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Underground by Craig Spector
01/11/2005 . Source: Paul Skevington 
pub: TOR. 254 page hardback. Price: $23.95 (US), $33.95 (CAN). ISBN: 0-765-30660-3. Buy from Amazon US - Buy from Amazon UK
nb: US titles may only be available from Amazon US, and UK titles from Amazon UK. check out website: www.tor.com and www.craigspector.com
Take this book now. It's not badly written. It's quite exciting and generally it holds together pretty well plot-wise. So what's the problem?
Major horror deja vu I would say. Reading this book was like stepping through a portal into my past. I could see my teenage self at the bookshop with armfuls of Stephen King and Dean Koontz books spilling out onto their hallowed counters. If you were to selectively sample bits and pieces from my juvenile reading, I wouldn't be at all surprised if you were able to create from those dissected dramas something surprisingly close to this book.
Let me see. First I'll pick virtually anything at all by Stephen King...wait a minute...there I've got it. My first selection is the close-knit group of childhood friends who are forced to come back together again to finally defeat the evil that they faced together in their youths. Hang on, I'll just put my copy of 'It' back on the pile.
Let me see. What kind of adolescents do I want to involve in this tale? Now I'm going to have to ask you to bear with me on this one, because it's a little outrageous. How about we make them high-school students? It gets better. They go to this out-of-the-way old mansion, right, and they have a big party. They start being very naughty, doing things like taking drugs, drinking alcohol and fiddling with each other's bendy bits. Whilst doing this they accidentally set free a demonic force bent on being generally unpleasant. Sigh! Didn't any of them watch 'Scream'? Follow the rules people!
Craig Spector attempts to vary the formula with the introduction of African black magic and the slave trade. Despite his efforts, this doesn't do much to alter the by-the-numbers feel of much of this book.
To give him credit, though, he does manage to come up with a couple of interesting characters. The drug-using Amy Kaplan is a quite fascinating invention. She's an addict who is coping with her addiction and lives with it on a day-to-day basis. It makes a change to the hordes of psychotic, faceless monsters often seen in the media. Seth, a bouncer in a strip club, is also quite entertaining. He provides a striking contrast for the other (non-dead) black characters in the book, which consist of a group of racial militants with sympathies for the supernatural cause. Many of his other creations are much blander though, largely forgettable plot-drivers, as hollow and intangible as the spirits that inhabit the latter part of the novel.
Spector also has significantly more success with his depiction of the spirit world and the goings on there. Events taking place in this setting maintain an admirable quality of strangeness. Reading these sections is always a pleasure. They have a strange texture, like plunging your hand in honey. The creatures that torment the protagonists are well thought out and there are some truly creepy moments to be found here.
It is almost a shame that I have to level such criticism at the book, as it fairly motors along and was a pleasurable read while it lasted. I can't help but think that Spector had some really good intentions with the book's slavery theme as well but somehow it just didn't work for me.
If you want a fast and loose bit of creepy fun then you could do a lot worse than reading this novel. Personally, though, I believe the horror genre is capable of a lot more than this and I'm sure that Spector is, too.
Paul Skevington
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