His imagination is at times so bizarre, you feel the world has no bounds.and indeed it doesn't, especially in this novel. Morris' writing style is superb, with a descriptive nature that sets a atmosphere so vivid, it's incredible. Corgi have since bought the rights to the novel and re-released the 702 page epic fantasy / horror tale.įrom the start, you can clearly see a strong resemblance to Clive Barker. 'Toady' aka 'The Horror Club' is Mark Morris' first horror novel, which was originally published back in 1989 by Piatkus. Morris only penned a handful of horror novels before moving on, but well worth a read if you can find them. It did remind me of King's It, but definitely not derivative. Overall, I was impressed, even though this does feature young teenagers, which is not my bag. The actual 'monster' they summoned is quite unique and not a run of the mill demon. The dreams/nightmares are stunning and surreal, half the time the boys 'awake' only to find the dream simply continuing. While the pacing was a bit erratic at times, Morris takes you down a rabbit hole here, especially toward the end. What the hell? Olive knows something nasty 'came over', but what to do about it? Worse, when the boys compare nightmares, they find that seemed to be similar dreams, and sometimes they even saw one another. Shortly after the séance, strange and nasty things start happening around town, and all four boys are plagued by horrible nightmares. He knows something 'came over' during the séance and he desperately wants to communicate with it more than that, he wants its power. His dad is a drunk and his mother works as a stripper in a seedy dive bar. Toady comes from the seedy part, as do most of the bullies at school. Outside the tourist areas, Starmouth is half posh, half very seedy. Starmouth in the winter when the tale takes place is bleak the amusement park on the shore is shuttered for the season and it always seems to be cold and snowy. I have a weak spot for English horror, in part due to the settings. Well, as you might expect, yeah, something happened at the séance, or should I say, something 'came over', but what exactly it is and what is wants prove to be no small mystery. Richard, one of the boys in the club, is warned off by his friend Olive, who has some psychic abilities she is actually his grandma's pal and runs a fortune teller booth by the seaside attractions. So, after some nasty bullying one day, the new kid, Toady, wants to kick the Horror Club up a notch by holding a séance in an abandoned house with a haunted reputation. ![]() Toady attracts bullies like bees to nectar and there are several of these at their school. The fourth, known as Toady, recently joined, and if anything, he is even more of a social outcast than the other three. ![]() This mainly entails watching horror flicks and swapping books. Set in a small tourist town (Starmouth) on the coast of England, Morris introduces the ensemble cast right away: four boys, aged 14 to 16, who are members of the Horror Club. Mark Morris' first novel made a splash and I can see why. ![]() His most recently published or forthcoming work includes a novella entitled It Sustains for Earthling Publications, a Torchwood novel entitled Bay of the Dead, several Doctor Who audios for Big Finish Productions, a follow-up volume to Cinema Macabre entitled Cinema Futura and a new short story collection, Long Shadows, Nightmare Light. His short stories, novellas, articles and reviews have appeared in a wide variety of anthologies and magazines, and he is editor of the highly-acclaimed Cinema Macabre, a book of fifty horror movie essays by genre luminaries, for which he won the 2007 British Fantasy Award. He has since published a further sixteen novels, among which are Stitch, The Immaculate, The Secret of Anatomy, Fiddleback, The Deluge and four books in the popular Doctor Who range. Mark Morris became a full-time writer in 1988 on the Enterprise Allowance Scheme, and a year later saw the release of his first novel, Toady. There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.
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