of his writing career was conducted part-time while also owning a bookstore; he became a full time writer after 1997.
Weinberg was also an editor, and edited books in the fields of horror, science fiction and western. In comics, Weinberg wrote for Marvel Comics; his first job was on the series Cable, and he later created the series Nightside.
Wikipedia entry: Robert Weinberg
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
May 20, 2013
This book should technicaly be horror plot wise, but somehow it read more like paranormal fantasy, somehow never quite dark enough of a tone that would have been appropriate for the subject matter. This book should technically be good, based on all the praise for it and it's award winning author, but somehow it wasn't quite engaging. The characters, however outrageous, didn't make the reader care about what happened to them. The action was abound, but the whole thing just had a feel of an old movie that might have been scary at some point, but mostly comes across as cheesy. It was a very quick read and I liked the original premise, but the execution was just good enough and never great. Despite being entertaining enough, the book didn't quite live up to its potential or its promise.
October 7, 2019
I had seen several references to this book as an "occult mystery" with lots of fascinating, arcane detail about magic and its history. Then I found copy of the hardcover, cheap. And no wonder! It's terrible.
First of all, there are the shallow characters and their wooden dialogue. The two protagonists are remarkably unconvincing people, and the walk-ons even flatter. Alex, our hero, is a professor of history who, during the Vietnam war, was apparently some sort of commando, silent-killer type. He's also divorced from a woman so unpleasant that it's left him scarred. Oddly, he seems completely unmarked by all of this, because he has magical luck (it's a plot point). The girl, Valerie, is a blonde model who's also rich and a sorceress (and a nymphomaniac), and who immediately falls madly in love with middle-aged Alex. In part that's a plot point, but mostly it's just that the author seems to assume we'll be rooting for Alex and will be pleased that he has lots of sex with a blonde bombshell. Of course, despite her supernatural powers and putative intelligence, as soon as the going gets rough, she turns all weak and squeaky, and he has to tote her around in a fireman's carry so she won't be killed by various conveniently slow-motion monsters. I could go on about the terrible characters at length. There's the Countess, a leather-and-whips sadist who actually tries to seduce Alex while dressed as an underpants-less French maid with stiletto heels (no, really); of course, Honest Al doesn't fall for that one. There's the Japanese super-sorcerer who's into karate and Shinto (which for some reason means he's at one with the Tao and talks a lot about kismet and karma...), though he turns out to be irrelevant. Mercifully, the Jewish kabbalist doesn't speak enough to go past a slight cod-Borscht Belt accent and into full-on faux Yiddish. It's as though the author had a list of stereotypes and rolled dice. Without characters we can care about--not necessarily like, but care one way or another what happens to them--it's very hard to keep slogging through the novel.
The plot is trivial at best, and soon revealed (no spoilers here: this is all overt by about page 10). Once a generation there's an auction, held by a mysterious magician (the same one or a successor? who knows? dum dum dah!). Only a few powerful magicians are invited, and those excluded will kill to get invitation cards. Nobody knows what's on auction, and as far as anyone knows nobody has ever left the auction alive, so you can certainly see why everyone's so anxious to get in. (!) Anyway, the point of course is the big surprise at the end about who's selling what, and I doubt you'll be remotely surprised if you get there. The plot is really just a sort of tissue to keep the tale going from one unsuspenseful monster attack to the next.
The prose is clunky in rather the way Dan Brown's is clunky, but to do Weinberg justice, at least he's not completely narcissistic about it the way Brown is. Action scenes don't draw us in, and instead just sort of plod along. Some passages are master-classes on why "show don't tell" is usually a good idea: if you have to tell us that one hero has the hots for the other hero, especially after they've gotten it on repeatedly, you're doing something wrong. Weinberg seems to be striving for a short, tough, punchy type of sentence in the old-fashioned noir style, but it reads more like someone with a small vocabulary banged the thing out in an afternoon and couldn't be bothered to edit. That said, if Weinberg can't write well, at least he keeps his yarn mercifully short... which is about the best thing I can say for this book.
As for those of you who've heard, as I did, that a great thing about the book is the extensive occult research, you'll perhaps be surprised or shocked (or not) to learn that the research could've been done in a couple hours on Wikipedia. You've got the usual boners, of course: famous, unobtainable grimoires that are neither; important secret facts buried in obscure volumes that aren't obscure and don't have those passages; all that nonsense. Poor old Cornelius Agrippa comes in for a lot of this: not only are we informed that his name was actually plain old "Henry Cornelius" and that he made up the Agrippa bit (he didn't), but his Occult Philosophy is, we are told, actually a big argument that magic has nothing to do with demons of any kind. And yes, it's the professor who specializes in the history of magic who tells us this. I mean, if you want to make stuff up, just make it up, like Lovecraft did! As for all the dreck about the Wandering Jew, Weinberg doesn't seem to have read much in that lore either. For goodness' sake, he even insists on the spelling "kaballah" and claims that it's a book!
A core problem here is that Weinberg can't quite decide what he's trying to write. Is it a mystery? A thriller? A horror novel? He does a lot of POV cutting back-and-forth to tell us about mysterious events happening while our heroes are shagging, but there's no payoff for any of it. The monsters are either known quantities from the get-go or else sudden surprise attacks at the end. We're supposed to have the sense that there's this growing threat, building up dread, but instead we just keep wondering why everyone is so dumb as to actually attend the stupid auction in the first place. Weinberg even gives us a character who decides to skip it, without consequences, so we know it can be done. It all just doesn't really click together the way a good thriller does, and the monsters and such aren't scary enough for horror. And as for mystery, are you really all that interested in what's for sale at the auction? Me neither.
I salute the intention: somebody should be writing more occult mystery-adventures. But on this showing, Weinberg should stick to editing other people's fiction.
First of all, there are the shallow characters and their wooden dialogue. The two protagonists are remarkably unconvincing people, and the walk-ons even flatter. Alex, our hero, is a professor of history who, during the Vietnam war, was apparently some sort of commando, silent-killer type. He's also divorced from a woman so unpleasant that it's left him scarred. Oddly, he seems completely unmarked by all of this, because he has magical luck (it's a plot point). The girl, Valerie, is a blonde model who's also rich and a sorceress (and a nymphomaniac), and who immediately falls madly in love with middle-aged Alex. In part that's a plot point, but mostly it's just that the author seems to assume we'll be rooting for Alex and will be pleased that he has lots of sex with a blonde bombshell. Of course, despite her supernatural powers and putative intelligence, as soon as the going gets rough, she turns all weak and squeaky, and he has to tote her around in a fireman's carry so she won't be killed by various conveniently slow-motion monsters. I could go on about the terrible characters at length. There's the Countess, a leather-and-whips sadist who actually tries to seduce Alex while dressed as an underpants-less French maid with stiletto heels (no, really); of course, Honest Al doesn't fall for that one. There's the Japanese super-sorcerer who's into karate and Shinto (which for some reason means he's at one with the Tao and talks a lot about kismet and karma...), though he turns out to be irrelevant. Mercifully, the Jewish kabbalist doesn't speak enough to go past a slight cod-Borscht Belt accent and into full-on faux Yiddish. It's as though the author had a list of stereotypes and rolled dice. Without characters we can care about--not necessarily like, but care one way or another what happens to them--it's very hard to keep slogging through the novel.
The plot is trivial at best, and soon revealed (no spoilers here: this is all overt by about page 10). Once a generation there's an auction, held by a mysterious magician (the same one or a successor? who knows? dum dum dah!). Only a few powerful magicians are invited, and those excluded will kill to get invitation cards. Nobody knows what's on auction, and as far as anyone knows nobody has ever left the auction alive, so you can certainly see why everyone's so anxious to get in. (!) Anyway, the point of course is the big surprise at the end about who's selling what, and I doubt you'll be remotely surprised if you get there. The plot is really just a sort of tissue to keep the tale going from one unsuspenseful monster attack to the next.
The prose is clunky in rather the way Dan Brown's is clunky, but to do Weinberg justice, at least he's not completely narcissistic about it the way Brown is. Action scenes don't draw us in, and instead just sort of plod along. Some passages are master-classes on why "show don't tell" is usually a good idea: if you have to tell us that one hero has the hots for the other hero, especially after they've gotten it on repeatedly, you're doing something wrong. Weinberg seems to be striving for a short, tough, punchy type of sentence in the old-fashioned noir style, but it reads more like someone with a small vocabulary banged the thing out in an afternoon and couldn't be bothered to edit. That said, if Weinberg can't write well, at least he keeps his yarn mercifully short... which is about the best thing I can say for this book.
As for those of you who've heard, as I did, that a great thing about the book is the extensive occult research, you'll perhaps be surprised or shocked (or not) to learn that the research could've been done in a couple hours on Wikipedia. You've got the usual boners, of course: famous, unobtainable grimoires that are neither; important secret facts buried in obscure volumes that aren't obscure and don't have those passages; all that nonsense. Poor old Cornelius Agrippa comes in for a lot of this: not only are we informed that his name was actually plain old "Henry Cornelius" and that he made up the Agrippa bit (he didn't), but his Occult Philosophy is, we are told, actually a big argument that magic has nothing to do with demons of any kind. And yes, it's the professor who specializes in the history of magic who tells us this. I mean, if you want to make stuff up, just make it up, like Lovecraft did! As for all the dreck about the Wandering Jew, Weinberg doesn't seem to have read much in that lore either. For goodness' sake, he even insists on the spelling "kaballah" and claims that it's a book!
A core problem here is that Weinberg can't quite decide what he's trying to write. Is it a mystery? A thriller? A horror novel? He does a lot of POV cutting back-and-forth to tell us about mysterious events happening while our heroes are shagging, but there's no payoff for any of it. The monsters are either known quantities from the get-go or else sudden surprise attacks at the end. We're supposed to have the sense that there's this growing threat, building up dread, but instead we just keep wondering why everyone is so dumb as to actually attend the stupid auction in the first place. Weinberg even gives us a character who decides to skip it, without consequences, so we know it can be done. It all just doesn't really click together the way a good thriller does, and the monsters and such aren't scary enough for horror. And as for mystery, are you really all that interested in what's for sale at the auction? Me neither.
I salute the intention: somebody should be writing more occult mystery-adventures. But on this showing, Weinberg should stick to editing other people's fiction.
February 6, 2014
From that moment on I knew without books I could not live.
July 2, 2018
I debated on reveiwing this book, as for one I was reluctant to read it yet did so upon request.
This takes away from my need for plausibility but in the same sense feeds it.
I'm not saying I believe in the premise of witches, warlocks, wearwolves, or anything like that but I do believe that not everyone who you pass on the street is exactly as you preserve them to be. This book feed my desire for a gripping, fast paced, can't figure out pshycological game. It had amazingly developed characters, the storyline flowed wonderfully, and despite they fact it's 30 years old I was able to imagine this in the now. So it's plot aged really well, I find it easily understood no matter the decade you read it in. The author really did an amazing job bringing all of the elments alive and keeping them there. This is what great books are, engaging, gripping, descriptive without completely saturating the meaning beyond understanding. I could read this again and again. So if you're looking for something easy to read, that will read quickly without losing the sense of comprehending then try this on for size. Even outside of your comfort zone you will be in for wild but fun ride!
This takes away from my need for plausibility but in the same sense feeds it.
I'm not saying I believe in the premise of witches, warlocks, wearwolves, or anything like that but I do believe that not everyone who you pass on the street is exactly as you preserve them to be. This book feed my desire for a gripping, fast paced, can't figure out pshycological game. It had amazingly developed characters, the storyline flowed wonderfully, and despite they fact it's 30 years old I was able to imagine this in the now. So it's plot aged really well, I find it easily understood no matter the decade you read it in. The author really did an amazing job bringing all of the elments alive and keeping them there. This is what great books are, engaging, gripping, descriptive without completely saturating the meaning beyond understanding. I could read this again and again. So if you're looking for something easy to read, that will read quickly without losing the sense of comprehending then try this on for size. Even outside of your comfort zone you will be in for wild but fun ride!
July 3, 2020
I first read this book when I was 12 or 13 years old. We were travelling with a carnival at the time, and we were at some truck stop in some random state that I don't remember. I do remember being intrigued by the cover, and like any adolescent who doesn't want his mom knowing what he's reading, I stole it. As a kid, I fell in love with this book, and while I lost track of it shortly after I read it, the book stayed with me.
This is the first time in 30 years I've read it, and while I now see the flaws in it, I still loved it. Call it nostalgia, or blame it on the fact that I love pulpy horror. Either way, this felt like coming home, rediscovering some of the magic of childhood. Albeit, a bloody welcome mat.
This is the first time in 30 years I've read it, and while I now see the flaws in it, I still loved it. Call it nostalgia, or blame it on the fact that I love pulpy horror. Either way, this felt like coming home, rediscovering some of the magic of childhood. Albeit, a bloody welcome mat.
March 10, 2018
I picked this one up at a Half-Price Books and I wasn't disappointed. The suspense holds pretty well and the story, while definitely immersed in the decade it was written, was intense and held my attention. The characters are interesting, if not a little cliche when we get to the "young Vietnam veteran who turns out to be a deadly weapon" motif. Still, it's not overdone to Schwarzenegger standards, so it still works out without being annoying. Overall, Weinberg could write a fun story (apparently he passed away in 2016).
March 5, 2024
A swift little bit of grown-up Goosebumps. Fun premise that feels like a decent (if minor) episode of Supernatural.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews