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Painfreak #3
Road To Hell
The first horror novel from Gerard Daniel Houarner continues the story of Max the Assassin which began in Gerard's collection PAINFREAK, and continued further in the anthology, INSIDE THE WORKS. ROAD TO HELL follows Max's son, Angel, as he grows from infant to man in only a few days. As Angel is led through fantastic worlds of both the living and the dead, he encounters obstacles at every turn as he tries to find his way back to his father and beautiful but deadly aunts. The ghosts of Max's victims work to forever trap Angel in their world and attempt to show him the atrocities of his father. While Angel battles his father's demons, Max and the twins frantically try to escape from various governments and agents intent on capturing Max...dead or alive. The action is explosive when Angel finally reunites with his family and the lives of all will never be the same.
208 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1999
1 person is currently reading
40 people want to read
About the author
Gerard Houarner
73 books37 followers“Houarner is a smart, intelligent talent who has a gift for writing with serene beauty about the most atrocious things.” Ed Bryant, Locus
He is also the author of 5 novels and over 300 short stories and novellas, some gathered in 6 collections.
He fell to Earth in the fifties and is a product of the NYC school system and the City College of New York, where he studied writing under Joseph Heller and Joel Oppenheimer and crashed hallucinogenic William Burroughs seminars back in the day.
The mental health field has provided a living as well as inspiration for the past 34 years. His current position might be described as Director of Recovery and Recreation at Arkham Asylum.
Since 1998, he has served as Fiction Editor for Space and Time magazine.
He continues to write whenever he can, mostly at night, about the dark.
He is also the author of 5 novels and over 300 short stories and novellas, some gathered in 6 collections.
He fell to Earth in the fifties and is a product of the NYC school system and the City College of New York, where he studied writing under Joseph Heller and Joel Oppenheimer and crashed hallucinogenic William Burroughs seminars back in the day.
The mental health field has provided a living as well as inspiration for the past 34 years. His current position might be described as Director of Recovery and Recreation at Arkham Asylum.
Since 1998, he has served as Fiction Editor for Space and Time magazine.
He continues to write whenever he can, mostly at night, about the dark.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
January 20, 2008
Gerard Houarner, Road to Hell (Leisure, 1999)
I struggled through the first fifty pages of Road to Hell, then considered tossing it to the dustbunnies. But then I read a number of reviews that said "it gets better." So I struggled with it while not reading other things for another four months. It may get better, but I finally came to the conclusion that I wasn't willing to put in the time to get there. I quit at about page 130.
Road to Hell is a confused mess, to put it bluntly. It looks as if an editor took certain sections of the book, tossed the pages into the air, and started swinging with a meat cleaver. Sometimes the book will stay in the same moment for twenty pages, at other times it goes through weeks in the space of a page, with no delimiters of any kind to tell you time has gone forward. Suddenly, you're in a different setting, wondering "how on earth did I get here?" The characters are flat and uninspired (casualties of "tell, don't show" syndrome). The action is confusing most of the time, and when it isn't it feels as if it were written by someone who was scientifically observing, rather than actually feeling it. Simply put, I couldn't find a single redeeming quality about the book that made me want to read any farther. And with so many books sitting and waiting for me to get to them, I decided it wasn't worth the trouble. (zero)
I struggled through the first fifty pages of Road to Hell, then considered tossing it to the dustbunnies. But then I read a number of reviews that said "it gets better." So I struggled with it while not reading other things for another four months. It may get better, but I finally came to the conclusion that I wasn't willing to put in the time to get there. I quit at about page 130.
Road to Hell is a confused mess, to put it bluntly. It looks as if an editor took certain sections of the book, tossed the pages into the air, and started swinging with a meat cleaver. Sometimes the book will stay in the same moment for twenty pages, at other times it goes through weeks in the space of a page, with no delimiters of any kind to tell you time has gone forward. Suddenly, you're in a different setting, wondering "how on earth did I get here?" The characters are flat and uninspired (casualties of "tell, don't show" syndrome). The action is confusing most of the time, and when it isn't it feels as if it were written by someone who was scientifically observing, rather than actually feeling it. Simply put, I couldn't find a single redeeming quality about the book that made me want to read any farther. And with so many books sitting and waiting for me to get to them, I decided it wasn't worth the trouble. (zero)
June 25, 2008
Confusing at points but ehhhh. Just ehhhh..
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews