'Entombed' – Guy N. Smith (Hamlyn)

I still have a few unread Guy N. Smith books hiding around the flat... ;o) I'm trying to ration them out a bit (if you read more than a couple at a time, it does get very difficult to say something new about them...) but it's been a while so I thought it was time for another one. To tell you the truth, last week was so busy (what with one thing and another) that short books like this were all I had time for so you might see a few more, of a similar length, featured here over the next week or so. But that's for later... The last few Guy N.Smith books have seen a move away from 'creature features' to straight up 'gore fests' and the odd haunting. 'Entombed' is one of the latter, and not a bad one either...

Simon Rankin is a failed priest, a failed husband and a failed exorcist. After a terrifying experience in a haunted house, he takes his girlfriend off to North Wales in a desperate search for peace of mind. But the horror left behind is nothing compared to the chilling evil that hangs over Cwymgilla. The villagers are frightened and hostile... his nights are troubled by dreadful nightmares... and down in the abandoned slate-mines an inhuman power is at work.

Hideus screaming, manic laughter, the scraping of booted feet in the darkness, the terrible warnings increase...

As Simon nerves himself to challenge the unknown, a devastating fury awaits him in the icy depths of the earth.

I'll be honest, I don't normally get along too well with ghost stories; I don't mind a good scare but at the same time, I get impatient easily though and that spoils all the good work that the author is putting into raising the tension etc. It's not the book's fault, my reading time is at a premium so I want something that will grab me RIGHT NOW, not in a few pages time. It's a good job that there are authors around like Guy N. Smith then, 'Entombed' may not be a perfect read but it was the ghost story that I was looking for and that is the main thing.

A quick aside... I wouldn't normally do this but we've already established that Guy N. Smith loved to shock his readers and wouldn't pull any punches doing so. This is definitely very much the case in 'Entombed' where there is demonic sex and child sacrifice. If you can stomach that then go for it but if you can't, this is me warning you that this is what you can expect to see if you read 'Entombed'. No worries, you're welcome ;o)

But back to what I thought of the book itself. Simon Rankin isn't the easiest character to get behind (at least, not to start off with) as he has had it all beaten out of him and it takes him a while to find the inner strength that a reader can get behind. What happens to him though... That kicks off on the very first page and just keeps going, that is what kept me reading. You can feel the evil on the page and that's the way it stays over the course of the book. How much evil can happen to one man before he buckles under the weight of it? Rankin 'clicks into gear', as it were, and you find out that actually, Rankin has a lot of strength to draw on when he has something to fight for, whether it's his new love or his children.

The occult attacks increase in severity at the same time as the evil under the mountain starts to emerge; for the book that means a slow and steady increase in tension that flickers with menace as people succumb to evil in one way or another. Special mention has to be made of how Smith makes excellent use of the cramped caves to induce a feeling of claustrophobia that works really well with the dread that you feel as the tension is ratcheted up. I would have liked to have found out more about how it all tied together (was that evil under the mountain already or was it brought there?) but sometimes, it's enough to know that evil is there and has to be fought. That's what Smith gives us here and as the evil grows, Rankin fights harder and you can't help but cheer him on.

Maybe 'Entombed' is a little vague on the nature of the evil in Cymgilla (it might just be me though, it has been a busy week...) but when you have loads of full on psychic warfare as well as occult civil war, you can afford to be a little forgiving ;o) 'Entombed' is my kind of ghost story though, it draws out the tension but it doesn't hang around introducing you to what happens next. It is a brutal read as well, Smith is clearly in no mood to pull any punches here and that worked for me; it's a book that chills and shocks in equal measure. At only a hundred and ninety one pages long, it's worth checking out as an evening's horror/ghostly read...