Available:*
Library | Call Number | Status |
---|---|---|
Searching... Stayton Public Library | GRAY | Searching... Unknown |
Bound With These Titles
On Order
Summary
Summary
Alchemy: the summoning and control of demons. Those who cross the alchemist are in danger of being disposed of. The easiest way to do this? Cast the runes: strips of flesh made from the dried skin of a child sacrifice and inscribed with the time the victim has yet to live...When trucker Josh Spiller pulls his rig into the small town of Furnace, Virginia, all he wants is a decent meal before getting back on the road and away from his memories of a bitter quarrel with his girlfriend. Instead, he witnesses a baby's violent death and can't convince the sheriff that the upstanding, well-dressed woman he saw leaving the scene was responsible. Shaken by his experience, he rolls out of Furnace, stopping to pick up a desperately attractive, female hitchhiker who seems to have the answers to some of his questions about the inhabitants of Furnace--and who is just as anxious to get out of town as he is.Soon after, Josh begins to feel eyes watching him--the burning eyes of misshapen creatures. Is it possible to have nightmares while you're awake? And just as his grip on what's real and what's imagined begins to slip, he makes a bizarre discovery: someone has slipped him what looks like parchment, inscribed with the words, five days alive permitted. Something unnatural is happening in Furnace, but will Josh be around long enough to unravel its secrets?
Reviews (3)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Gray gives meaning to the term "full-throttle horror" in her jet-propelled tale of an 18-wheeler's race with a demon. A likable trucker who believes that "the best cure for any kind of unhappiness was perpetual motion," Josh Spiller is fleeing commitment to his pregnant girlfriend when he accidentally runs down a child in rural Furnace, Va. Although cleared of responsibility, Josh can't shake the conviction that the child was deliberately pushed in front of his rig, and that the pious townsfolk are covering up a murder. Back on the road, Josh senses something indescribable pursuing him. It could just be his guilt, but a hitchhiker persuades him that a more sinister game is afoot. In a nod to M.R. James's classic "Casting the Runes," Josh discovers that he has been given a scrap inscribed with an invocation to a fire elemental, and that to save his life he must pass it "willingly but unknowingly" back to whoever gave it to himwithin the next five days. The pace never flags once Josh burns rubber back to Furnace, even when the story detours through dead-end subplots about the fate of Josh's unborn child and Furnace's dark history of ritual sacrifice. Although the plot doesn't manage the same consistency that Gray brought to the many layers of her debut, Trickster, it abounds with unpredictable twists and ends with a suspenseful climax that both fulfills its eerie potential and does justice to its intelligently drawn characters. (Oct.) FYI: This is the second riff on M.R. James's story to appear this season. James Hynes's Publish and Perish pays homage to James with a novella called "Casting the Runes." (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus Review
Scottish novelist Gray, whose debut performance was the well-received The Trickster(1995), plunges even deeper into Stephen King territory with this remorselessly grisly supernatural thriller set in the Virginia hills and also the remoter ""worlds"" of alchemy and Scots folklore. When trucker Josh Spiller inadvertently runs down a baby carriage that ""accidentally"" rolls into his path, his visit to the (improbably named) town of Furnace becomes an initiation into an imported brand of Satanism, whose minions include a friendly sheriff and a compassionate councilwoman. For nearly half its length, Furnace seems merely a clever variation on King's Desperation, but Gray is a very skillful writer and her story's furious denouement conceals a vivid succession of nasty shocks and surprises. An enjoyably lurid entertainment that will almost certainly shape-shift into a blockbuster movie. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
Gray's previous novel, The Trickster (1995), a page-turner in which evil nearly destroyed good, dealt with the mystical powers of shamans. Her latest conjures the world of alchemy, and good has just as difficult a time in prevailing over evil as it did in the previous book. Josh Spiller, a truck driver, is informed one day by his live-in girlfriend that she is pregnant but does not want the baby. He storms out and takes on another trucking assignment. In another town--the town of Furnace--he gets involved in a horrible and very peculiar accident. A woman shoves a baby in a stroller under his wheels, and his rig crushes the child. But no one else saw the woman do it; what the mother and other witnesses insist they saw was simply the wind catching the stroller and blowing it into Josh's path. On the way out of town--the town of Furnace--he picks up a hitchhiker, who turns out to know a lot about Furnace and its inhabitants. What Josh has unwittingly stepped into is the domain of alchemy, and with the appearance of a rune, a piece of dried skin from a child sacrifice, he is at the mercy of forces no mortal would want to face. With a considerable publicity push behind this novel, which is as compelling as its predecessor, high demand can be expected. --Brad Hooper