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Accursed
240 pages, Paperback
First published December 1, 1984
3 people are currently reading
135 people want to read
About the author
Guy N. Smith
175 books297 followersI was born on November 21, 1939, in the small village of Hopwas, near Tamworth, Staffordshire, England. My mother was a pre-war historical novelist (E. M. Weale) and she always encouraged me to write.
I was first published at the age of 12 in The Tettenhall Observer, a local weekly newspaper. Between 1952-57 I wrote 56 stories for them, many serialized. In 1990 I collated these into a book entitled Fifty Tales from the Fifties.
My father was a dedicated bank manager and I was destined for banking from birth. I accepted it but never found it very interesting. During the early years when I was working in Birmingham, I spent most of my lunch hours in the Birmingham gun quarter. I would have loved to have served an apprenticeship in the gun trade but my father would not hear of it.
Shooting (hunting) was my first love, and all my spare time was spent in this way. In 1961 I designed and made a 12-bore shotgun, intending to follow it up with six more, but I did not have the money to do this. I still use the Guy N. Smith short-barrelled magnum. During 1960-67 I operated a small shotgun cartridge loading business but this finished when my components suppliers closed down and I could no longer obtain components at competitive prices.
My writing in those days only concerned shooting. I wrote regularly for most of the sporting magazines, interspersed with fiction for such magazines as the legendary London Mystery Selection, a quarterly anthology for which I contributed 18 stories between 1972-82.
In 1972 I launched my second hand bookselling business which eventually became Black Hill Books. Originally my intention was to concentrate on this and maybe build it up to a full-time business which would enable me to leave banking. Although we still have this business, writing came along and this proved to be the vehicle which gave me my freedom.
I wrote a horror novel for the New English Library in 1974 entitled Werewolf by Moonlight. This was followed by a couple more, but it was Night of the Crabs in 1976 which really launched me as a writer. It was a bestseller, spawning five sequels, and was followed by another 60 or so horror novels through to the mid-1990's. Amicus bought the film rights to Crabs in 1976 and this gave me the chance to leave banking and by my own place, including my shoot, on the Black Hill.
The Guy N. Smith Fan Club was formed in 1990 and still has an active membership. We hold a convention every year at my home which is always well attended.
Around this time I became Poland's best-selling author. Phantom Press published two GNS books each month, mostly with print runs of around 100,000.
I have written much, much more than just horror; crime and mystery (as Gavin Newman), and children's animal novels (as Jonathan Guy). I have written a dozen or so shooting and countryside books, a book on Writing Horror Fiction (A. & C. Black). In 1997 my first full length western novel, The Pony Riders was published by Pinnacle in the States.
With 100-plus books to my credit, I was looking for new challenges. In 1999 I formed my own publishing company and began to publish my own books. They did rather well and gave me a lot of satisfaction. We plan to publish one or two every year.
Still regretting that I had not served an apprenticeship in the gun trade, the best job of my life dropped into my lap in 1999 when I was offered the post of Gun Editor of The Countryman's Weekly, a weekly magazine which covers all field sports. This entails my writing five illustrated feature articles a week on guns, cartridges, deer stalking, big game hunting etc.
Alongside this we have expanded our mail order second hand crime fiction business, still publish a few books, and I find as much time as possible for shooting.
Jean, my wife, helps with the business. Our four children, Rowan, Tara, Gavin and Angus have all moved away from home but they visit on a regular basis.
I would not want to live anywhere other than m
I was first published at the age of 12 in The Tettenhall Observer, a local weekly newspaper. Between 1952-57 I wrote 56 stories for them, many serialized. In 1990 I collated these into a book entitled Fifty Tales from the Fifties.
My father was a dedicated bank manager and I was destined for banking from birth. I accepted it but never found it very interesting. During the early years when I was working in Birmingham, I spent most of my lunch hours in the Birmingham gun quarter. I would have loved to have served an apprenticeship in the gun trade but my father would not hear of it.
Shooting (hunting) was my first love, and all my spare time was spent in this way. In 1961 I designed and made a 12-bore shotgun, intending to follow it up with six more, but I did not have the money to do this. I still use the Guy N. Smith short-barrelled magnum. During 1960-67 I operated a small shotgun cartridge loading business but this finished when my components suppliers closed down and I could no longer obtain components at competitive prices.
My writing in those days only concerned shooting. I wrote regularly for most of the sporting magazines, interspersed with fiction for such magazines as the legendary London Mystery Selection, a quarterly anthology for which I contributed 18 stories between 1972-82.
In 1972 I launched my second hand bookselling business which eventually became Black Hill Books. Originally my intention was to concentrate on this and maybe build it up to a full-time business which would enable me to leave banking. Although we still have this business, writing came along and this proved to be the vehicle which gave me my freedom.
I wrote a horror novel for the New English Library in 1974 entitled Werewolf by Moonlight. This was followed by a couple more, but it was Night of the Crabs in 1976 which really launched me as a writer. It was a bestseller, spawning five sequels, and was followed by another 60 or so horror novels through to the mid-1990's. Amicus bought the film rights to Crabs in 1976 and this gave me the chance to leave banking and by my own place, including my shoot, on the Black Hill.
The Guy N. Smith Fan Club was formed in 1990 and still has an active membership. We hold a convention every year at my home which is always well attended.
Around this time I became Poland's best-selling author. Phantom Press published two GNS books each month, mostly with print runs of around 100,000.
I have written much, much more than just horror; crime and mystery (as Gavin Newman), and children's animal novels (as Jonathan Guy). I have written a dozen or so shooting and countryside books, a book on Writing Horror Fiction (A. & C. Black). In 1997 my first full length western novel, The Pony Riders was published by Pinnacle in the States.
With 100-plus books to my credit, I was looking for new challenges. In 1999 I formed my own publishing company and began to publish my own books. They did rather well and gave me a lot of satisfaction. We plan to publish one or two every year.
Still regretting that I had not served an apprenticeship in the gun trade, the best job of my life dropped into my lap in 1999 when I was offered the post of Gun Editor of The Countryman's Weekly, a weekly magazine which covers all field sports. This entails my writing five illustrated feature articles a week on guns, cartridges, deer stalking, big game hunting etc.
Alongside this we have expanded our mail order second hand crime fiction business, still publish a few books, and I find as much time as possible for shooting.
Jean, my wife, helps with the business. Our four children, Rowan, Tara, Gavin and Angus have all moved away from home but they visit on a regular basis.
I would not want to live anywhere other than m
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
January 29, 2020
Stock standard Egyptian curse this is not. Whilst the theme is prevalent in many horror novels, Accursed primarily focuses on a family’s’ slow decent into madness by virtue of two displaced mummies; their supernatural spirits and that of their gods awaken when English house husband George Brownlow disturbs their place of (restless) rest whilst digging out a portion of the backyard as part of his construction of a fallout shelter.
What ensues is a series of increasingly disturbing events, victimising the Brownlow’s and those close to them until the spirits and their masters complete a macabre ritual, depicted in the most gruesome manner.
Not for the squeamish, Accursed slithers its way inside the reader and takes root of all that is rational and bleeds it out drip by drip until the omnipresent madness experienced by the characters consumes you into the story. A must read for fans of paperback horror.
What ensues is a series of increasingly disturbing events, victimising the Brownlow’s and those close to them until the spirits and their masters complete a macabre ritual, depicted in the most gruesome manner.
Not for the squeamish, Accursed slithers its way inside the reader and takes root of all that is rational and bleeds it out drip by drip until the omnipresent madness experienced by the characters consumes you into the story. A must read for fans of paperback horror.
August 11, 2024
This started off nicely enough, but then about halfway through, we fall into long monologues about the Gods of Egypt and curses instead of these curses and Gods coming into form and doling out their vengeance. Yes, there was frogs and spiders and such, but they really didn't do too much.
What this pretty much boils down to was one man afraid of nuclear war caused by Libya digs a bomb shelter and finds an amulet of Set. Ancient curse befalls his family, but the button wasn't pushed.
What this pretty much boils down to was one man afraid of nuclear war caused by Libya digs a bomb shelter and finds an amulet of Set. Ancient curse befalls his family, but the button wasn't pushed.
June 17, 2018
W „Przeklętych” znajdziemy wszystko to, co sprawia, że sięgamy po tego typu opowieści, czyli wartką, wciągającą fabułę i zagadkę, która przyciąga nasze zainteresowanie. W tym przypadku zagadką jest klątwa oraz związane z nią okrutne dzieje pary starożytnych kochanków, skazanych na męczarnie tak za życia jak i po śmierci. Komu na myśl przyszedł film „Mumia”, ten może radośnie przyklasnąć, chociaż tutaj nie ma co liczyć na radosne amerykańskie zakończenia i wiwaty triumfu. Niemniej, może oczekiwać porządnej dawki przesadzonej grozy w postaci egipskich plag, które torturują mieszkańców rozpalonej patologicznym upałem angielskiej prowincji. W tym – spektakularnej w skutkach zarazy, która pochłania ciało, a na którą nie ma lekarstwa, smrodu rozkładających się trupów i gnijącej rzeki w egipskiej spiekocie. Wisienką na tym torcie grozy jest intrygujące zakończenie, które nadaje całości metaforycznej głębi, a to sprawia, że „Przeklęci” mogą być wyższą szkołą pulpowej jazdy, jeśli tylko damy im szansę.
Dla miłośników grozy klasy B i C to pozycja obowiązkowa, tym bardziej jeśli pamiętają phantomowe, bijące rekordy popularności wydania Guya N. Smitha z początku lat dziewięćdziesiątych.
Dla miłośników grozy klasy B i C to pozycja obowiązkowa, tym bardziej jeśli pamiętają phantomowe, bijące rekordy popularności wydania Guya N. Smitha z początku lat dziewięćdziesiątych.
September 16, 2017
An old curse comes from Egypt to Britain in form of two mummies and Set is seeking revenge on the Brownlows living at the site where the reverend buried the corpses. A well paced, eerie story rolling like thunder to the end. Does it really end... absolutely creepy pageturner. Clear recommendation!
March 2, 2022
"He shall not be shut in along with the souls which are fettered; he shall have power to deliver himself wherever he may be; and the worms shall not devour him.
Chapter CLXIV. Book of the Dead"
Chapter CLXIV. Book of the Dead"
September 21, 2024
There's a lot of irony behind the scenes this time out. This New English Library book is larger than Smith's previous bunch for that publisher at well over two hundred pages, but it has the smallest cast of characters perhaps thus far in his entire output and the least amount of action. There are precious few characters in play outside the Brownlow family, if we count two significant others as part of that clan, and nobody else is remotely at risk between the prologue and the final page. Of course, if the latter means what we think it does, then Smith makes up for the death count there and then. What's more, for a book in which very little actually happens, we know plenty about its evolution.
Like so many of Smith's stories, it has roots in a bizarre true story from his old stomping grounds, in this instance the exploits of the Revd. William MacGregor, vicar of St. Editha's in Tamworth for a decade in the late nineteenth century. He was a rich man, who used much of his fortune to help his community as a public benefactor, but he was also an amateur Egyptologist who made quite a few trips to Egypt and brought much back with him, including a pair of mummies that he gave an important place in his study. Sadly, they started to decompose in the British climate, so he chose to lay them to rest in a Christian burial at the bottom of his back garden by the river.
Smith wrote about MacGregor in a few articles, mentioning the mummies even in general pieces like 'The Reverend William MacGregor' and especially in ones like 'My Buried Mummies', in which he visited the Bolehall Manor Club in Tamworth, formerly MacGregor's cottage, to see the study, which at that point had become a billiards room. He also adapted the story into fiction, leading to an Egyptian themed cover for 'London Mystery' to accompany his story, 'The Mummy', about two Egyptologists stumbling on a tomb and one having a vision there of a beautiful priestess who has borne a child to a prince and so must see it killed in front of her as an offering to Isis before she's killed herself in punishment.
That story is reprised here, with this previously unnamed priestess given the name Dalukah and the prince becoming her soldier lover Aba-aner. Their baby is killed but so are both of them, with their bodies entombed for millennia until a British clergyman, the Revd. Mason, discovers them and brings them home to England, where, just as MacGregor did, places them in his study until a growing smell prompts him to give them a Christian burial in his garden down by the river. Sound familiar? Well, that's our prologue and during it we meet a small cast of characters beyond just a thinly disguised vicar. It's when we leap forward in time for part one that the world shrinks.
Our focus is the Brownlow family, who live at number 12 in the upscale neighbourhood known as River View, and we stay with them there for the vast majority of this book. The man of the house is George Brownlow, but as we begin he's very much at the mercy of his wife, Emily, in more than one sense. Back a way, he lost his job and she won big on a Spot the Ball competition, which she's kept quiet all these years to maintain a different image to their neighbours. She's a real piece of work, a stuck up Hyacinth Bucket type, who's making everyone's life a misery in the holy name of keeping up appearances.
George is the primary target of her disdain, but they have two kids too, both grown and eager to be able to move out and away from her. Their son is Barry, who works at a solicitor's office even if he rides a common motorcycle, and has a girlfriend who Emily sees as class, Rita Hendon, who's a professional at a research laboratory. Their daughter is Sheila, who's dared to invoke her mum's wrath by dating Adrian Capper, a common-as-muck boy from a council estate. And that's our cast, for almost the entire novel to follow, with a smattering of supporting players popping up once in a blue moon to remind us that there's a wider world than just number 12.
Oh, and there's Set. Yes, the Egyptian god of all sorts of things dark. He never shows up in person but he's a palpable presence throughout the book, once George finds his amulet in his back yard. Guess what was later built on Revd. Mason's land where he buried those two Egyptian mummies? Yes indeed, River View. George has visions, like the Egyptologist in 'The Mummy', but seeing two people instead of just one, Dalukah and Aba-aner, who had been cursed by Set, a curse that's now transferring over to the Brownlows, who will gradually serve to repeat history.
Of course, that's been a theme of quite a few Guy N. Smith novels in the early eighties, not least the Mark Sabat novels, but up to this point, he's done it as a supporting plot device deep into the third act. Here it takes up the primary thrust of the novel. George is already worried about how the world might end, what with the mad Libyan leader Col. Gadaffi threatening Israel and their local conflict threatening to spill over into the broader Cold War with its omnipresent shadow of nuclear holocaust looming large over George's future. So he decides to annoy his wife by digging a nuclear shelter in their back garden. That's when he finds the amulet of Set and everything else follows from there.
When I say not much happens in 'Accursed', I mean in the traditional sense. There aren't a heck of a lot of characters given anything to do and Smith ventures deep into his character building, with each of the Brownlows and their significant others given plenty of opportunity to manifest their thoughts and frustrations to us. Much of this story takes therefore place inside the heads of this highly focused primary cast, while George makes steady progress on his shelter and becomes, as he does so, more dominant and more lost in Egyptian research until he shaves both his head and his eyebrows to become a priest of Set carrying out the god's bidding.
While he transforms, the local area suffers a redux of the plagues that hammered Egypt back in historical times, but Smith never loses his focus on the Brownlows. At one point, George calls an appropriate specialist hotline to report the locust he's captured in his garden and he's told that it's nothing to worry about, contrary to what we read only four years earlier in Smith's 'Locusts'. There's a plague of frogs which memorably interrupts Sheila and Adrian getting it on in the park, prompting them to run home buck naked, squishing frogs as they go. There's a plague of flies and what I guess is a plague of boils and, well, they all end up mostly ignored as Set's hypnotic spell on George spreads to Emily and the kids.
And so it goes, with a sad inevitability about it because we know relatively early on where it will all go and, sure enough, it does, escalating slowly throughout the book and much quicker during the final chapter until a pessimistic final page. There's an occasional glimpse of hope, but it never becomes much more than a glimpse and that's about it. None of these characters ever really had the potential to save the day or change its outcome and, well, maybe that's the point, given what we have to believe happens on that final page. None of us can do anything.
I can't say I didn't enjoy this, because it's always fun to rekindle an old acquaintance with a Guy N. Smith novel, but it's a notably different read to what went before it, which surprised me. During this monthly runthrough of all his novels in order, I've been surprised at how much more I got out of some of his more downbeat books that I'd previously remembered with less fondness. This one wasn't one of those. I don't remember being disappointed by it, but I am little now. It is what it is and I guess what it had to be, for a metaphor representing nuclear armaggeddon, but it's not one I'm likely to dive back into again any time soon.
Originally posted at the Nameless Zine in March 2024:
https://www.thenamelesszine.org/Voice...
Index of all my Nameless Zine reviews:
https://books.apocalypselaterempire.com/
Like so many of Smith's stories, it has roots in a bizarre true story from his old stomping grounds, in this instance the exploits of the Revd. William MacGregor, vicar of St. Editha's in Tamworth for a decade in the late nineteenth century. He was a rich man, who used much of his fortune to help his community as a public benefactor, but he was also an amateur Egyptologist who made quite a few trips to Egypt and brought much back with him, including a pair of mummies that he gave an important place in his study. Sadly, they started to decompose in the British climate, so he chose to lay them to rest in a Christian burial at the bottom of his back garden by the river.
Smith wrote about MacGregor in a few articles, mentioning the mummies even in general pieces like 'The Reverend William MacGregor' and especially in ones like 'My Buried Mummies', in which he visited the Bolehall Manor Club in Tamworth, formerly MacGregor's cottage, to see the study, which at that point had become a billiards room. He also adapted the story into fiction, leading to an Egyptian themed cover for 'London Mystery' to accompany his story, 'The Mummy', about two Egyptologists stumbling on a tomb and one having a vision there of a beautiful priestess who has borne a child to a prince and so must see it killed in front of her as an offering to Isis before she's killed herself in punishment.
That story is reprised here, with this previously unnamed priestess given the name Dalukah and the prince becoming her soldier lover Aba-aner. Their baby is killed but so are both of them, with their bodies entombed for millennia until a British clergyman, the Revd. Mason, discovers them and brings them home to England, where, just as MacGregor did, places them in his study until a growing smell prompts him to give them a Christian burial in his garden down by the river. Sound familiar? Well, that's our prologue and during it we meet a small cast of characters beyond just a thinly disguised vicar. It's when we leap forward in time for part one that the world shrinks.
Our focus is the Brownlow family, who live at number 12 in the upscale neighbourhood known as River View, and we stay with them there for the vast majority of this book. The man of the house is George Brownlow, but as we begin he's very much at the mercy of his wife, Emily, in more than one sense. Back a way, he lost his job and she won big on a Spot the Ball competition, which she's kept quiet all these years to maintain a different image to their neighbours. She's a real piece of work, a stuck up Hyacinth Bucket type, who's making everyone's life a misery in the holy name of keeping up appearances.
George is the primary target of her disdain, but they have two kids too, both grown and eager to be able to move out and away from her. Their son is Barry, who works at a solicitor's office even if he rides a common motorcycle, and has a girlfriend who Emily sees as class, Rita Hendon, who's a professional at a research laboratory. Their daughter is Sheila, who's dared to invoke her mum's wrath by dating Adrian Capper, a common-as-muck boy from a council estate. And that's our cast, for almost the entire novel to follow, with a smattering of supporting players popping up once in a blue moon to remind us that there's a wider world than just number 12.
Oh, and there's Set. Yes, the Egyptian god of all sorts of things dark. He never shows up in person but he's a palpable presence throughout the book, once George finds his amulet in his back yard. Guess what was later built on Revd. Mason's land where he buried those two Egyptian mummies? Yes indeed, River View. George has visions, like the Egyptologist in 'The Mummy', but seeing two people instead of just one, Dalukah and Aba-aner, who had been cursed by Set, a curse that's now transferring over to the Brownlows, who will gradually serve to repeat history.
Of course, that's been a theme of quite a few Guy N. Smith novels in the early eighties, not least the Mark Sabat novels, but up to this point, he's done it as a supporting plot device deep into the third act. Here it takes up the primary thrust of the novel. George is already worried about how the world might end, what with the mad Libyan leader Col. Gadaffi threatening Israel and their local conflict threatening to spill over into the broader Cold War with its omnipresent shadow of nuclear holocaust looming large over George's future. So he decides to annoy his wife by digging a nuclear shelter in their back garden. That's when he finds the amulet of Set and everything else follows from there.
When I say not much happens in 'Accursed', I mean in the traditional sense. There aren't a heck of a lot of characters given anything to do and Smith ventures deep into his character building, with each of the Brownlows and their significant others given plenty of opportunity to manifest their thoughts and frustrations to us. Much of this story takes therefore place inside the heads of this highly focused primary cast, while George makes steady progress on his shelter and becomes, as he does so, more dominant and more lost in Egyptian research until he shaves both his head and his eyebrows to become a priest of Set carrying out the god's bidding.
While he transforms, the local area suffers a redux of the plagues that hammered Egypt back in historical times, but Smith never loses his focus on the Brownlows. At one point, George calls an appropriate specialist hotline to report the locust he's captured in his garden and he's told that it's nothing to worry about, contrary to what we read only four years earlier in Smith's 'Locusts'. There's a plague of frogs which memorably interrupts Sheila and Adrian getting it on in the park, prompting them to run home buck naked, squishing frogs as they go. There's a plague of flies and what I guess is a plague of boils and, well, they all end up mostly ignored as Set's hypnotic spell on George spreads to Emily and the kids.
And so it goes, with a sad inevitability about it because we know relatively early on where it will all go and, sure enough, it does, escalating slowly throughout the book and much quicker during the final chapter until a pessimistic final page. There's an occasional glimpse of hope, but it never becomes much more than a glimpse and that's about it. None of these characters ever really had the potential to save the day or change its outcome and, well, maybe that's the point, given what we have to believe happens on that final page. None of us can do anything.
I can't say I didn't enjoy this, because it's always fun to rekindle an old acquaintance with a Guy N. Smith novel, but it's a notably different read to what went before it, which surprised me. During this monthly runthrough of all his novels in order, I've been surprised at how much more I got out of some of his more downbeat books that I'd previously remembered with less fondness. This one wasn't one of those. I don't remember being disappointed by it, but I am little now. It is what it is and I guess what it had to be, for a metaphor representing nuclear armaggeddon, but it's not one I'm likely to dive back into again any time soon.
Originally posted at the Nameless Zine in March 2024:
https://www.thenamelesszine.org/Voice...
Index of all my Nameless Zine reviews:
https://books.apocalypselaterempire.com/
March 22, 2020
A small scale domestic horror yarn from the popular pulp author Guy N. Smith. This one begins with a 1920s-era prologue clearly derived from the famous Tutenkhamen discovery before moving to the present day, where a father digging in his garden uncovers a weird amulet with an image of the god Set which proceeds to possess him. Smith has fun with Egyptian mythology in this one, but it's something of a lesser story that flirts with the topic rather than covers it in any kind of depth or complexity. I did like the Cold War backdrop, which works well throughout, and the author's attempts at scant characterisation in his family drama. The text suffers from errors throughout (frogs are constantly described as reptiles, for example) and the author's trademark bloodshed is slightly more restrained than usual. Fans will find it readable but not perhaps one of his most outlandish or outrageous stories.
November 3, 2021
⭐️1,5/5
Nie mam ostatnio szczęścia do książek Guy’a. Może się starzeję i nie bawią mnie już ociekające kiczem i złym smakiem horrory klasy B? Ale nie, raczej nie tu tkwi problem, bo żenujące mastertonizmy nadal przyprawiają mnie o salwy śmiechu naprzemienne z chęcią wsadzenia sobie miksera w oczy. Czyli pewnie mam wyjątkowego pecha trafiać na poważniejsze dzieła mistrza horroru klasy Z. Wszystkie ostatnio czytane przeze mnie książki Guy’a zamiast wywoływać uczucie zażenowania i podśmiewajki z absurdalnych i niesmacznych do granic możliwości sytuacji i dialogów - nużyły niemiłosiernie. Przez to bez większych emocji i trochę na siłę wymęczałam je do końca bądź jak w przypadku „Przeklętych” zrezygnowałam i bez większego żalu odstawiłam na półkę z etykietą niedoczytane.
A właśnie w „Przeklętych” pokrywałam ogromną nadzieję, że oto w końcu jest książka, która złą Guy’ową passę przełamie, bo sam opis sugerował historię idealnie wpasowującą się w moje preferencje. Horror okultystyczny z plagami i bóstwami starożytnego Egiptu w roli głównej - przecież to brzmi swietnie! W tym wypadku tylko brzmi, bo zamysł to jedno, a wykonanie to już całkiem co innego. Nie wiem jakim cudem można tak spartolić książkę z tak dużym potencjałem i motywem samograjem. „Przeklęci” udowodniają że i powieść z niesamowicie ciekawym i dającym wyobraźni ogromne pole do popisu tematem starożytnego Egiptu może być szalenie nudna. Guy się przy pisaniu zbytnio nie wysilił i poleciał schematami. Wyjątkowo nieciekawi, bezpłciowi i rozwleczeni ci „Przeklęci”. W tej historii nie ma grama oryginalności - po kolei odhaczane są kolejne plagi, a okraszone to wszystko znikomą i strawną nawet dla średnio wrażliwego czytelnika dawką gore. Brzmi znajomo? Tak, wszyscy oglądaliśmy taki slasher już parę razy. Klisza do kwadratu. Nie wymagam od Guy’a wyszukanego języka ani pogłębionych portretów psychologicznych postaci, ale już sztampy, monotonii i przewidywalności wybaczyć nie mogę. Bez większego żalu porzuciłam w połowie. I nie mam zamiaru do lektury jeszcze kiedyś wrócić.
Kolejny nietrafiony celowy wybór złej literatury i kolejne nieudane spotkanie z Guy’em. Czas wrócić do dobrze napisanych książek. A co do Guy’a - to chyba już tylko „Sabat” może go w moich oczach odczarować.
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Nie mam ostatnio szczęścia do książek Guy’a. Może się starzeję i nie bawią mnie już ociekające kiczem i złym smakiem horrory klasy B? Ale nie, raczej nie tu tkwi problem, bo żenujące mastertonizmy nadal przyprawiają mnie o salwy śmiechu naprzemienne z chęcią wsadzenia sobie miksera w oczy. Czyli pewnie mam wyjątkowego pecha trafiać na poważniejsze dzieła mistrza horroru klasy Z. Wszystkie ostatnio czytane przeze mnie książki Guy’a zamiast wywoływać uczucie zażenowania i podśmiewajki z absurdalnych i niesmacznych do granic możliwości sytuacji i dialogów - nużyły niemiłosiernie. Przez to bez większych emocji i trochę na siłę wymęczałam je do końca bądź jak w przypadku „Przeklętych” zrezygnowałam i bez większego żalu odstawiłam na półkę z etykietą niedoczytane.
A właśnie w „Przeklętych” pokrywałam ogromną nadzieję, że oto w końcu jest książka, która złą Guy’ową passę przełamie, bo sam opis sugerował historię idealnie wpasowującą się w moje preferencje. Horror okultystyczny z plagami i bóstwami starożytnego Egiptu w roli głównej - przecież to brzmi swietnie! W tym wypadku tylko brzmi, bo zamysł to jedno, a wykonanie to już całkiem co innego. Nie wiem jakim cudem można tak spartolić książkę z tak dużym potencjałem i motywem samograjem. „Przeklęci” udowodniają że i powieść z niesamowicie ciekawym i dającym wyobraźni ogromne pole do popisu tematem starożytnego Egiptu może być szalenie nudna. Guy się przy pisaniu zbytnio nie wysilił i poleciał schematami. Wyjątkowo nieciekawi, bezpłciowi i rozwleczeni ci „Przeklęci”. W tej historii nie ma grama oryginalności - po kolei odhaczane są kolejne plagi, a okraszone to wszystko znikomą i strawną nawet dla średnio wrażliwego czytelnika dawką gore. Brzmi znajomo? Tak, wszyscy oglądaliśmy taki slasher już parę razy. Klisza do kwadratu. Nie wymagam od Guy’a wyszukanego języka ani pogłębionych portretów psychologicznych postaci, ale już sztampy, monotonii i przewidywalności wybaczyć nie mogę. Bez większego żalu porzuciłam w połowie. I nie mam zamiaru do lektury jeszcze kiedyś wrócić.
Kolejny nietrafiony celowy wybór złej literatury i kolejne nieudane spotkanie z Guy’em. Czas wrócić do dobrze napisanych książek. A co do Guy’a - to chyba już tylko „Sabat” może go w moich oczach odczarować.
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January 21, 2026
Like many things that are bad for you, Guy N. Smith is addictive. I really can't help myself. Intervention needed.
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