In Christopher Golden's world of WAKING NIGHTMARES, the
answer to "who ya gonna call" isn't Ghostbusters, but Peter
Octavian, former vampire, current mage. Chaos is yawning a
hungry mouth in New England and there's only one man (well,
one man and a sexy earthwitch) who is going to be able to
clean up this rain of toads.
Octavian's a difficult man to get a handle on as a reader.
He's smooth, with a more-than-just-an-amateur rockstar
girlfriend and a tall bounty-hunter aesthete of his own. He
travels the country fighting evil in penance for his past as
a blood-sucking fiend (hey, it was a long time ago) but
little is said about his motivations beyond a sentence or
two of summary. For the most part, he's remarkably, even
unsettlingly, even-keeled for a man in a relationship on the
rocks who's suffered a thousand years of torment in Hell and
has a day job that mostly involves swapping bodily fluids
(and not in the fun way!) with evil. In some ways, he's
almost too aloof- he swoops in like Superman and almost
effortlessly defeats his opponents but there's little to
create an empathic link for the reader. He's a man of
mystery but it's difficult to be enveloped in a novel where
the main protagonist comes across as a chilly cipher.
WAKING NIGHTMARES feels like a Halloween haunted house,
where each chapter opens a door on a new frightfest (as well
as numerous new characters, many of whom I found to be
easier to sympathize with than the superhuman- literally-
Octavian). Golden clearly knows his locations and
describes the small town atmosphere in a comfortable and
familiar manner, one that makes the horror aspects of the
book that much more jarring. The supernatural becomes far
more believable with such a firm setting beneath it, and the
pace is pleasantly fast-moving and dramatic. Overall, the
novel reads like a campfire tale that would go well with a
trip to the Great Pumpkin Patch, and I will be looking
forward to Octavian's continued adventures in hopes of more
in-depth insights into his murky character.
Peter Octavian, once a vampire, now a powerful mage, has
been living a quiet life in San Francisco. But when the
arriers that used to prevent demons and monsters from
entering the world have fallen, Octavian is compelled to
do what he can to hold back the darkness.
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