Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, August 8, 1993 TAG: 9309090296
SECTION: HORIZON PAGE: D4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MIKE MAYO BOOK PAGE EDITOR
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
``The Forbidden Zone'' is an affectionate tribute to and updating of H.P. Lovecraft's rich horror fiction.
Author Whitley Strieber has avoided the most obvious elements - the florid prose, the fulsome adjectives, the repressed sexuality - concentrating instead on the incredible imaginative quality that drives the best of Lovecraft's work. It's a risky undertaking. That kind of horror goes so far beyond the conventional psychological underpinnings of the genre that it can become unintentionally humorous.
Strieber makes it work. He reveals his monstrous critters slowly and lets their early, less flamboyant incarnations establish the mood. His characters are believable and sympathetic, neither too heroic nor too innocent. The setting is the small college town of Oscola in upstate New York.
It's at a large natural mound outside of town that Brian Kelly and his Vietnamese wife, Loi, first encounter a strange sound that seems to come from within the earth. That sound, a weird human moan, somehow threatens Loi's pregnancy and manifests itself to others in different forms.
To newspaperwoman Ellen Maas, it appears first as a glowing swarm of insects that brings painful sexual ecstasy, and then - in a terrific scene - a crablike creature that reeks of urine. To policeman Bob West, it's the driver of a Dodge Viper. To Loi, it's simply ``the demon.'' Before long, Brian realizes that whatever is happening must be connected to the physics experiment he had worked on. But that work ended with a lab accident that killed his first wife, or so he has been told.
The last third or so of the novel is an extended chase that's not as effective as the first part. But by then most readers will be hooked, and the big finish does just what it's supposed to do. In the end, ``The Forbidden Zone'' succeeds on its own as an engrossing novel, and as an homage to a writer who may be out of fashion now but whose contribution endures.
by CNB