Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #618927 in Books
• Published on: 1985-07-01
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Mass Market Paperback
• 554 pages

Customer Reviews

Artful Horror
For horror fans blessed with a bit of patience, Klein's artfully executed and lengthy novel makes for a rewarding read. I particularly appreciated the way he wove together strands of esoteric lore and multiple literary allusions. The book features a unique and ingenious premise, in which an ancient evil housed in an innocuous old man tricks and cajoles unsuspecting people into performing the necessary rituals for releasing a catastrophic horror.

Although Klein draws his characters well, and takes his time doing it, I unfortunately found them less than compelling. The one exception, Sarr Poroth's mother, simply wasn't around enough. And she certainly didn't play the crucial role at the end which I had hoped she would. The portrait of the Amish-like "Brethren" also stretched believability a bit thin at times. Sorry to say, the ending too fell rather flat.

That said, for me this book stands well above most efforts in the genre. It attains the rare modern status of true horror "literature."

Atmospheric Weirdness
Picked this up from "Horror: The 100 Best Books" by Stephen Jones. It's a rather long, languid, and atmospheric rural Christian gothic novel. This book sure does seem to have its fans, but I found it to be more sleep inducing than thrilling. Dense and elaborate prose weighed this book down, and much great detail of the Amish-like country folk and their beliefs. Draws heavily on Arthur Machen's short story the "White People".

"Flawed" may be the word, but "good" is definitely the case
I've owned a copy of this book for years now, and upon recently finishing the four stories of Klein's other book Dark Gods, I was frothing at the mouth to delve into one of (in fact, his only) longer works. Ultimately, I liked it, but there were just a few too many little things which could (or should) have been different.

Without giving anything away, I'll just say that I found way too much focus on the antagonist(s) and their side of things, to the point that we, the readers, know more about what's REALLY going on than the protagonists. And it stays like this through the end of the book - although there is certainly a climax, the epilogue is a single page which serves more as a vague coda rather than a resolution.

There were also more than a few scenes which really didn't serve much purpose, in the end - these were mostly long stretches of dialougue between the (VERY) religious townspeople of the novel's main setting, Gilead, New Jersey. While I did understand that it was key to show how religious the people were, I felt it was a bit of a stretch to show them contemplating every little thing that went on in their town (and long before the horrors began). It made for a few stretches of boredom in the suspense.

However, you DO remember that I gave this book four out of five stars, right? That's because this book was so GOOD, it fairly throttles the not-so-good parts. There is a very classy build-up of suspense, going from very vague, very slow to much more blatant and fast-paced in the last third or so. The characters were well-illustrated, for the most part (I would have wished to have seen more of Carol towards the end of the book), and the descriptions were colorful and yet not overabundant. There were also many a reference to various classics of gothic/horror literature throughout
(Lovecraft, Dunsany, Walpole, and above all, Arthur Machen's "The White People," for key reasons), which was also a delight.

All in all, this is a slightly flawed but overall impressive novel from a very reclusive author who I really wish would write more often - Klein tells a good story, and THE CEREMONIES is no exception to this.