Haunted Forest Tour

by James A. Moore and Jeff Strand

• ISBN10: 0979505429
• ISBN13: 9780979505423
• Publish Date: 1 November 2007
• Publish Status: Active
• Imprint: Earthling
• Format: Hardcover
• Pages: 285
• Language: English

Reviews

[HekArtemis]

I am not sure how to rate this one. On the one hand it is gory, creepy, monster goodness with a touch of humour. On the other hand most of the men are perverted sexist pigs and I couldn't stand reading their constant objectification of every woman they saw. It got better towards the end, given they were more focused on survival by that point but even at the end it was still present. One character in particular was really bad, fantasising about his co-worker and then reminding himself about his wife, constantly. I mean constantly. It was really bad in his case. One of the other male characters got angry enough at one point that I was sure he was seconds away from physically attacking a 50year old woman. He only didn't because other characters got in his way.

So as a campy horror story it's fantastic. But... Ugh. I really don't know how to rate this.

[cornerfolds]

DNF @ 40%

I started reading The Haunted Forest Tour as part of Fraterfest this year, but ended up not completing it, so it carried over after the read-a-thon. Unfortunately taking extra time to battle through it didn't help very much.

This book is about a forest and really that's about all. It definitely isn't about the characters. I made it 40% in and I honestly couldn't tell you the name of a single one of them. The action begins on the first page and the initial sequence is fascinating! I truly wish we'd gotten to stay in the creation of the forest much longer. Instead, the book jumps to the tour and from there it feels a bit Jurassic Park, but without the tension.

In Jurassic Park, we knew the characters and came to care about what happened to them. When the cars die in the forest of The Haunted Forest Tour and monsters come out of the woodwork, it's very difficult to feel any kind of way about the characters who die. I'm not sure what happens later in the book, but at the point where I gave up, there had been a lot of running and monster kills and very little emotion.

I'm sure there was a great idea here and it's possible that it was better after the 40% mark, but I just couldn't care any less about the characters or what happened to them. A book can have tons of action, but without any attachment to the characters, it's a whole lot of nothing.