Banquet for the Damned

by Adam L.G. Nevill

Few believed Professor Coldwell could commune with spirits. But in Scotland's oldest university town something has passed from darkness into light. Now, the young are being haunted by night terrors and those who are visited disappear.

This is certainly not a place for outsiders, especially at night. So what chance do a rootless musician and burned-out explorer have of surviving their entanglement with an ageless supernatural evil and the ruthless cult that worships it? This chilling occult thriller is both an homage to the great age of British ghost stories and a pacy modern tale of diabolism and witchcraft.

Genres: Horror, Fiction, Fantasy, Thriller, Paranormal, Scotland, Gothic

545 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2004

About the author

ADAM L. G. NEVILL was born in Birmingham, England, in 1969 and grew up in England and New Zealand. He is an author of horror fiction. Of his novels, The Ritual, Last Days, No One Gets Out Alive and The Reddening were all winners of The August Derleth Award for Best Horror Novel. He has also published three collections of short stories, with Some Will Not Sleep winning the British Fantasy Award for Best Collection, 2017.

Imaginarium adapted The Ritual and No One Gets Out Alive into feature films and more of his work is currently in development for the screen.

The author lives in Devon, England.

Reviews

[Jeffrey Keeten · Rating 3 out of 5]

”But just as suddenly as it began, the kiss ends. Beth releases Dante’s face and sits back to pant in the dark beside him, her lips smeared with blood or lipstick. He does not care. The smudge image of her face watches him, eagerly. It is as if she is now using extraordinary powers of will to restrain herself. A little whimper for more mewls from his throat and dies on his tongue. She looks insane, slovenly, a hysteric; the mouth gaping, the stare crude, the body slumped, thighs open. Torture pornography against a black surround.

Coppery blood mingles with the taste of the silvery lipstick she’s smeared across his teeth. His limbs are heavy, his body drugged. Shaking his head, he fights the faint, only aware of his need for more of her. Slowly, he moves forward to engage the delicious, biting mouth again.”

Dante Shaw has gotten what he believes is the opportunity of a lifetime, to work with Eliot Coldwell, a writer he admires, who is a professor at the University of St. Andrews. It is an unusual collaboration, given that Dante is not an academic, but a musician. He wants to create an album, based on the writings of Coldwell.

Seeing a detached arm on the beach upon first arriving is a foreboding event that is thought of as unsettling and odd by Dante and his friend Tom, but is not really processed as something to do with them or have anything to do with their reasons for being in Scotland.

That realization is going to come... much... much later.

People are having night terrors that quickly escalate into manifestations and creatures that are unfathomably real. Dante, after a few encounters with Eliot and Beth, his bodacious goth chick from hell assistant, soon begins to realize that the missing people, the terrors, and his own near death experiences all lead back to Eliot Coldwell.

Fortunately, he finds one other person, Hart Miller, an American anthropologist who is in Scotland to study the potential mass hysteria around terror in dreams, who believes, like Dante does, that what goes thump in the night in St. Andrews is not something anyone can afford to ignore. ”This is crazy. A bearded hippie and a hair-metal singer with the future of the town at stake. They’re fucked.”

I can’t say I disagree with that assessment.

The plot of this novel is a wet gunpowder fuse that sputters and sputters and goes out, and Adam L. G. Nevill has to break from cover and strike some flint to get it relit again. In other words, it is a slow burn. I’m a great lover of gothic novels, and many of them rely on the sedated building of terror through carefully revealed revelations that allow readers to manifest their own ideas of the creatures in the dark, long before they are brought into the light. It is what we can’t see or understand that creates the real terror. Somehow I became so disconnected from the plot that I didn’t feel the true horror, not for lack of some graphic examples, and I never really connected with the characters. I was interested in Eliot Coldwell, but he is ushered off stage very early in the story, and only has these brief appearances where he is seen by someone so they can comment on his advanced decrepitude.

I do feel that Nevill is a true student of the gothic genre. There are certainly all the classic elements of the gothic story in this novel, but somehow he fails, through prose too ponderous, to keep the story juvenated as the fuse slowly sputters to the grand explosive conclusion. I did feel like I was reading an Ann Radcliffe, the grand dame of gothic novels, but there are very good reasons why no one is writing in the Radcliffe style anymore.

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[Ginger · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the second book that I've read of Adam Nevill and there's a few things that I've noticed from both books. This guy is super detailed in his writing and he puts in a ton of time in research!
So if those two things don't work for you in books, you might want to skip Nevill.

I seem to not have a problem with both and I really liked Banquet for the Damned!
The book starts off with Dante and Tom traveling from Birmingham to St. Andrews for a new start. Dante has been in contact with Professor Eliot Coldwell who's a philosopher, a radical and someone who's always pushing the boundaries between this realm and dark spiritual religions.

Professor Coldwell wrote a book years ago called "Banquet for the Damned" and it's one of Dante's favorite books. Coldwell sends Dante an invite to come stay at St. Andrews and help him with his second book.

But when Dante and Tom get to St. Andrews, they realize that things happening in this college town go against explanation and students may be more in danger then they realize!

This book bogged down a bit in the middle but damn, that ending paid off!
After reading the last line of the book, I sat there and said,
"Really?!! Damn you Nevill!!" That's a compliment by the way. hahaha

Recommended to horror book lovers and book lovers that enjoy things that go bump in the night!

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that the hazards of writing supernatural horror fiction at novel-length are many and legendary. The received wisdom is that it cannot be done with any real success. But the received wisdom is that there are also a few honourable exceptions. So whilst good novel-length supernatural horror fiction (meaning here what can be conveniently be called “Jamesian” or “dark fantasy”, and thus not simply horror fiction) is as rare as Weird Tales keeping to its advertised publication schedule, nevertheless it does exist.

Fritz Leiber’s Conjure Wife and Our Lady of Darkness come to mind, as does Ghost Story by Peter Straub, as well as several novels by Charles L Grant and the late and considerably under-rated Michael McDowell. In his Introduction to Banquet for the Damned Ramsey Campbell invokes the Leiber novels, and also mentions Kingsley Amis’ The Green Man and Daniel Rhodes’ Next, After Lucifer. (And modestly omits to say anything about any of his own valuable contributions to the list.) But, as Campbell correctly points out, it is still clear that novel-length “Jamesian” fiction is a rare commodity

And now there is Adam L G Nevill’s new novel Banquet for the Damned. It is Jamesian to the core, and not just in the aspects that are apparently the easiest to do, and which in the past have so often caught out the writer of mere pastiche. The novel has a genuinely gothic and scholarly setting: the Scottish city of St Andrews, with its ancient university and long-established academic tradition. The atmospheric background is established from the opening line: “It is a night empty of cloud and as still as space.” But you can’t construct a novel on atmosphere only, and we aren’t only looking backwards into the more leisurely period of stained glass, illuminated manuscripts, and candlelight. We are also clearly in the contemporary world, with computers, CDs, guitars, a battered Land Rover, considerable amounts of drinking, and much academic intrigue and back-biting (although that last is perhaps simply timeless).

M R James always set his stories in thoroughly recognizable (if sometimes unusual) settings, and used the trappings of the time. Thus the supernatural is a part of the scene, although a thoroughly unwelcome intrusion, and all the more able to terrify through its distortion of what was previously thought to be simple reality. That is where Nevill starts from.

Two young men from Birmingham, Dante and Tom, arrive in St Andrews. Both have spent years drifting in and out of jobs, and getting absolutely nowhere at all with their band and would-be musical career. Now Dante is following up the chance of a life-time: becoming the research assistant to philosopher Eliot Coldwell, cult author of Dante’s favourite book, the occult study Banquet for the Damned. Tom tags along in the hope of also being able to make a new start in a new city.

Straightaway, the setting of the old city and university of St Andrews starts to make itself felt. But the placid city is taking on a life of its own. Dante and Tom have arrived just as a number of students are reporting suffering from terrifying sleep disturbances, and some have disappeared. And with the American anthropologist Hart Miller also newly arrived on the scene, and starting to investigate, St Andrews is certainly not the quiet and somewhat remote academic backwater that it might have seemed to be on the surface. The past has become like something cold, dark, and tainted rising up slowly through mud into the bright daylight of the present.

Nevill starts building up the suspense early on. Banquet for the Damned is as much a thriller as it is a novel of supernatural horror. Intriguing and ambiguous hints are liberally strewn around. Eliot Coldwell turns out to be as utterly dodgy as it is possible to be. He crudely tries to get his assistant, Beth, together with Dante – something which she is certainly enthusiastic about. Coldwell’s university employers finally start to wonder who they have taken on and start to put the pressure on him. And when Hart Miller’s work with the disturbed students starts him to making connections with Eliot’s non-academic activities that seem to have resonances with aspects of St Andrews’ dark past, then the stage is set.

The tension gradually mounts. Scuttling things are glimpsed; dreams are disturbing and life-like. There is plenty of arresting imagery, with often little sense of the city really being quite of this world, despite the mundane setting. There are many Jamesianesque hints scattered throughout. For example: “That was the last straw, to turn around and see your own overcoat upon the table, where it had been upset from the window sill, lying as if face down with the shape of a body still inside it, on the desk where his books and folders were open.”

Not all is deadly serious, either. One character is called Rhodes Hodgson! (The character Eliot Coldwell of course recalls Mr Karswell from “Casting the Runes”. The resemblances between them are not limited to their names, and are surely not coincidental.) And there is much that is distinctly non-Jamesian as well. Banquet for the Damned has a strong erotic element. Beth is presented to Dante as a sort of senior research assistant to Eliot Coldwell -- someone who will show Dante everything. That turns out to potentially be the least of it. Beth puts the fatale firmly back into femme fatale. And does it with much femme as well…

Past occurrences have consequences in the present. Dante collides with that most clichéd and Jamesian -- and correct -- of notions with a vengeance. Coldwell has apparently made contact with some sort of coven from St Andrews’ violent past, and Beth is also intimately involved as the corrupting channel for the mediaeval terrors newly breaking into the city. Friends and acquaintances are becoming deadly enemies. Dante, Tom, and Hart Miller have to put a stop to it all. Nevill winds up Banquet for the Damned in a very vivid and satisfying way, with plenty of violence and the always present possibility that they might still yet fail.

The breathless pace is maintained right up until the end: a considerable achievement for a long novel of 494 pages. (For comparison, Fritz Leiber’s Our Lady of Darkness weighs in at 189 pages of quite large print). The dustjacket by Edward Miller is a bonus, capturing as it does much of the eerie essence of Adam L G Nevill’s novel. Banquet for the Damned is a first-rate read, and one which contains a great deal to savour for the enthusiast of the Jamesian manner, and which also offers as much to those who prefer a more obviously contemporary approach to supernatural horror.

[Richard Wright · Rating 1 out of 5]

Ack. I can't do it. I can't finish the thing. Picking it up for another chapter felt like a punishment. I've had so many people recommend this book that I feel almost guilty for having so many problems with it, but I do. Characters spend brief sojourns speaking like actual people do before collapsing into the narrative voice. They introspect tirelessly, and tiresomely, sucking life out of the plot (which I kept zoning out of). The prose is a bloated, turgid mess, working too hard to impress and forgetting to progress. I can accept that, very occasionally, a sky or a room might be illumined instead of just being 'lit'. When both are illumined within pages of each other, I want to commit hate crimes against thesauri. The intent to indulge language to evoke some earlier phase of gothic literature feels misguided, and so gallingly pretentious at my expense that it actually started to anger me.

I did not enjoy this. Not one whit.

[Latasha · Rating 4 out of 5]

This may be my 2nd favorite Adam Nevill book. Your pulled in from the start with Tom and Dante, along for the ride to St.Andrews. The scary, creepy bits are there from the start and it just gets darker and darker. I did not expect this book to be about what it turned out to be about. It was a very good suprise. If you like other books by this author, you'll love this one.

[Nancy Oakes · Rating 4 out of 5]

I liked it...While I happen to sit on the side of the fence of readers who claim that horror is much more potent in short-story format, once in a while I run into a full-length novel that can throw a continually sustained chill down my spine. Banquet for the Damned did just that. Although it didn't give me nightmares or produce the sort of night terrors that some of the characters suffered in this book, the creep factor was intense enough to where I read it in one sitting -- alone, at night,wind howling outside, the perfect horror-read atmosphere. If the object of writing horror is taking the reader briefly into the zone of the worst that might possibly happen and letting him or her experience the fear, panic and hopelessness that abides in that space, well, Nevill's done a great job.

I'll just leave impressions here, I have a longer review elsewhere.

On the whole, I found Banquet of the Damned to be a disturbingly good occult horror read. There are no gimmicky creatures, the terror is manifested at times but for the most part cerebral, and the tension is sustained throughout the story, keeping you alert and ready for what might happen next. Nevill writes without going overboard in the telling, and The setting is inexorably linked to its already-charged historical atmosphere -- St. Andrews was once a place of religious martyrs, witchcraft and the cleansing of heresy ; Nevill has just added a new dimension to the already-existing history of darkness there. It works perfectly, from the dunes on the beaches to the dark Tentsmuir forests.

I'm not a reader who cares about instant gratification -- I'm very much willing to wait, especially in horror and in crime novels. Other readers have complained about the repetition of the night-terror scenes, but I thought they were necessary for raising the tension level right off the bat. Some have noted that Dante makes some really stupid decisions, and that is true, but my take is that in his growing state of disillusionment, he's kind of slow or maybe unwilling to grasp what's really going on. My issues with this book are in some of the characters: first Tom -- while you could argue that he had to be included as the first link in a chain of cause and effect as to Dante's current predicament, we really only see him through Dante's eyes without any real fleshing out, and I was totally unsympathetic and apathetic toward this guy. And when he and Dante have a fight and Dante begins to think about their relationship, the book gets a bit draggy while we have to go through the sordid backstory that I really didn't think added to the tension of the main story. Second is Hart and the way he speaks -- it is so stupid, having him refer to the women as "honey" -- sort of unrealistic for most modern American men.

But truth be told, I really liked this book despite the stuff that niggled at me, and I definitely recommend it when you want an old-fashioned story that will give you the willies for a few hours.

[Phillip Smith · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very strong 4. Once this got going, it became one of the most visually intense novels I've read. I simply could not put down the last 100 or so pages. If you liked the film, Hereditary, I believe you will like this.

[nicoll lu · Rating 1 out of 5]

Probably the worst book I had the pleasure of giving up on. after well over 250 page my reading buddy and I decided it was not worthy. Believe me you do not want to read this. It's badly written, it has no plot direction, the characters are awful. most of the book appears like a scene-descritpion in a movie script - short, and exhaustive. just don't. this book is NOT about a scholar investigating mysterious deaths. this book is about killing your will to read and live. be smart, walk away.

[J.M. Brister · Rating 3 out of 5]

I did like this book much better than Apartment 16; however, I didn't really love it. My biggest complaint is that the book is incredibly repetitive. Since I'm not a big fan of this genre and don't read a lot of it or watch a lot of these movies, the only things I have to really compare this book to are video games. So, here's a gamer's perspective on this book:

Adam Nevill would have gotten five stars from me if he would have heeded the following:

1.) Cut the book in half. The whole thing dragged out. There's a reason why there aren't fifty hour plus horror video games (are there actually any?): people would get bored! Length only breeds dull repetition. There's a reason why horror movies aren't super long; it ruins the suspense. (Also, please don't tell me the length was for character development. The characters were all cliches.)

2.) Take a hint from the failure of Doom 3. Just like the aforementioned video game, Banquet for the Damned is JUST like Doom 3 in the following way: the first part of the book/game is scary, interesting and makes you want to keep going. However, after awhile, the SAME THINGS keep happening. I mean, after awhile, you just know what's going to happen and then it's just annoying. For example, in Doom 3, I know that if my character walks over a set of grated stairs or picks up a health pack, monsters are going to pop out. It never fails. In Banquet for the Damned, everyone's dreams are pretty much THE SAME. Why would I want to keep reading if I can anticipate what's going to happen? Maybe Adam Nevill should have played one of the games from the Dead Space franchise, instead. Now, THAT is a great example of the horror genre.

So, that was just a slight rant. If you have no idea what I'm talking about, then you should be happy because I am SUCH A NERD. :-)

[Kaora · Rating 2 out of 5]

This isn't my favorite Adam Nevill by far.

I found Last Days to be far creepier than this book but it had its moments. I was just hoping for I think MORE. The kind of must-read-only-in-the-light creepiness that came from Last Days. The creepy moments in this were so far between that it just didn't have the same impact.

I feel like his protagonist is one that I've met before and is so overdone in horror novels. So I'll stick to my Goodreads ratings of 2. I liked it. But I didn't love it.

[Hudson · Rating 3 out of 5]

**actual rating 3.5**

This was a tough book to rate. On the one hand, I thought some of the writing was truly exceptional and even more so because this is the authors first book. Haunting, horrifying, heartbreaking....there was a lot of ground covered and some of the descriptions in the book were just awesome.

That said.....I think it was a tad too long and seemed to move a little slowly at times (544 total pages). This was the reason for my 3.5 rating instead of a 4.

The setting of the book is a university town in Scotland where two heavy metal band members have traveled from England in order to assist a reclusive professor with his research. This research will assist them with their new album and hopefully reinvent a sagging career. However bad dreams and sickness ensues, students start disappearing and it quickly becomes apparent that something has been summoned and does not want to leave.

Shades of occult, witchcraft, history and some pretty decent horror scenes made this book a good read. Even though it's a bit long I would recommend it to horror fans and I am excited to read more of Neville's books.

[Maria Hill AKA MH Books · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is so recommended to anyone who has ever been a Student or Staff member in The University of St Andrews but those of a nervous disposition who are living there at the moment maybe should give it a miss :)

[Steve Stred · Rating 5 out of 5]

Well, here it is, the final Nevill book that I own that I needed to read. (Actually, I still have to read the free ebook that you get when you sign up for his newsletter, but I believe that features short stories that are in other anthologies and some essays, so not technically an available book.)

I never read a Nevill book until I joined Kendall Reviews way back about seven years ago, and it seemed fitting that with the closing of this reading chapter – in that I’ve completed my read-through of Nevill’s current bibliography – this review is hosted again on Kendall Reviews.

If not for having discovered Andrew Pyper and his work that has played such a powerful and special role in my life, I can safely say, that Nevill would be my all-time favorite author. As is, I’ve slotted him in the place of 1B or Silver Medalist, but not by much. Well, a little. But not a lot.

With each of his books, I’ve found that very few people out there can go as utterly fucking dark and bleak as Nevill can. Whether it’s the rain and foggy gloom of ‘The Ritual,’ the subtle noises and occasional smells in ‘Apartment 16,’ the decayed sludge and peeling back of the wallpaper in ‘Under a Watchful Eye,’ or the sheer terror and mold that grows within ‘Last Days,’ Nevill finds a way to clobber the reader over the head every time. And that’s not even me discussing the other masterpieces in his bibliography such as ‘House of Small Shadows,’ ‘Lost Girl,’ ‘Cunning Folk,’ or ‘All the Fiends of Hell.’ And even then, there are a few others I’ve not alluded to.

The reality is, Nevill has a bibliography untouched in its sheer volume of terror and magnitude of dirt. Each book leaves the reader sweaty and covered in scum. And we eat it up begging for more.

This brings me to the last of his that I needed to read, but also the first of his that was published. ‘Banquet for the Damned’ kept tugging at me to read it, even when I decided to tackle other doorstoppers like ‘No One Gets Out Alive.’ It was always there, and now that I’ve read it, much like the other books he’s released, it’ll always be there, lurking in the shadows, reminding me that there are scary things that go bump in the night.

What I liked: I’ve said this before, but Nevill is truly one of a kind. He bridges the gap between the old world of horror writing, the British way of overly describing things and pushing things based on dialogue, but also the new way of horror writing, quick, visceral snippets of action. He’s equally a director who would release a five-hour opus for cinema while sharing how much they love thirty-second clips on TikTok. And frankly, it works perfectly well.

As is always the case, every single sentence in this is loaded with dread and we arrive in St. Andrews, where Dante and Tom – two twenty-something musicians – have arrived to write their musical masterpiece, based on the teachings and beliefs of Dante’s hero, an enigmatic professor and writer, Eliot Coldwell. Not long after, we’re also introduced to Hart, an anthropologist, who’s arrived to investigate why so many students of Coldwell’s are having horrendous nightmares and are turning up dead.

It’s these two storylines that crisscross back and forth for a solid 50% of the novel that has the reader gripped. But it’s not so much a story about Dante and Coldwell and Coldwell’s young, gorgeous assistant who takes a shine to Dante. No, this is a novel about what happens to them.

Slowly, delicately, they start with a shine and as Nevill peels back each layer, we see the dirt begin to pack on and the darkness surrounds them.

The pacing of this shifts from glacial to speed-rocket at times, making for a very challenging, but rewarding read, and I found that, though there’s nothing implied here with connectivity, much like we get with ‘Last Days’ and ‘Under a Watchful Eye,’ but this novel felt like a connected thematic soul to ‘Under a Watchful Eye’ and ‘Apartment 16.’ As though the world was the same, just nobody had met each other at any point.

The mythology/lore that Nevill ultimately gives us was spot on and terrifying, perfect for fans of ‘The Reddening’ and ‘Cunning Folk,’ but hinted even more to what we got with his novella, ‘The Vessel.’

What I didn’t like: I found that the pacing was so different between Hart’s chapters and Dante’s chapters at the beginning that it felt very rough and start-stop. Too jerky. But that smooths out nicely and things take off. So, be prepared that at the start, you may find yourself weaving in and out of this one.

Why you should buy this: Well, granted, I might be the last Nevill fan on the planet who hasn’t read this one, but if you love Adam’s work, definitely get on this one. It was great to see where he started, but also just how solid of a writer he’s always been.

As for what is within, the story is as bleak and dark as you’d expect from a Nevill offering and gives us a look at the worlds and blackness that was to come.

Outstanding.

[Kyriakos Sorokkou]

Ο ΓΥΡΟΣ ΤΟΥ ΚΑΡΚΙΝΟΥ ΣΕ ΟΓΔΟΝΤΑ ΜΕΡΕΣ
Μέρος Ί: Χαλογουινέζικο φινάλε

Το τελευταίο βιβλίο που διάβασα αυτή τη δύσκολη περίοδο.

Το ξεκίνησα 19 Οκτωβρίου, ακριβώς 2 μήνες αφού ξεκίνησα χημειοθεραπεία και 6 μέρες πριν δω τη γιατρό μου για πρώτη φορά μετά το τέλος της θεραπείας.

Το τελείωσα την επόμενη του Χάλογουιν 1η Νοεμβρίου, του πρώτου μήνα που δεν είχα καθημερινές επισκέψεις το πρωί από τις νο��ηλεύτριες για αντιπηκτικές ενέσεις και εβδομαδιαίες επισκέψεις στο Ογκολογικό Κέντρο.

Το πρώτο μυθιστόρημα του συγγραφέα και φυσικά είχε ανατριχιαστικές σκηνές φανερά επηρεασμένες από τον κλασικό Μ. Ρ. Τζέιμς. Θυμάμαι όσο το διάβαζα τα βράδια αποκοιμιώμουν στον καναπέ και ξυπνούσα νομιζομενος ότι έβλεπα σκιές. Κάτι τέτοιο ποτέ δε μου προξένησε βιβλίο του Κινγκ του επονομαζόμενου Βασιλιά του Τρόμου.

5 μυθιστορήματα διάβασα του Νέβιλ τα 3 από στα 2 με τρόμαξαν σε αντίθεση με 0 στα 20κάτι του Κινγκ.

Αλλά ας μην κάνω άλλες συγκρίσεις, είναι άσκοπο.

Εγκληματικά αμετάφραστος συγγραφέας τρόμου στα ελληνικά με 2 βιβλία του ταινίες στο Νετφλιξ και καριέρα 20 περίπου χρόνων.

Το πρωτόλειο αυτό βιβλίο διαδραματίζεται στο ιστορικό πανεπιστήμιο της Σκωτίας St. Andrew’s όπου στη μεσαιωνική πόλη κάτι που ήρθε από το υπερπέραν κυνηγά φοιτητές που έχουν μπλέξει με μια σέχτα αποκρυφισμού.

Πολύ πεζή η περιγραφή μου που δεν θα πουλούσε αν ήταν στο οπισθόφυλλο. Αν έχετε την τύχη να ξέρετε αγγλικά διαβάστε το γιατί αν περιμένετε από τους ελληνικούς εκδότες χαΐρι δε θα δείτε.

[Melanie · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the fourth book of Nevill's I've read. I love his writing, his characterization and his slow-burn style. Banquet was his first published book and his style has changed quite a bit since then. The only problems I have with Mr Nevill is his main characters often make really fucking dumb decisions . There was more than one time in this as well as other books of his, that I desperately wanted to slap the protagonist in the face with a wet fish. Hard. And with vigour. More than once.

The other problem I have with his books is the endings are almost always ambiguous. In this one, the protagonist may or may not be possessed. WTF Nevill! . Have you read House of Small Shadows ? If you have and you can explain what the fuck was going on for the last 2 chapters of that little tome, please, PM me and spell it out because my head's still doing a Linda Blair impersonation.

So why am I giving it 4 stars? Here's why.
It's well written.
It's scary.
There were times he made me literally squirm.

So I'll be reading his next one...and likely having a bit of whinge about the ending.

Sorry Adam.

[Noctvrnal · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book could've been at least half shorter and still deliver the same punch. I liked the plot overall except for one aspect. But most chapters were difficult to get through because they were filled with unnecessary details and descriptions. Author does all the thinking for you through his characters and that robbed me from a lot of pleasure when I had to read pages upon pages of characters wondering same things I have, which didn't exactly move the plot forward just added to the word count. Gothic horror tends to be like that and I suppose it was my own fault for expecting something different and a bit more fast-paced, considering the people this novel portrayed.
Still, even though I did not particularly enjoy this book overall - I would say it's a good story and good book. It just wasn't my style and I have a big bone to pick with author choosing so over-done The Big Bad. I was expecting something more clever and shocking but even for me, who doesn't guess the outcomes of books - every plotline was too obvious. Maybe the book is about the journey and not the goal and it's a good argument to have, but with how needlessly wordy this book was - I'd say I got tired of the journey by the time page 100 hit.
It's the second book I read by this author and both of them have been a chore despite, somehow, being great at the same time. But I see now that Nevill can't get through to me and I won't be picking up any more of his material.
Overall - good story, poor execution. Didn't hate it, but didn't love it either. Maybe those with more inclination for this type of horror are a better suited audience.

[Natasa · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is my first Adam Nevill novel and I loved it. Loved simply because I respect authors who invest a lot of time in research. Just the amount of books he read in order to make this peace of work is astonishing. The pace was constant though it could have had a bit more action, but I'm not complaining as the story flowed nicely.
I'm really surprised to see a lot of bad reviews. I think this book deserves a bigger rating than 3,38.
But I guess everyone has a right to his own opinion.
This is a new gem of an author that I have discovered and I plan on reading more of his books very soon.

[Kimberly · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5 stars.

This was the first novel that I read from Adam Nevill (forgot to post a review), and I wasn't overly impressed. While the idea was okay, I--personally--found it a bit too unnecessarily wordy.

I would recommend, instead, starting with his novel, HOUSE OF SMALL SHADOWS. I found this one much more "creepy", myself.

[Ceeceereads · Rating 5 out of 5]

Banquet For The Damned was, for me, on a level with Peter Straub’s Ghost Story, which is one of my all time favourites. I found it chilling and authentic but what really elevated it was the depth of the subject matter and the level of writing. The horror elements were unrelenting but the story unfolded at it’s own pace. When I thought it had peaked, it would peak again. For the last part I was genuinely filled with dread. This is a true horror.

“Just before everything goes to black, something slips from the cement floor of the cellar, and drops into the tomb with him.”

“With reluctant fingers he proceeds to pull something from his mouth that looks like a tendril of wet hair.”

[Neofytos Kaltzidis · Rating 1 out of 5]

The beginning of the book was quite interesting, the middle of it was even better, but I struggled so much with the last 100+ pages that I almost threw it away or dnf it. I have never felt more underwhelmed by a book than I did with the last quarter of this one. And the ending was a total sh*t!

[Tom A. · Rating 3 out of 5]

Feb Review 1: Banquet for the Damned by Adam Nevill

"Over there, Dante, are three clever debunkers. You know what a debunker is? A person who lacks imagination, Dante. Who can only thrive in the world. Their dull creed replaced spirituality with a new god of economics. But what has that achieved? People are dissatisfied, bored, unfulfilled. Those three can do nothing but mock the intuitive and the creative. Like us, Dante, who flee the everyday world and seek a meaning through our endeavours. We are the fortunate ones."

- Elliot Coldwell

Dante and Tom are two down-on-their-luck Birmingham musicians who travel to the sleepy town of St. Andrews. They plan to collaborate with the esteemed but eccentric Professor Elliot Coldwell, whose book (title drop) Banquet for the Damned was an inspiration to Dante's music. But everyone is not enjoying their sleep in this sleepy town, as there has been a plague of night terrors plaguing its citizens, causing them to commit suicide or disappear. Meanwhile, an American anthropologist named Hart Miller comes to St. Andrews to investigate the night terror phenomenon as part of his globe-spanning study on the matter. Miller stumbles on the connection of these night terrors to Coldwell, particularly his popular paranormal sessions with the student body. Is it too late for Dante and Tom? Will Hart live long enough to convince somebody of his findings?

Adam Nevill entranced me with his writing through his free kindle giveaways Before You Wake: Three Horrors and Before You Sleep: Three Horrors *. The stories were engaging, well-written, and scary. These collections revealed the horror style Nevill dabbled in: ambiguous tales filled with protagonists realizing their ill-fate too late. These are the types of stories I love to read.

I wish my enthusiasm extended to Banquet for the Damned, Nevill's first novel: it's intriguing but sluggish, moody but overlong, and the scintillating parts scattered among needlessly ornate writing contributing nothing to the narrative. This book tries to combine the subtle hauntings and horrors of Ramsey Campbell and the mythology-comes-raising-hell shockers of Graham Masterton with mixed results. I don't mind the slow-buildup (you have to read up to 60% for the "action" to get going), but it is irritating when the denouement is derailed by flowery prose like this:

"Although the lighting has been intentionally dimmed, traces of ochre and sweeping crimson peek lie an ecclesiastic backdrop from among the plethora of plants and waxy creepers she grows from large ceramic and brass pots" (77% into the book!)

And I know what you're thinking: "shouldn't we be more concerned with the predicament befalling missing character X and the plight of the entire town?". We should be, instead of being made to admire (or loathe) the lighting in the room.

Now, let us discuss the positive aspects. Nevill understands good horror: there are many threats in Banquet, and this ups the ante against our heroes: you can feel their desperation grow after each grueling, intense, and sometimes bloody encounter. Nevill also touches on the themes of being an outsider, to be somebody thought of as a joke by modern society. Nevill personifies this theme in Elliot Coldwell**, a charismatic man who is turned into… ah no spoilers here.

It's Adam Nevill's first novel, so of course, there would still be a lot left to improve on. But reading the reviews for The Reddening and No One Gets Out Alive , I know that his writing has evolved for the better.

*Are they still free?

**Based on the late Colin Wilson, writer of "The Outsider" and many books on hauntings, mysteries, and the supernatural. He wrote Lovecraftian fiction, too.

[Peter · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dante had been writing Eliot Coldwell, the author of Banquet for the Damned for a couple of years. Banquet had a big influence on their band and their hit album. Eliot invites Dante to come to Scotland to help him do some research for his new book. Dante jumps at the chance to work with Coldwell. Dante bring along another band member and his best friend Tom. Dante believes that the research that he is doing for Eliot, will help the band produce another classic rock album. Dante meets Coldwell in his office, which is located in the cellar of the University. Coldwell has a drinking problem and is on thin ice with the University. Eliot tells Dante, that he will be meeting with Beth from now on. Beth is a student, who is helping out Eliot with his research for the new book.. Things don't turn out the way Dante had planned and he finds out that he is merely a pawn in Coldwell's game. Hart Miller, is an American, who is studying night terrors. Some of the students who are in Eliot's study group, end up seeing Miller about their night terror. Those students who saw Miller, never keep their next appointment and it was like they vanished right off the face of the earth. Is Eliot Coldwell, the Devil himself or a follower of Satan? Banquet started off really strong but somewhere in the middle, the story began to drag. The plot was good and the characters were interesting. I feel that the novel could have been cut by 75 to 100 pages and still kept the interest of the reader. I have heard good things about this author and plan to checkout other works by him. I recommend this book, to readers who enjoy Horror.

[Blair · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was one of those books you're just not quite sure what to make of. I was really into it at the beginning, and couldn't put it down for about a third of the story, but little by little I began to lose interest and by the last few chapters I didn't really care what happened. The supernatural/occult element was really interesting at first, but some of what happened was just overkill and it all became a bit silly. While the narrative painted a really vivid picture of the setting, and some of the older characters were well-drawn, I didn't find any of the young characters convincing at all - and for some reason the cultural references felt really dated, even though the book was only published a few years ago. I hadn't heard of the author before and bought this book on the strength of an Amazon recommendation; having read it, I think maybe it strayed a bit too far into the fantasy realm for me. I love books that have a touch of the magical and macabre about them, but while parts of this were enjoyable, I found many details hard to swallow (for example numerous characters' rapid/immediate acceptance that the night terrors and disappearances had a supernatural cause) and the ending left me cold.

[Phil · Rating 3 out of 5]

A very atmospheric and gothic tale by Nevill! Set in St. Andrews, Scotland's oldest university town, the story concerns Dante and Tom, two rockers from the Midlands who are invited to St. Andrews by a professor who wrote an old book Dante wants to turn into a concept album. Things quickly turn strange, however. The old professor is basically a drunken sot and he fobs Dante off on his 'research assistant', a beautiful, if strange woman named Beth. We are introduced along the way to an American anthropologist also at St. Andrews doing some research in what he calls 'night terrors'. The reader is quickly introduced, however, outside of the main POVs, to a series of brutal murders/killings taking place in town. How they are related to the professor slowly starts to emerge.

In a way, this book is a homage to St. Andrews, and Nevill spends quite some time elaborating on its geography, history and so forth. Despite the brutal killings interspersed in the narrative, the book actually is more of a slow, gothic burn, as we gradually learn what the professor and his research assistants have unleashed. 3.5 solid stars.

[Kyle Blount · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was my second Nevill novel, after Last Days, and I think his first... I just loved it. Great literate horror, excellent atmosphere, and how can you resist a finely written novel about witchcraft and the occult. Mr. Nevill is becoming one of my favorite novelists and I can't wait to read another! Very recommended to horror fans, don't miss out!

[Mike Duguid · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliant debut novel

Having read a few short stories and really enjoying them and knowing this one was set in a place I know well, St Andrews. This had everything. It actually reminded me a little of Salem's Lot. High praise indeed. Highly recommended

[Sharon Bidwell · Rating 5 out of 5]

I can easily see why this book is going to receive mixed reviews, and it's purely owing to stylistic preference. I found myself sinking into a rich vocabulary and longer sentences so often lacking in modern fiction. I don't want to use the term literary as it carries an unfortunate modern-day connotation of dusty libraries and mildewed books written by notaries of a by-gone age (a sad view of the classics that were part of my childhood reading and nowadays occasionally termed 'too difficult') and this definitely isn't like that, but one would have to say this is a more literary 'style' of horror. Another way to describe it is I can see some editor's returning the manuscript circling some sentences as purple prose. Thank goodness the publisher ignored them if they did. The style used is carefully chosen to weave a delightfully successful spell on any reader able to appreciate the opulent seductive description spiced with the 'creep' factor; the sense that something is coming and might be present on the next turn of a page. This seems to be where Adam Nevill excels. I've read two of his titles so far but will check out more.

[#ReadAllTheBooks · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's kind of difficult to rate an Adam Nevill novel sometimes. You can tell that this was one of his earlier works and as such, is a little rough around the edges. There are some wonderful moments here and there where the promise gleams through, but there are also parts where I couldn't help but wish that the book had been somewhat more refined.

Overall I have to say that I did greatly enjoy this book, although it took some time for me to wade through. It was an interesting choice to jump between various different people POV-wise, but I do think that this worked well in the long run since Dante wasn't really that sympathetic of a main character. He was a bit of a tosser at times, something that was deliberate on Nevill's part, but still made him a difficult character to connect with.

In any case, if you're looking for something fun and a nice chilling read, this is one to check out.

[A.R. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Adam has done it again! What a brilliant story of witchcraft and the long-hairs that must fight it! Not really crazy about hair-band guys, but I love the Metal Church reference. This is the second book I've read by Neville, and the genius can do no wrong!

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

Well-written and smart. Some really creepy moments and great characters. A winner.