What do you think?
Rate this book
The Children's Hour
Returning from Baltimore with his wife and children, a successful writer is haunted by an accident that should have claimed his life, and a girl who has been missing for thirteen years mysteriously returns.
293 pages, ebook
First published October 1, 1995
203 people are currently reading
993 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 77 reviews
September 9, 2016
A dark and atmospheric novel of small town life and the evil that lives directly beneath the surface. It may have dragged a wee here and there, but it didn’t spin me out of the story and the slower interludes didn’t last long. Not that this is a fast novel to begin with…because it isn’t. It isn’t supposed to be. Mr. Clegg takes his time getting you familiar with the characters and the colorful backstory of Colony, West Virginia. And then all hell breaks loose...
Welcome home, Joe. We’ve been waiting. …All of us.
Welcome home, Joe. We’ve been waiting. …All of us.
June 21, 2024
Eerie, and creepy. Clegg is awesome when he is on. This fantastic little novel has some weird kinky stuff going on, and at times it is absolutely nightmarish. Same vibes going on along the lines of ‘Salem’s Lot. Read this one at night when everyone is asleep. Goose flesh guaranteed!!
April 12, 2011
I've looked for this book for years and I'm happy to say it was well worth the wait. Reminded me how much I love Clegg's horror. It's so exceptionally well written, reminds me of Braunbeck...great take on what could have been a trite vampire story, characters you really care about and surprisingly romantic for a that bloody of a book. I love that about Clegg's work, the depth, the heart. I highly recommend this book.
June 3, 2014
I love horror stories set in those bucolic little off-the-beaten-path country towns where anyone and, in some cases, everyone has dark secrets and no one is safe.
Clegg does an outstanding job weaving a bleak and chilling tale about the town of Colony, West Virginia, where an unspeakable evil is being perpetrated on innocent children.
When Joe Gardner, formerly a resident of Colony, receives a call informing him his mother is about to die, he must overcome seemingly insurmountable bitterness and paranoia regarding his hometown and the lingering terror he feels concerning the horrific act he committed there many years ago.
This was my first time reading Douglas Clegg and I am thoroughly enjoyed it. I was happy to discover he is a prolific writer and lots of his titles look very interesting.
I love when that happens.
Clegg does an outstanding job weaving a bleak and chilling tale about the town of Colony, West Virginia, where an unspeakable evil is being perpetrated on innocent children.
When Joe Gardner, formerly a resident of Colony, receives a call informing him his mother is about to die, he must overcome seemingly insurmountable bitterness and paranoia regarding his hometown and the lingering terror he feels concerning the horrific act he committed there many years ago.
This was my first time reading Douglas Clegg and I am thoroughly enjoyed it. I was happy to discover he is a prolific writer and lots of his titles look very interesting.
I love when that happens.
May 20, 2020
Douglas Clegg is a master of prose and a fabulous writer, and The Children's Hour is no exception.
There is much here to enjoy, and those who prefer horror novels over horror short stories (I don't) will likely rate it higher than I have.
Ultimately I found the explanation of the horrors occurring within the town of Colony, WV, to be unnecessarily detailed; mystery brings a certain allure all its own. Here, more time is spent exploring the legend behind the horror than actually being horrified, and that's a shame.
Tension is a bit lacking throughout, which I blame on the many intrusive digressions into different character backstories. There was much sidebar information to slog through that could've perhaps been incorporated into the main narrative in a more organic way.
All in all, it's a perfectly fine book - though mastery of prose significantly exceeds the mastery of story structure on display.
Solid 3 Stars.
There is much here to enjoy, and those who prefer horror novels over horror short stories (I don't) will likely rate it higher than I have.
Ultimately I found the explanation of the horrors occurring within the town of Colony, WV, to be unnecessarily detailed; mystery brings a certain allure all its own. Here, more time is spent exploring the legend behind the horror than actually being horrified, and that's a shame.
Tension is a bit lacking throughout, which I blame on the many intrusive digressions into different character backstories. There was much sidebar information to slog through that could've perhaps been incorporated into the main narrative in a more organic way.
All in all, it's a perfectly fine book - though mastery of prose significantly exceeds the mastery of story structure on display.
Solid 3 Stars.
March 13, 2012
If you were a fan of Stephen King's "'Salem's Lot," you'll find a lot to like in "The Children's Hour." Vampires! An ancient evil! Love lost! Troubled heroes who fight the demons of their past!
All this and more, as they say.
Clegg's protagonists are Joe and Hop, childhood friends who have lost touch since Joe left town after high school. He looks back at his formative years in Colony with something akin to hatred. Joe's mother is dying, though, so he packs up his wife, his children and his marital issues and heads back to his hometown. Joe's return sets the wheels in motion for the re-emergence of an ancient evil the men thought they'd seen the last of.
Why do children keep disappearing in Colony? How could a 12-year-old girl reappear at her parents' home, when she ought to be in her 30s, if alive at all? What has been living in the well hidden inside Old Man Feeley's barn all these years? What does it all have to do with Joe?
Clegg's novel jumps back and forth in time, which makes it difficult to summarize. As he works his way through the above material, he revisits Joe's and Hop's childhood, from the first time they came up against Abaddon, the demon in the well, and through subsequent encounters with it. I understand why he structured it that way — a straightforward, chronological retelling would reveal too much, too soon — but it makes the narrative occasionally difficult to follow.
Like "'Salem's Lot" — and like many King books — Clegg periodically cuts to the viewpoints of minor characters. We meet a college student dogged by his cruel past, a sheriff caught between his distant wife and his pregnant mistress, a teenager whose parents have disappeared; they all eventually fall to Abaddon. The scenes where the demon and/or his minions overtake those victims are the highlights of the book:
The child reached out his hand, its shackles pulling at the stone. As its skin met Byron's, he felt as if something within him was fighting to be born, fighting to burst through his skin, trying to burst his bones and flesh and blood, outward in a spray of red.
He heard the sound of wet splitting, and where the child touched him, a bone broke through the surface of his flesh.
The child's mouth went eagerly to the bone and Byron, shivering and feeling cold, watched while he sucked at the bone of his forearm as if it were sugar cane.
Vampiric children! What a creepy idea. And, yes, they're the biggest similarity to "'Salem's Lot."
"The Children's Hour" is an entertaining horror story, though it suffers from the genre's periodic flaws in logic. But if this is your kind of story, you're likely ready to look past that.
All this and more, as they say.
Clegg's protagonists are Joe and Hop, childhood friends who have lost touch since Joe left town after high school. He looks back at his formative years in Colony with something akin to hatred. Joe's mother is dying, though, so he packs up his wife, his children and his marital issues and heads back to his hometown. Joe's return sets the wheels in motion for the re-emergence of an ancient evil the men thought they'd seen the last of.
Why do children keep disappearing in Colony? How could a 12-year-old girl reappear at her parents' home, when she ought to be in her 30s, if alive at all? What has been living in the well hidden inside Old Man Feeley's barn all these years? What does it all have to do with Joe?
Clegg's novel jumps back and forth in time, which makes it difficult to summarize. As he works his way through the above material, he revisits Joe's and Hop's childhood, from the first time they came up against Abaddon, the demon in the well, and through subsequent encounters with it. I understand why he structured it that way — a straightforward, chronological retelling would reveal too much, too soon — but it makes the narrative occasionally difficult to follow.
Like "'Salem's Lot" — and like many King books — Clegg periodically cuts to the viewpoints of minor characters. We meet a college student dogged by his cruel past, a sheriff caught between his distant wife and his pregnant mistress, a teenager whose parents have disappeared; they all eventually fall to Abaddon. The scenes where the demon and/or his minions overtake those victims are the highlights of the book:
The child reached out his hand, its shackles pulling at the stone. As its skin met Byron's, he felt as if something within him was fighting to be born, fighting to burst through his skin, trying to burst his bones and flesh and blood, outward in a spray of red.
He heard the sound of wet splitting, and where the child touched him, a bone broke through the surface of his flesh.
The child's mouth went eagerly to the bone and Byron, shivering and feeling cold, watched while he sucked at the bone of his forearm as if it were sugar cane.
Vampiric children! What a creepy idea. And, yes, they're the biggest similarity to "'Salem's Lot."
"The Children's Hour" is an entertaining horror story, though it suffers from the genre's periodic flaws in logic. But if this is your kind of story, you're likely ready to look past that.
October 28, 2015
A superior horror novel that truly elevates the genre. Clegg writes a chilling story while at the same time exploring important issues about families, life, love, and death.
December 21, 2013
No. Just No. This is the second book of his that I've tried to read and, while it's a tad bit better, that ain't saying much. I'm not going to try any more.
Most of this book is just plain boring. I could tell that there is some structure under all of this that could've made this a decent book (maybe not ubber original) but it was totally drowned out by everything else.
The story is that kids (and adults, but it's mainly kids) have been dying in mysterious ways. Now they're coming back and Jon is back to his hometown for the first time in a long time.
That sounds very interesting, doesn't it? Instead, what we get in piles and miles and mountains of info dumps. The author doesn't even try to make it interesting. This is unfortunate because all everyone does is whine and mop around. Pretty much the only interesting is Jon's but that's limited and what strength that brings is further cut by everyone else.
This book has like fifty different POVs, it would seem. I don't give a shit about all these characters. We get some interesting flashback with the kids and then we're pulled into some boring persons info dump of the past.
The info dumps/ random characters are a bit like a Jerry Springer show, save Springer's show actually has some kind of action. This doesn't. It's like a bad soap opera.
Like, for example, take the Sheriff. He has a mistress who's gotten pregnant, right? She tells him and says she loves him. He plans to kill her (saying he'll get away with it cause he's the Sheriff.) He goes to see her at the bar and nothing. He breaks into her car and sees the woman screwing another man and he does nothing. Then, miraculously, he decides he loves her and she does a 180 on him. Suddenly, she's sleeping around on him and she's going to get an abortion.
It's freakin' bizarre.
Then there's his choice of words. It's not horrible in the sense that he raped a Thesaurus but the choices are so... awkward. It's like he took his Thesaurus out for a date and they ended up at a BK where he buys it a value meal and a slice of their 'pie'. Then he expects that Thesaurus to 'put out' for him and it just throws horrible word choices at him because it feels rather used and cheap about the whole thing.
For example, one of the billions of characters is caught in a bad situation that is some kind of black mail ploy because he apparently raped a college girl. He stands there and thinks: "All this because I mated and she squealed?" Mated and Squealed? WTF? Who the fuck says 'Mated' outside a Paranormal Romance?
Bleh.
Most of this book is just plain boring. I could tell that there is some structure under all of this that could've made this a decent book (maybe not ubber original) but it was totally drowned out by everything else.
The story is that kids (and adults, but it's mainly kids) have been dying in mysterious ways. Now they're coming back and Jon is back to his hometown for the first time in a long time.
That sounds very interesting, doesn't it? Instead, what we get in piles and miles and mountains of info dumps. The author doesn't even try to make it interesting. This is unfortunate because all everyone does is whine and mop around. Pretty much the only interesting is Jon's but that's limited and what strength that brings is further cut by everyone else.
This book has like fifty different POVs, it would seem. I don't give a shit about all these characters. We get some interesting flashback with the kids and then we're pulled into some boring persons info dump of the past.
The info dumps/ random characters are a bit like a Jerry Springer show, save Springer's show actually has some kind of action. This doesn't. It's like a bad soap opera.
Like, for example, take the Sheriff. He has a mistress who's gotten pregnant, right? She tells him and says she loves him. He plans to kill her (saying he'll get away with it cause he's the Sheriff.) He goes to see her at the bar and nothing. He breaks into her car and sees the woman screwing another man and he does nothing. Then, miraculously, he decides he loves her and she does a 180 on him. Suddenly, she's sleeping around on him and she's going to get an abortion.
It's freakin' bizarre.
Then there's his choice of words. It's not horrible in the sense that he raped a Thesaurus but the choices are so... awkward. It's like he took his Thesaurus out for a date and they ended up at a BK where he buys it a value meal and a slice of their 'pie'. Then he expects that Thesaurus to 'put out' for him and it just throws horrible word choices at him because it feels rather used and cheap about the whole thing.
For example, one of the billions of characters is caught in a bad situation that is some kind of black mail ploy because he apparently raped a college girl. He stands there and thinks: "All this because I mated and she squealed?" Mated and Squealed? WTF? Who the fuck says 'Mated' outside a Paranormal Romance?
Bleh.
February 15, 2017
Once upon a time Douglas Clegg finished the last pages of King's Salem's Lot and thought to himself "I wish I would have come up with that!".
And as time went by this wish turned into "What the heck! I'll just write the same story again myself!".
To be fair I don't know if the author wrote his book as an homage to Salem's Lot or has stated in some interview how his plot was heavily, heavily influenced by King's book, but the many parallels and similarities cannot be dismissed.
Nevertheless, I really enjoyed the first part of the book. It was written well enough and had a sufficient sense of foreboding as well as "creepy-evil-is-lurking-in-every-corner" kind of scenes.
I liked the anachronic narrative that revealed parts of the puzzle only one at a time and was eager to carry on reading to know more about what's going on in the picturesque litte town of Colony.
But then the whole plot took kind of a detour: I felt lost in too many stories of the town's inhabitants that did not really drive the story forward. Worst of all: even though I had read through all those different character's life stories, I still didn't care very much when the plot got back on track and the grand finale hit the town -
And as time went by this wish turned into "What the heck! I'll just write the same story again myself!".
To be fair I don't know if the author wrote his book as an homage to Salem's Lot or has stated in some interview how his plot was heavily, heavily influenced by King's book, but the many parallels and similarities cannot be dismissed.
Nevertheless, I really enjoyed the first part of the book. It was written well enough and had a sufficient sense of foreboding as well as "creepy-evil-is-lurking-in-every-corner" kind of scenes.
I liked the anachronic narrative that revealed parts of the puzzle only one at a time and was eager to carry on reading to know more about what's going on in the picturesque litte town of Colony.
But then the whole plot took kind of a detour: I felt lost in too many stories of the town's inhabitants that did not really drive the story forward. Worst of all: even though I had read through all those different character's life stories, I still didn't care very much when the plot got back on track and the grand finale hit the town -
October 27, 2022
This started off strongly, but honestly it kind of lost me about halfway through. It came back decently for the finish though.
March 3, 2022
Can a Vampire book be better than 'Salem's Lot' by Stephen King? Hmmmmm? Welcome to the West Virginia town of Colony......happy nightmares!!
Check out my video review for this book here: https://youtu.be/2m0KbdolSoU
Enjoy!
Richard
Check out my video review for this book here: https://youtu.be/2m0KbdolSoU
Enjoy!
Richard
August 17, 2013
Joe Gardner is returning to his childhood town of Colony, West Virginia. He is there to visit his dying mother. Joe and his mother are not close at all. Joe had second thoughts about returning to see her. The town of Colony holds some bad memories for Joe and his friends. Joe will wish that he never returned to this hellhole of a place. Something evil has lied dormant waiting for Joe return. Joe has only one friend left in Colony and that is Homer. Joe and Homer talk about the strange things that happened when they were teenagers. Can Joe defeat this evil beast that has been waiting for him all these years?
December 7, 2016
I am one to finish books when I start them however, this one was difficult. I normally read a book or two in a week but this one took me almost 2 months to get through. Maybe it was just me .. I don't know?? I found it very poorly written and "boring".
August 31, 2016
We all face demons. We are all haunted by malevolent forces we cannot even begin to understand or control. But in the end, there is love, family, community...home. Home is not a building, nor is it a fixed place. It is where we are when we are with the people who know us better than we know ourselves, who have seen us at our worst far more often than our best, and yet...still find the strength and the courage to help us fight our demons and to forgive us again and again and again if we cannot overcome them.
Our childish innocence of old may lurk deep beneath the surface, but if we unlock the chains that bind us to cynicism and despair, we can return home and find a way to rebuild our shattered hearts, dreaming new dreams to replace those that are gone forever.
Our childish innocence of old may lurk deep beneath the surface, but if we unlock the chains that bind us to cynicism and despair, we can return home and find a way to rebuild our shattered hearts, dreaming new dreams to replace those that are gone forever.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
October 3, 2019
This isn’t horror, it’s horrible.
It’s hard not to compare this novel to Stephen King’s ‘Salem’s Lot’ and find jt inferior in nearly every way.
Only the language, the clear imagery and regional dialogue hold any worth in reading this novel.
Which is a shame, as it starts with so much promise, taking the time to set up a whole host of intriguing characters and storylines... only to discard it all in callously poor storytelling.
And then the ending arrives... and it’s worse than all that came before, taking the last shred of hope that there was anything to salvage from the experience and trashing it.
It’s hard not to compare this novel to Stephen King’s ‘Salem’s Lot’ and find jt inferior in nearly every way.
Only the language, the clear imagery and regional dialogue hold any worth in reading this novel.
Which is a shame, as it starts with so much promise, taking the time to set up a whole host of intriguing characters and storylines... only to discard it all in callously poor storytelling.
And then the ending arrives... and it’s worse than all that came before, taking the last shred of hope that there was anything to salvage from the experience and trashing it.
November 23, 2015
Super book by a terrific author!
When I first started reading this and saw that it was a vampire type book, I was prepared not to like it since I do not care for that type of horror story. But, since I have loved everything else that I have read by this excellent writer, I kept an open mind and continued reading. And, I am glad that I did. The plot was really a different take on this type of story. The storyline was well developed, and I really cared for the characters. Clegg is an excellent and very polished writer. I will be reading many more works by him.
When I first started reading this and saw that it was a vampire type book, I was prepared not to like it since I do not care for that type of horror story. But, since I have loved everything else that I have read by this excellent writer, I kept an open mind and continued reading. And, I am glad that I did. The plot was really a different take on this type of story. The storyline was well developed, and I really cared for the characters. Clegg is an excellent and very polished writer. I will be reading many more works by him.
Read
March 14, 2016The story was just okay for me because it took awhile to get into. A lot of jumping around, the detail skips around too much, and too much like Stephen King's "Salem's Lot".
January 24, 2016
Meh.
Great start, but fizzled out about halfway through. I had higher expectations for this story. The description made it out to be more than it was.
Great start, but fizzled out about halfway through. I had higher expectations for this story. The description made it out to be more than it was.
November 8, 2018
I read it because it was tis the season for Halloween. I found it weird but it did have some creepiness to it and gore as well. It just moved slow. Finally got moving about a quarter of the story to go.
May 12, 2020
Finally finished this one. I found it longgggggggg and boring, and the further into the book I read, the worse it got.
July 27, 2015
Quick and dirty review, here. I really enjoyed this, my first Clegg novel (although I do love the creepy little illustrated story Isis). I see a lot of comparisons to Salem's Lot in the reviews here, but beyond a surface similarity involving creepy kids (among others) terrorizing a small town, I didn't get that vibe. Also take note of the cheesy stock "creepy kid" cover on this edition. It's right out of the John Saul school of the 1970s, and doesn't do much to dispel those kinds of comparisons.
Although this novel was written in the 90s, Clegg's approach is all bleak 21st century horror, and far less sentimental than King's.* Though the characters are well-drawn, and the flashbacks to their youth key to the story, there's very little romanticizing of childhood, or small town life, or of anything really, in The Children's Hour. (Okay, there is a lost first love subplot, but even that is mostly a catalyst for some seriously disturbing sh*t.) It's pretty relentlessly grim, even nihilistic at times, and comes with a vastly higher body count than any King novel I can recall.
Also, the entities that haunt The Children's Hour? Are. Not. Vampires. They are more like horrible meat puppets, vampiric in some ways, yes, but definitely not your standard-issue bloodsuckers. This menace is a lot more unsettling, unearthly, demonic. (My comparison: in an upside-down and backwards way, this book recalls Lovecraft's "The Dunwich Horror," and freakish Wilbur Whateley hiding that nightmarish entity in his farmhouse.)
I don't want to telegraph much more of the plot -- suffice it to say I was actually unnerved by some of the imagery in The Children's Hour. One night I left my bedside lamp burning after reading. That's one of my highest compliments. It's a good thing he's prolific, because I'll be reading more Clegg.
* For the record, I love King and his elegiac, nostalgic, sentimental side. This just isn't that.
Although this novel was written in the 90s, Clegg's approach is all bleak 21st century horror, and far less sentimental than King's.* Though the characters are well-drawn, and the flashbacks to their youth key to the story, there's very little romanticizing of childhood, or small town life, or of anything really, in The Children's Hour. (Okay, there is a lost first love subplot, but even that is mostly a catalyst for some seriously disturbing sh*t.) It's pretty relentlessly grim, even nihilistic at times, and comes with a vastly higher body count than any King novel I can recall.
Also, the entities that haunt The Children's Hour? Are. Not. Vampires. They are more like horrible meat puppets, vampiric in some ways, yes, but definitely not your standard-issue bloodsuckers. This menace is a lot more unsettling, unearthly, demonic. (My comparison: in an upside-down and backwards way, this book recalls Lovecraft's "The Dunwich Horror," and freakish Wilbur Whateley hiding that nightmarish entity in his farmhouse.)
I don't want to telegraph much more of the plot -- suffice it to say I was actually unnerved by some of the imagery in The Children's Hour. One night I left my bedside lamp burning after reading. That's one of my highest compliments. It's a good thing he's prolific, because I'll be reading more Clegg.
* For the record, I love King and his elegiac, nostalgic, sentimental side. This just isn't that.
April 15, 2020
This novel was the first book published after Dell ended the Abyss imprint, but still had contracts for horror novels from that line. (This book doesn't have the Abyss logo on the spine, nor in the inside cover, but the flyleaf still has the Abyss blurb.) By now, the horror boom was ending, Abyss wasn't the gangbusters imprint the publishers had hoped for, and it was time to come to terms with that. The Children's Hour is an appropriate title to represent all that, because, frankly, it's not that good.
The story is a blend of Stephen King novels. It's set in a small town, and the main villains appear to be vampires ('Salem's Lot), the main character is a writer, dealing with his own demons and at one point becomes a threat to his family (The Shining), and the main baddie is some demon from another world or dimension that thrives on children's beliefs, and everyone fighting it calls it It (It). It's a bunch of derivative ideas, written in such a way that makes it anything but engaging, while still trying to ape King's folksy charm. It's a convoluted mess.
I added these books on to my Abyss reading project, for obvious reasons, and I expect them to be the same kind of mixed bag those books were, but I expected more from this book, since Clegg is still considered a wunderkind within the genre. I'm hoping Neverland, another book of his that came highly recommended to me, will be better than this.
The story is a blend of Stephen King novels. It's set in a small town, and the main villains appear to be vampires ('Salem's Lot), the main character is a writer, dealing with his own demons and at one point becomes a threat to his family (The Shining), and the main baddie is some demon from another world or dimension that thrives on children's beliefs, and everyone fighting it calls it It (It). It's a bunch of derivative ideas, written in such a way that makes it anything but engaging, while still trying to ape King's folksy charm. It's a convoluted mess.
I added these books on to my Abyss reading project, for obvious reasons, and I expect them to be the same kind of mixed bag those books were, but I expected more from this book, since Clegg is still considered a wunderkind within the genre. I'm hoping Neverland, another book of his that came highly recommended to me, will be better than this.
November 20, 2010
I have mixed feelings about this book. It started off well with a nice, tense, and foreboding introduction. It then set about introducing its main characters while switching back and forth between different periods to reveal pieces of the puzzle in a nice non-linear fashion. The author develops his characters well, but for a horror book, he took too much time to kick things into gear. While there had been hints of the sinister or strange from the beginning, the book didn't shift too far away from a simple portrait of a writer and his small town roots until nearly two-thirds of the way into the story. Once the action starts, there is some genuinely creepy and disturbing imagery, and the author delivers some palpable tension. However, the promise of the finale that has been building up then completely unravels as the author fizzles the rushed climax with an underwhelming confrontation surrounded with bad exposition and steeped in cliche (that was bad even in the hands of someone like Stephen King).
I don't wish to spoil the book for those interested in reading it, so I won't name the specific works that I have in mind (and they should be obvious once you finish reading the book), but I found it disappointing that in the end this book borrows far too heavily from a few Stephen King novels.
I don't wish to spoil the book for those interested in reading it, so I won't name the specific works that I have in mind (and they should be obvious once you finish reading the book), but I found it disappointing that in the end this book borrows far too heavily from a few Stephen King novels.
November 26, 2012
Clegg gets good reviews from Kindle readers and the books aren't very costly, so I decided to try one. I got about halfway through and just couldn't force myself to continue. I generally like Stephen King but this is precisely like a knockoff of King but done long after these books have ceased to be interesting (hello, Salem's Lot, you old friend). Is it really a compliment to say this novel is "just like Salem's Lot" when that novel was written in 1975 and was only King's second book? Hasn't that been done to death in the last 37 years? As one reader says, it takes far too long for the real mystery to get underway and the constant moving back and forth between the present and flashbacks is debilitating. Too many writers depend on this structure these days. Finally, halfway through the book I was having to keep track of about a gazzilion different characters, their kids, their married names, their ex-spouses, etc. I was so uninterested in the story that I just could not continue. I didn't want to spend more time with these people.
October 15, 2012
I think I'm done with horror novels for a while now. This was awful in the sense of mindnumbingly boring. I thought I'd like it because I quite enjoyed "Neverland" by the same author, but this book lacked both the childlike enchantment and wit of the former. It just dragged, from beginning to end.
Author Joe returns to his hometown of Colony, West Virginia, with his wife and two children because he has been told his mother is dying. She's not, she just wants to see him. Joe has major misgivings because he experienced some rather horrible things in Colony - amongst other, the death of his fiancé Melissa. There is some horrid creature living in the mines underneath the town, something vampiric but not quite. Joe knows, he has heard it.
Maybe this wasn't a bad book. Maybe I'm just tired of monsters and paranormal horrors. It's possible, I'll grant you that. I still didn't like it and I won't be recommending it to anyone.
Author Joe returns to his hometown of Colony, West Virginia, with his wife and two children because he has been told his mother is dying. She's not, she just wants to see him. Joe has major misgivings because he experienced some rather horrible things in Colony - amongst other, the death of his fiancé Melissa. There is some horrid creature living in the mines underneath the town, something vampiric but not quite. Joe knows, he has heard it.
Maybe this wasn't a bad book. Maybe I'm just tired of monsters and paranormal horrors. It's possible, I'll grant you that. I still didn't like it and I won't be recommending it to anyone.
April 4, 2013
The Children's Hour by Douglas Clegg is one of the more interesting takes on the vampiric novel. Although, I guess I would not call the monster(s) in this a vampire.
The protagonist of this novel is Joe Gardner. This is a great literary character. Just because he is the good guy doesn't mean he is no flawed. Joe is in denial about having a drinking problem that his wife clearly sees. In the past, while drunk he cheats on his wife because she reminds him of his fiance that died in a horrible accident. This is what makes him so believable as a character. I also think that learning the origin of his flaws is one of the reasons that The Children's Hour kept my undivided attention.
Read more at uncappedpen.weebly.com
The protagonist of this novel is Joe Gardner. This is a great literary character. Just because he is the good guy doesn't mean he is no flawed. Joe is in denial about having a drinking problem that his wife clearly sees. In the past, while drunk he cheats on his wife because she reminds him of his fiance that died in a horrible accident. This is what makes him so believable as a character. I also think that learning the origin of his flaws is one of the reasons that The Children's Hour kept my undivided attention.
Read more at uncappedpen.weebly.com
February 24, 2015
In the children's hour nothing is at it seams
The children's hour is about a town a a group of people in that town who at different times experience great horror, much of which they can not explain. It is about the small town of colony that nobody ever leaves, except for Joe Gardner who had seen and heard to much of the evil in that town. Many years latter as a grown man with a family of his own he returns to his childhood home only to discover that he had barely witnessed any of the evil Colony had in store for him.
This story had surprises that I could not figure out in advance and so many terrifying twists. Douglas Clegg left me in shock more then once with this book; nobody does horror better.
The children's hour is about a town a a group of people in that town who at different times experience great horror, much of which they can not explain. It is about the small town of colony that nobody ever leaves, except for Joe Gardner who had seen and heard to much of the evil in that town. Many years latter as a grown man with a family of his own he returns to his childhood home only to discover that he had barely witnessed any of the evil Colony had in store for him.
This story had surprises that I could not figure out in advance and so many terrifying twists. Douglas Clegg left me in shock more then once with this book; nobody does horror better.
May 18, 2018
It was ok.
Still not sure I understand the concept of this book. Not sure if the main character Joe was supposed to be a hero of some sort.
SPOILER ALERT: At times I wanted Joe to do something and he would just lay down to It(devil/angel) waiting and wanting to die...really???? And b/c he did just that, he gets his family back....Again really??? They leave town after Tad said they shouldn't thru his father. In the next town everything is normal so they go to sleep instead of getting help. The end. That's it. So why should they have not left town? Why go to sleep instead of getting help? What happened to Virgil? The rest of the children? There were no answers to these and other questions.
Still not sure I understand the concept of this book. Not sure if the main character Joe was supposed to be a hero of some sort.
SPOILER ALERT: At times I wanted Joe to do something and he would just lay down to It(devil/angel) waiting and wanting to die...really???? And b/c he did just that, he gets his family back....Again really??? They leave town after Tad said they shouldn't thru his father. In the next town everything is normal so they go to sleep instead of getting help. The end. That's it. So why should they have not left town? Why go to sleep instead of getting help? What happened to Virgil? The rest of the children? There were no answers to these and other questions.
August 31, 2015
I don't comment on most books. I am about half way through and I am confused. So far it is boring nothing there's no excitement. I though this was a horror story but it's more of a confused love story of past live events of the main character. I don't think I will finish reading this book. Cuz it did not captive me and interest me for the beginning. I would not waste my time reading this book. You will be very disappointed. Also I will not rate this book cuz how can I rate something that wasted my time so this book gets no stars
June 5, 2016
The story was okay (slow at times), the writing was okay (kind of wordy at times and there were a couple of inconsistencies). Everything fell into place a little too neatly for my taste - kind of throughout the whole book. I read a shorter piece by this author that I enjoyed, so thought I would try this - I liked his short piece a lot more.
I agree with another reviewer who said this is like 'Salem's Lot - unfortunately, Mr. Clegg is not Mr. King.
I agree with another reviewer who said this is like 'Salem's Lot - unfortunately, Mr. Clegg is not Mr. King.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 77 reviews