It’s roughly a decade since I first reviewed a book by Whitley Strieber. I hadn’t been into this stuff very long, and I was shocked at how stupid the book was. I read the next book in his series about getting diddled by aliens a few months later, and a couple of years after that I managed to make it through the third book. Although I’ve had the 4th entry in the series on my shelf for years, I’ve never been able to convince myself to open it. What I had read of Strieber made him seem an unbearable twat, a boring, self centered gobshite.

I knew from the outset that he had been an author of horror novels, but his alien books were so cumbersome that I had no desire to read his fiction until. It was only when I became more interested in paperback horror a few years later and discovered that some of his horror novels seemed to be held in high regard that I decided to give his fiction a chance. He wrote 4 horror novels before switching to fantasy in the mid 80s. (It was a few years later that he moved on to “non-fiction” about aliens.) Over the last 8 months, I have read 3 of his 4 early horror novels. The one I didn’t read, The Hunger, seems to be considered one of the better ones, but it has sequels, so I am saving it for a separate post.

The Wolfen

I read this a few months ago and didn’t bother taking notes. It’s about a pair of detectives trying to solve a series of grisly murders committed by superwolves (not werewolves). It wasn’t utterly amazing or anything, but it was competently written and definitely of a higher standard than a lot of the paperback horror boom. I quite enjoyed it.

The Night Church

I was expecting to enjoy this one more as it deals with Satanists rather than werewolves. The different covers are really too. Look at the one above! Unfortunately, the story is boring. A young couple falls in love only to discover that they have been bred to breed the Antichrist. I read this a few months after reading all of the The Omen novelizations, and maybe the similarity to those is what made this seem underwhelming. After finishing this, I waited roughly 6 months until I could convince myself to read another book by Strieber.

Black Magic

I bought a copy of this book after seeing the cover online years ago. Unfortunately, this is a spy novel with only a touch of occultism. The plot is complicated and involves 4 different story lines. There’s the good guy, the evil, gay, psychic Iranian teenager and then 2 Russian communist generals who hate eachother. They’re all working against each other, and I didn’t care about any of them. This was boring crap, and I was very relieved to finish it.

The Wolfen was pretty good, but The Night Church and Black Magic were a waste of my time. I do plan to read The Hunger in the future as I’ve heard it’s one of his better efforts. I doubt I will ever return to Strieber’s non-fiction.