Effigies

by William K. Wells, Peter Caras (Cover Artist.)

Born in darkness, they will walk abroad in daylight. They are coming - the Devil's own!

Genres: Horror, Fiction

398 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 1980

Reviews

[Jack Tripper]

Here's the cover of the 1980 Dell mass-market, with art by Peter Caras (442 pages, not 398 as listed here).

[Grady Hendrix]

Beware the local priest growing soulless meat machines in the basement of his church that will be animated by all the forces of Hell to disrupt nice, white, upper middle class homes.

[Rick]

Don't let the incredible cover art fool you; this book is a turkey. Absolutely a product of its time. A small county is under siege by a group of satanists and a demon named Elvida (A Devil) who overtakes a little girl named Leslie. Unbelievably boring for 250 pages but when the filth begins, it's been too long to care. Includes human disembowelment, male rape, a man suffocated to death by a vagina while simultaneously being fellated and ejaculating. Blood red skies with murders of crowes, you name it. And all brought on by deviation from traditional values.

SKIP IT

[Anthony]

The length of this book and slow pacing is what kept it from getting 4 stars. Pretty strong content dealing with cults, devil worship, and religion. Some questions left unanswered after going thru 400 pages in length.

[Divine Prince]

Good enough someone stole this book from me in High School! Lol.

[Scott Oliver]

A small community of writers and artists in Holland County find themselves caught up in an evil plot hatched between the devil and a local satanist to send out in to the world the devil’s spawn

Despite the long length (398 pages) most of which describe the various drinking and sexual debauchery of the local inhabitants (and there is a lot of both) there are some really good moments in this book. I did find it a bit hard to keep track of everyone but enjoyed it nonetheless

[Rolf Erik]

This would have made for one lean, mean novella. But as a novel slow would not be an inaccurate description. Whenever something important happened, things got back to the status quo by the time the next chapter rolled around. Events that were set up finally arrived, without leading anywhere significant. And the novel's sheriff was pathologically absurd in his quest for rational explanations, no matter how supernatural things got around him. It is as if the writer added to the narrative just to get to a decent novel's length. By the arrival of book three I just wanted the author to get around to the climax, which was fun enough, but underwhelming. You will have fun as it is not a bad novel, with horrifying nastiness permeating many pages; it is only the collective whole that lacked punch.

[Ali]

Way to long and too much ridiculous sex-nonsense for me. Disappointing, I was hoping for a fun, creepy cult book. oh well. Stopped reading about halfway through and had skimmed before that.

[Thom Downie]

Probably closer to 2.5.

Far too long, got about halfway through and realised that not a lot had happened! It's readable enough but rather a lot of uninteresting character stuff.

[Stephanie Sanders-Jacob]

This book wasn’t very good, but it was bad in a weirdly comforting 1970s way so I didn’t quit halfway through like I should have. It’s about a small community upended by evil. It all begins when a woman receives a child’s severed finger in the mail. Sounds good, right? It was actually pretty interesting at first, but it just devolved into bad science, satanic orgies, and misogyny. I didn’t really understand the mechanics behind the big reveal…

[Tom]

Enjoyable enough horror read but I did feel that it was a bit slow to get going. If you are wanting something easy going and fun then pick it up.