Title: Haunted
Author: James Herbert
Type: Fiction
Page Count/Review Word Count: 230
Rating: 3/5
Haunted is the first of Herbert’s David Ash books, and the reason that I picked it up was that I already had books two and three. I tracked this one down and picked it up so that I could move on to them.
I was a little disappointed by this one, mostly because it just didn’t feel like a fully-fledged story. To be fair, I suppose it’s a novella as opposed to a full novel, but there just wasn’t enough here for me to feel absorbed by and interested in the story. It’s actually a bit of a weird setup, and the only thing I can compare it to is the way that The Gunslinger opens Stephen King’s Dark Tower series, except that was a lot better.
Don’t get me wrong though, it’s an okay little ghost story. It’s just that when you compare it to something like The Secret of Crickley Hall, which is also by Herbert, it just doesn’t stand up. It feels like a third of a novel, rather than a standalone novella.
Still, it was worth picking up, if only because it was kind of required to then progress with the series. And even Herbert’s worst books are still pretty good and worth reading. So yeah, there’s that.
