Ancients

by R. Karl Largent

Book

Genres: Horror, Fiction

400 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1990

About the author

R. Karl Largent, a.k.a. Robin Karl or Simon Lawrence, is an author, lecturer, and columnist who teaches writing at Tri-State University. Before launching his writing career, he spent 30 years in industry, the last 17 as VP of Marketing for a Fortune 500 multinational. A former horse show judge and trainer of youth horses, he competed in SCCA road racing events, flew as a weather observer in the USAF, completed a tour of duty in the Arctic and served with the U.S. Weather Bureau.

R. Karl Largent is the author of over 600 columns. He has also authored nearly two dozen novels including the bestselling "Red" series. He has also written six non-fiction books as well as numerous articles for magazines, newspapers and other publications.

Reviews

[Phil · Rating 2 out of 5]

This could have been soo much better, but so it goes. Having read several of Largent's works, I am familiar with his style and narrator here, E.G. Wages. Wages, an author of 'sinister fiction', also works as a writer in residence at a small college. Wages and his mentor, Cosmos, a professor of anthropology, start the novel discussing several newspaper articles chronicling various massacres that happened in remote areas of Canada every 11 years. If the chronology is correct, another massacre is due soon. With the aide of research assistants, Wages takes a guess at where the next will be and travels there with a doctoral student of anthropology who first sent him the articles.

The massacres typically involve the death of many people, some of them eaten and such, along with widespread devastation. What (or who) could be behind them? Wages and his partner arrive in Chambers Bay, a small, maritime town in a remote part of Canada. Recently, several strange events have trespassed there, including several animals butchered and partially eaten. Soon, however, people start to die as well, also butchered and partially eaten. I dug the set up and there is a great story here somewhere. Unfortunately, our narrator takes the prize for being a pompous, misogynist asshat, and so the reader must suffer with his outlooks and attitudes on life and women in general. If you can get past the narrator and style of the book, you may enjoy it; me, meh. 2 ancient stars!

[Brian · Rating 5 out of 5]

Starts off with a bang and doesn't slow down 'til the very last page.

If you can get your hands on a copy, I strongly recommend Ancients to anyone who enjoys horror, action/adventure, and/or suspense novels.

[Christine · Rating 3 out of 5]

Review to come.

[Amanda · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book has a lot of things going for it; engaging story line, fast-paced plot, engrossing lore, and a fun twist ending. I actually really enjoyed reading it and would recommend it to anyone who likes a good, bloody mystery. But one thing keeps me from giving it a five-star review. The one-dimensional, completely forgettable characters. I kept having to go back in the story to find the places where all of these people were introduced just to refresh my memory on who in the world they were. Even the two main protagonists, the narrator and his companion - who were in the book from the very beginning -
felt very flat and unimportant. The lack of character development kept me from being able to be completely engrossed in this book, made it feel like a tale I was being told and not a world I was actually IN and it was a detriment to what could have otherwise been a really great book.

[Victor · Rating 3 out of 5]

Exciting in its ideas and conception, this horror novel in small town Canada has ancient monsters, cannibalism, serial killing, and cults up its depressingly poorly written sleeve. Propulsive but definitely sexist (most horror boom period horror is, even from the female writers) and somewhat racist, I freely admit I probably enjoyed this because of my enjoyment of the subject matter more than because the book is any good.

[S.wagenaar · Rating 3 out of 5]

I very much enjoyed this neat horror/mystery. A little padded, but overall a fast, fun read. I have a couple more horror novels by Largent and I’ll definitely be reading them in the near future. His writing is smooth and easy going, written in the first person POV in this case. Not particularly gory, no sex and nothing really twisted. If you’re ok with that, it’s worth reading; recommend.

[Fred Rayworth · Rating 3 out of 5]

I originally read this twenty years ago and though I was already a huge fan of Mr. Largent, I had to scrounge to find this one in a used book store to complete my collection. At the time, I didn’t have Internet so I couldn’t do the review until now (2015).

Ancients could’ve been one of my favorite icky bug stories. Unfortunately, the author liked to switch points of view and this one was in first-person. At the time, there were just certain stories that bugged me but I couldn’t quite figure out why. It wasn’t until I gained more experience as a writer and editor that I figured out what it was that bugged me about certain stories and with certain writing styles.

Point of view is very important to me and this one was almost ruined by the first-person, myopic viewpoint. Not only that, but the constant I, me, we adverbs were annoying. The action was hindered because it was so limited to just that one character. However, the story itself was pretty cool, creepy and solid icky bug. It could’ve been so much better if he’d done it in third-person. Oh well, can’t have everything.

I did my best to enjoy it and remember being disappointed because something just wasn’t quite as good about it as his other icky bug novels. Now I know what it was.

This could’ve been a real winner for me. I wish I could tell him myself, but he’s unfortunately not around anymore. He was one of the greats that never got his due. I miss him. Still, if you have no issues with first-person, this is great icky bug so I’d highly recommend it. For me, the story was five stars, but the writing was kind of meh.

[David · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was an overall entertaining if not great novel. As I'm reading Largent's books, they are all a bit dated in that they feel old despite the fact that they are set withing a year or two of their publishing.

This book started off slower than his other books, but started to pick up about one-third of the way into it. The ending was very quickly wrapped up with just a short epilogue. About the half-way point you can pretty much figure out how the book will end. So, even the big surprise at the end wasn't really much of a surprise.

This book departed from the world of scientific possibility into complete science-fiction, unexpectedly so. I expected a grounded ending, but like the novel "Pagoda", it went completely into Science-fiction.

The interesting thing about this book is there doesn't appear to be much continuity with other books that use the EG Wages character. In the prior book, Wages had to swim with sharks and lost his survival kit with his Mauser when the boat sank. In this book, he notes his fear of sharks never mentioning his prior mission and has his survival kit with him. Ironically, Wages says he should just sit by a lake and write a novel rather than "living" the events of the book. This is how the novel "The Lake" begins.

[Shepherd · Rating 4 out of 5]

Liked it. Interesting stuff. Not a complete cliche monster book. I wish there were sequels. If you liked this, I recommend "Little Brothers" by Rick Hautala.

[Ryan Mcgunnigle · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5

[Michael Hogan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nothing groundbreaking or stellar, but it’s a fun read. If you’re into crypto -creature type stories you’ll enjoy it.

[Adam Clark · Rating 3 out of 5]

An entirely enjoyable ride, a quick read, nothing more, nothing less.

[puddlescript · Rating 1 out of 5]

Bought this at a garage sale and thought it looked interesting.

It wasn't. But I read it anyway and got my 25 cents worth.