Review: An accomplishment of atrocity, angels and abandonment!
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 03 26, 2014
If the individual tales in The Macabre Collection were episodes of a TV show, then The Scream of Angels would be a big-budget feature film version. David Haynes’s talent for Victorian horror fiction reaches new peaks (or perhaps depths) with this novel. He tells a grander story without losing any of his attention to monstrous detail.The great triumph of this book is how well the atmosphere of turn of the century Paris is evoked, in all its splendour and barbarism. It really doesn’t feel as if it was written in the 21st Century, which is an achievement. The characters all retain the formality of those times, especially in their speech, which does sometimes make it feel a little stilted like a Shakespearian play. But there’s no denying that they feel believable as they confront demons both within and without. This is a story that does not shy away from showing the worst of humanity.This is definitely recommended as a genuine spine-chiller, head-scratcher and stomach-turner of a book!