| Author | Message | ||
     Mark_lynch (Mark_lynch) Username: Mark_lynch Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 79.71.196.36 |
I glanced in the latest issue of SFX last week, saw there was a review of Ramsey's latest paperback, THIEVING FEAR. I have to confess, I stopped reading the review halfway through to make sure it hadn't accidentally been transposed with a review of the latest Shaun Hutson or Guy N Smith novel, assuming Mr Smith still publishes. And it hadn't been. It just described a writer I didn't recognise. Called Ramsey a spatter master who published one pulp novel a year. If memory serves it also mentioned him being gory and ladling out blood. I can't imagine THIEVING FEAR is the book described in the magazine's pages, but I'm looking forward to the arrival of my copy, and wondering what the reviewer knows about Ramsey's books that the rest of us don't. | ||
| Mark_lynch (Mark_lynch) Username: Mark_lynch Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 88.110.53.116 |
Uhm. Splatter, that should have been. | ||
| Huw (Huw) Username: Huw Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 218.168.198.176 |
Mark, when I saw the thread title I wondered if perhaps Ramsey had a secret life as a Jackson Pollock-style painter... The level of writing and the degree of knowledge on display at SFX is sometimes appalling, I've found (I was given a year's gift subscription - didn't renew). Deathray was a much better mag. | ||
| Steve Bacon (Stevebacon) Username: Stevebacon Registered: 09-2008 Posted From: 90.208.112.230 |
Did they describe Edward Lee as a practitioner of quiet, Jamesian-style ghost stories? Or Charles L Grant as a gore hound? Jeez, my wife has never read a horror novel in her life, but knows the difference between the styles of different authors. Maybe she could write for SFX... | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 91.110.130.210 |
Does SFX still place every cover illustration so it looks like the magazine's title is SEX? Even I wouldn't recycle the same joke every month for ten years. (Simon B. is forbidden to comment.) I assume the reviewer didn't actually read any of the book. More serious genre magazines than SFX have been known to print the publisher's press release as a review, credited to a named reviewer. If you wrote the press release, that's a very strange sensation. | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 75.4.224.208 |
If memory serves it also mentioned him being gory and ladling out blood. Wouldn't it be cool if that were actually the case? Book-signings would be fun to go to.... | ||
| Gcw (Gcw) Username: Gcw Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.151.125.173 |
I read a slightly indifferent review of Thieving Fear in (I think) another Sci-Fi Mag, which previously reviewed 'Grin Of The Dark' very favourably. I don't think Thieving Fear is a top-flight RC book, but there is enough of the mans' deft touches to make it very readable despite its flaws. gcw | ||
| Jonathan (Jonathan) Username: Jonathan Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 79.75.140.124 |
SFX aren't brilliant on horror, it must be said. The magazine is much more focused on film and TV SF, at the expense of most other forms. The nice thing about Deathray is that it covers writers in quite a lot of depth and the reviews section is quite broad. | ||
| Mark_lynch (Mark_lynch) Username: Mark_lynch Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 79.79.191.131 |
I remember early SFX, when the author interviews stretched three or four pages . . . GCW, I agree: even standard Ramsey is better than the rest can manage | ||
| Stephen Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 82.4.20.22 |
I don't give a monkey's what any poxy magazine says about Ramsey. We all know his worth and posterity will prove it! Just wait and see... | ||
| Ramsey Campbell (Ramsey) Username: Ramsey Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 195.93.21.74 |
That's a strange review. The writer clearly has read the book but I wouldn't recognise it from some of his comments. Honestly, if the mad magician and the monsters underground come from anywhere it isn't the cinema, they're echoes of Charles Dexter Ward. Many years ago a Fangoria review of The Face That Must Die described it as being like Friday the 13th seen from Jason's viewpoint. I thought that told us more about the reviewer than about the book. |