Review: Nothing New Here
Rating: 2 out of 5
Date: 11 16, 2013
While I think Anthony Price shows some promise, The House of Wood was a below-average horror novel. Price threw too many tropes into the mix, so that certain parts of the novel sounded like amateurish rehashes of Chucky and Hitchcock's The Birds. This led to an incoherent plot, in which the characters' motivations seemed to change almost every chapter. The primary characters, Rachel and Nathan, were two-dimensional and, at times, acted in utterly unbelievable ways. The numerous typographical errors were also distracting, as was the constant use of British terms (tyres, tarmac, etc.) in a book which is set in the United States. There were also some disturbing inconsistencies; for example, Dr. David Cochrane alternates between being a psychiatrist and a clinical psychologist, careers which require different professional degrees. And why was every car black?On the positive side, I liked the framework Price used to slowly disclose to the reader Rachel's experience from three years earlier: a dinner conversation with Dr. Cochrane in which events in the present, narrated in the third person, alternated with Rachel's story, told in the first person. I also liked the unexpected resolution in the epilogue.In sum, I would not recommend this book to other horror aficionados, but I would be willing to read Price's sophomore novel to see if his writing matures and if he can tighten his plot.I received a free copy of this book from the author in exchange for an honest review.