Once

by James Herbert

Overview

Remember the faery stories you were told as a child? Tales of tiny, magical, winged beings and elves, wicked witches and goblins. Demons . . .

What if one day you found out they were true? What if, when you became an adult, you discovered they were all based on fact? What if you met the fantasy and it was all so very real?

That''s what happened to Thom Kindred. The wonders were revealed to him. But so were the horrors, for not far behind the Good, there always lurks the Bad. And the Bad had designs on Thom. The Bad would show him real evil. He would see the hellhagges and the demons. He would be touched by perverted passion. And corruption. And he would encounter his own worst nightmare. The Bad would seek to destroy him. And only the magic of the little beings would be able to help him.

Once, James Herbert''s masterful novel of erotic love and darkest horror, will take you to a realm where fantasy and reality collide, where faerytales really can come true.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780330451833
Publisher:	Pan Books Limited
Publication date:	05/04/2007
Edition description:	Unabridged
Pages:	480
Product dimensions:	5.08(w) x 7.68(h) x 1.22(d)

About the Author

Widely imitated and hugely influential, James Herbert (1943-2013) was a bestselling English horror writer who originally worked as the art director of an advertising agency. His 23 novels—including The Fog & The Rats—have sold more than 54 million copies worldwide and have been translated into over 30 languages, including Russian and Chinese. In 2010, he was made the Grand Master of Horror by the World Horror Convention and was awarded an OBE by the Queen for services to literature.

Editorial Reviews

After ringing changes on Victor Hugo in Others, Herbert now takes us to a fairyland decidedly not out of James M. Barrie. Yes, the author does provide some sweetness-and-light and pitter-pattering fairy laughter, but only as they contrast with dark forces of wiccans married to the boiling and shapeless father of darkness. His object is to create a total environment in which the reader can at least half-believe in fairies, elves, undines, and so on, not to mention witches. So he sets before us the Bracken estate with its castle, acres of lawn, deep woods, and rough lanes: an absolutely idyllic landscape for fairies. Thom Kindred, 27, is recovering from a crippling auto accident that resulted from a stroke while driving. His mother worked for Sir Russell Bleeth at Castle Bracken until Thom was seven years old; then she . . . hmm, died? . . . without ever telling Thom who his real father was. Sir Russell, twice a widower and father to big, shapeless, greedy Hugo, lies dying as Thom returns to the estate and takes up life in his mother's abandoned old cottage. He finds himself attended mornings by Nell Quick, a pretty wiccan, it turns out, whose attentions cause dishes to fly off shelves while some kind of elf or goblin scoots about the floor just out of sight. Soon Thom hears strange musical sounds and sees eerie golden lights floating about, and later he finds himself sucked into the world of little spirits and an affair with beautiful Jennet, an undine. But as his mother would have warned him, affairs between mortals and undines can't end happily. Leaf-clogged suspense until a slashing succubus appears to add stress to Thom's recovery.

Kirkus Reviews