Choosing my next Horror Series

So this week the universe answered my Necroscope question from a few weeks back, the copy I had purchased from my local used book store was a few pages shy, actually five pages, the last five pages, which meant that if I wanted to read the third book in the series I would have to find another copy.

So now I get to decide which horror series I'm going to follow next - although to be fair it may not be a specific series by one author, maybe I'll hit the award winners again or just go through my ever-increasing shelf of books I mean to get around to reading someday.

One quick stop in the horror genre I'm definitely going to be making however, is Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips series Fatale, which melds film noir-style crime stories with H.P. Lovecraft style horror.  At this point I've read the first collection and it was pretty amazing; moody, intriguing and really, really creepy.

So, while I'm looking for great horror series, if you happen to know of any, feel free to send a comment my way!

How long should you stick with a series?

So I'm in a bit of a pickle; I've read the first two books of a series and am unsure of whether or not I want to continue.

The first book I read, Brian Lumley's 1986 novel Necroscope, was actually pretty great - Although aware of the series for a long time, I was unnerved by the cover art, and was pleased to find the novel was both exciting and had me intrigued to read the rest of the series.

Then I read the second book in the series, Necroscope II: Wamphyri! and found myself a little underwhelmed; the story didn't quite move fast enough for me and there were some plot holes I couldn't get past.

Now the series overall has a lot of sequels and spin-off titles, but the reviews I've read over the years say it's pretty great, but after being disappointed by the sequel I'm a little hesitant to sign on to such a large series of books, and I'm pretty sure if I read book three I'm going to in it for the long haul.

I'm not actually sure whether to continue or not, anyone out there have any suggestions?

Catching up on the genre classics: Necroscope

I've been seeing them since I started getting into horror fiction back in Junior High, while looking through the horror section at bookstore for the newest Stephen King or Clive Barker, they've always been patiently sitting on the shelf, knowing that at some point I would inevitably get around to trying them out.  Well, today is that day (or yesterday, to be more precise).  I've finally started reading Brian Lumley's horror series, Necroscope.

I'll happily admit that a big part of what has kept me away but interested all these years is the bizarre cover art by George Underwood (see left), which shows both a skull with tendrils moving through it and a man lit in blue in the background with his eyes closed.  As a kid, the cover images for the series (almost twenty titles), were both fascinating and horrifying, so much so that I could never quite give the series a chance, even while I was picking my way back and froth through some other pretty horrific stuff as the mood took me.

Last year while on a used-bookstore trip with my BFF Mike I finally picked up the first book as a trade for some titles I was getting rid of, and it's sat on my "to be read" shelf ever since.  Until yesterday when I decided to finally give the book a shot.

So I'm now about 200 pages into the title and it's pretty great - the whole thing is a strange Cold War era battle between agencies in Britain and the USSR between psychics - kind of a proto-Nightwatch if you will, and follows two psychics with some pretty disturbing abilities as they make their way through life.

Oh yeah and those skull tendrils on the cover the unnerved me so much as a kid?  Yup, that's actually a pretty good representation of something one of the psychics in the book can do - Yikes!

I'm not finished book one yet, but so far it's a pretty fast and fun read, so there you go.