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4.0étoiles sur 5
Alternate title: Crybbe, Nov. 29 2003
It is so annoying to buy two copies of the same book, just because it has been assigned more than one title. For all of you Rickman fans out there, "Crybbe" and "Curfew" are the same novel.Woe betide the unsuspecting city-raised New Ager who ventures out into Crybbe's mean streets while curfew is being rung--especially during one of the unnervingly frequent power blackouts. According to author, Phil Rickman Crybbe is a composite of Knighton, Presteigne, Clun, and Bishop's Castle---and there really is a town where the curfew bell must be rung every night. His villagers are the equivalent of British rednecks, and all of the ghostly phenomena are local to the borderland between England and Wales, including a gigantic black dog that appears when someone is about to die. Stories of phantom black dogs abound in Britain. Almost every county has its own variant, from the Black Shuck of East Anglia to the Bogey Beast of Yorkshire. In this novel, the ghost hound's name is Black Michael, and it is thought to be the spirit of a warlock, who does not quite have enough power to transform himself back into a man--although he's been trying since he hanged himself in the late 1500s.
One of my favorite characters is killed almost immediately in this horror novel. He is a dowser after earth mysteries called ley lines. In this book, ley lines aren't simply lines of cosmic power linking prehistoric sites. They are the ancient pathways of the dead, and sure enough Black Michael is usually seen rushing down a ley line. A young writer of an occult best-seller, Joe Powys is brought to Crybbe by a millionaire who is trying to remake the old border village into England's new mystical center. Powys makes friends with Fay a down-on-her-luck radio reporter, and soon they are involved in the battle between Old Crybbe whose inhabitants tend to duck their heads and tug on their forelocks in the presence of the occult, and the New Age Crybbe where one can buy mystical lumpen pottery or align oneself with the Earth Mysteries through massage or acupuncture. As in most of Rickman's novels, the dewy-eyed mystics seem to take it on the chin. "Curfew" also harbors a serial killer who discovered Black Michael's skeletal hand hidden in his chimney. He goes from murder to ever-grislier murder while occult forces wreak a separate havoc on Crybbe. The novel's resolution gets a bit garbled and tedious when all of the evil forces line up against what's left of the good, and for the first time in 400 years the curfew bell falls silent. Suffice to say that Joe and three-legged Arnold go on to greater glory in "The Chalice." Fay goes back to work for the BBC. Gomer Parry, the manic digger-for-hire moves on to a prominent role in Rickman's Merrily Watkins procedurals.
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5.0étoiles sur 5
Beware the Borderlands, Sep 25 2001
The town of Crybbe, stuck on the English-Welsh border has a dark history. One of violence and secrets, of magic and the paths of the dead. The curfew is observed, surely only symbolic, the church bell tolled one hundred times each night. The sounds of a bell to keep evil at bay. With the appearance of a New Age millionare intent on bringing the town back to its roots tradition is ignored, safeguards removed, and darkness once again released upon the town. For fans of the genre this book is akin to Horror confection, packed with subtle terror and peppered with well timed gore, references to pagan rituals and occult phenomena the filling and the icing. A true contender for one of the top 20 Horror novels of the last decade. Recommended wholeheartedly. Beware Black Michael!
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5.0étoiles sur 5
As with CANDLENIGHT, I could not turn the pages...., Nov. 16 2000
fast enough....As with CANDLENIGHT, it all seems to make sense... in a 'very very deep within oneself'....way....CURFEW (CRYBBE) was the second of the works I found by Mr. Rickman (I have now three copies of this one). Both books I had read- have left me with a heigtened sense of surreal, touching other levels of my safe world inside my house and outside it...and as with both, I finally understood what 'bone chilling' meant. Never before did I ever check and recheck doors and windows. While I have heard some did not particularly like the character of Fay, I did. She held strong, all and all, sure, she faltered, as who would NOT have if having met her 'challanges'. I found myself relating a bit with having made some-not wise for myself choices in my past and present. Fays dad...he IS a corker- and does he have surprises of his own. And Powys, I love. EACH person comes alive, as I am finding is an excellant characteristic of Mr. Rickmans. The creativeness, the depths, of this mans' writing is truly an adventure and gives an awareness that I find in each book. As in every good book, there is always SOMETHING around the bend,and there ARE bends...I found myself squeezing my eyes SHUT, as I rapidly turned the next page. I can truly say, in my over-thirty years of reading, I had not come across anywhere near the talents of this author, the insight of his subject, and awareness of his surroundings in his books. Often --with each book I have read-I feel as if I have been transferred into the very pages, living the reality/dream of the places and the people. And I am a little more scared these days, but still I would not trade it in for the cushy stuff of others I have read. My hat is off to Mr. Rickman, and I raise my hands in applause...BRAVO BRAVO!!!!
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