I was annoyed to discover this Blu-Ray disc will not play properly on a PC unless there is an Internet connection. I don't know if this is a DRM thing or some useless "feature" thrown in for the heck of it. I wasted hours trying to get this to play until I finally realised all I had to do was turn the firewall off.

This is probably one of Little's better efforts. Granted he's not the "poet laureate" that the cover declares him to be, but he's not as bad as Dean Koontz either. Like most of this books, this one consists of a long lead-up and series of creepy events finished by a sudden, quick ending.

I found it interesting that this book, relatively speaking, was not as violent as some of Little's others. There also seemed to be fewer plot holes compared to his earlier works. The narrative was more controlled and did not go off on too many strange tangents (for example, the part in Little's "The Store" where the dad goes to the company's headquarters and gets brainwashed for no obvious reason). Little seems to have either matured as a writer or at least has a better editor.

Little switches perspectives each chapter. Even Kit Carson gets to tell us about his encounter with the haunted land in New Mexico that the haunted house eventually gets built on, which I have to say was a little strange.

If you like cheesy haunted house stories, you will like this book. If you like reading novels that are original and well written, you should probably look elsewhere.

First things first: this isn't a haunted house story. The characters are trapped in a weird time paradox that's caused by electromagnetic activity or something.

How do we know this? Well, the characters don't get to find out for themselves. The reader is straight up told by the narrator, and that's the main problem with this book. There is way too much telling and not enough showing. There are long stretches in the book without any dialogue. In addition, there are places where Koontz gets on his soapbox and rants (chapter 28 is probably the worst of these).

Incidentally, Koontz goes for the gross here. The book may be a spiritual successor to "The Taking" in that it too contains lots of disgusting creatures, mushrooms, and fungi.

Well, this is a throwback to classic Goosebumps. Kid goes to school and finds the other students are zombies. After defeating the zombies, he changes schools... and winds up at "Dracula Middle School," where all the other students are now vampires. Classic RL Stine, insulting to the reader ending. Avoid.