Fantasy Fiction, Settings & Atmosphere - Fiction, Horror

Neverland

Name: Neverland
Author: Douglas Clegg
ISBN: 9781593155414

by Douglas Clegg

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Overview

About the Author

Douglas Clegg is the Bram Stoker and International Horror Guild Award winning author of more than a dozen novels, including the Internet's first publisher-sponsored e-serial novel, Naomi. Under a pseudonym, Clegg wrote the bestseller Bad Karma, which will be out in 2001 as a movie starring the British actress, Patsy Kensit. His ebook, Purity, has reached over 100,000 readers on the Internet. His current print fiction includes You Come When I Call You, Mischief, and The Infinite.

Synopsis

Beau Jackson and his cousin Sumter were only six when they first met. But even then, Beau recognized his cousin's obsession with evil. Every summer, Beau and Sumter vacation with their families on the dreary bluffs of Gull Island, and every year Beau watches as his cousin grows increasingly more powerful. But nothing prepares him for the terror that emerges when Sumter introduces him to Neverland, the place where grownups are forbidden and Sumter reigns supreme. In Neverland, the boys and their sisters escape their parents' authority, only to discover a nightmarish world of garish rituals, evil games, and ultimate bloodshed.

Publishers Weekly

Douglas Clegg fans will welcome the reissue of his coming-of-age novel, Neverland (1991), set in rural Georgia. In his introduction, Bentley Little explains why this Southern gothic is his "favorite horror novel of the 1990s." Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

About the Author, Douglas Clegg

Douglas Clegg is the New York Times bestselling author of Isis, The Priest of Blood, Afterlife, and The Hour Before Dark, among other novels. His short story collection, The Machinery of Night, won a Shocker Award, and his first collection, The Nightmare Chronicles, won both the Bram Stoker Award and the International Horror Guild Award.

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Editorials

Library Journal

Clegg's name is less known in libraries than it is among an eclectic group of horror and dark fantasy readers for whom his "Vampyricon" series and, most recently, the novel Isis, are already classics. Clegg began his career with Goat Dance (1989); since then, along with pioneering epublishing ventures, he finds his way to readers through an array of niche publishing houses. This early work, originally published by Pocket Books in 1991 but long out of print, is a coming-of-age horror tale set on mysterious Gull Island, where four children try to survive the terrors the island serves up. VERDICT Fans' desire for this title has given it collectible status, fetching three-digit prices for mint-condition copies. Although there is an awkwardness in the plotting and storytelling that Clegg has long since grown out of, the book does well as an introduction to the author for new readers, particularly YAs. Libraries with a growing number of horror and fantasy readers may find that this new, partially illustrated edition will give patrons yet another author to add to their list of favorites.—Nancy McNicol, Hamden P.L., CT

Publishers Weekly

An adolescent's cruel mischief proves a pathway to a dimension of otherworldly terrors in this creepy supernatural thriller, first published as a mass-market paperback in 1991. One summer on Gull Island off the coast of Georgia, Sumter Monroe indoctrinates his cousin Beau Jackson into the marvels of “Neverland,” Sumter's name for a tumble-down shack on their mutual maternal grandmother's property that's a shrine to a god he names “Lucy.” In Neverland, reality and illusion blur eerily, and the spirit of fun takes a malevolent turn as Sumter begin offering “sacrifices” of an increasingly disturbing nature to placate Lucy and sustain his special relationship with her. Clegg (The Vampyricon) crafts a haunting story redolent with the influence of Arthur Machen, H.P. Lovecraft, and other classic horror writers. His credible rendering of the internal lives of children and their imaginations give this flight of dark fancy a firm and frightening foothold in reality. (Apr.)