What do you think?
Rate this book
Omnibus: Relics / Spawn / Shadows
RELICS When a hidden chamber filled with the skulls of children is discovered by an archaeological dig, the discovery triggers a series of murders in which the victims are horrifically mutilated. Something evil is waiting. Something monstrous is loose...
SPAWN Released from a mental hospital where he has spent all his adult life, Harold Pierce is given a job as a hospital porter. But that job involves the disposal of aborted foetuses, something which brings back nightmare memories of Harold's accidental killing of his baby brother years before...
SHADOWS In Oxford and Paris psychic investigators are attempting to probe forbidden areas of the mind. In New York writer David Blake is studying the methods of miracle healer Jonathan Mathias. Driven by their own desperate motives, these researchers are about to unlock Pandora's Box - to unleash the horrifying forces of destruction hidden deep within us all...
SPAWN Released from a mental hospital where he has spent all his adult life, Harold Pierce is given a job as a hospital porter. But that job involves the disposal of aborted foetuses, something which brings back nightmare memories of Harold's accidental killing of his baby brother years before...
SHADOWS In Oxford and Paris psychic investigators are attempting to probe forbidden areas of the mind. In New York writer David Blake is studying the methods of miracle healer Jonathan Mathias. Driven by their own desperate motives, these researchers are about to unlock Pandora's Box - to unleash the horrifying forces of destruction hidden deep within us all...
- GenresHorror
896 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2000
6 people are currently reading
47 people want to read
About the author
Shaun Hutson
115 books537 followersBritish horror novelist, including horror and urban thriller novels.
His novella Slugs was made into a movie, although Hutson didn't like the movie. He also appeared in two horror movies himself.
Hutson is a Liverpool F.C. fan.
His novella Slugs was made into a movie, although Hutson didn't like the movie. He also appeared in two horror movies himself.
Hutson is a Liverpool F.C. fan.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
May 21, 2024
I picked up a few Shaun Hutson novels cheaply a few years ago, when I found a bunch of Omnibus collections of his work on a 3 for £5 offer, which essentially meant I paid about 70 pence for each of them. In a desperate attempt to clear through a huge backlog in my "To Be Read" pile, which now pretty much takes up an entire bookshelf of its own these days, I've started into some of them. So far, the majority have taught me why they were available so cheaply and also why I was in no rush to try them out sooner.
This collection contains three of his earlier novels, originally released between 1983 and 1986. The first novel here, "Relics", opens with an archaeological dig which has unearthed some tunnels containing hundreds of skulls from several time periods. , thanks to a nasty accident suffered by one of those doing the digging. The dig is on borrowed time thanks to the land being owned by a local developer who was just finishing off building a leisure centre nearby and now wants to start building on the land used by the dig and in woods where satanic rituals take place.
This means that when people from the building company start dying in horrific accidents and horrible murders, there are no shortage of people unhappy enough to have carried them out. However, the circumstances and other events suggest an unnatural and potentially non-human cause, both due to the sheer levels of violence and the suggestion that some of the victims were literally scared to death during the process.
The second novel, “Spawn”, follows Harold Pierce, who is about to be released from Exham Mental Hospital as it is moving to a new building. He’s been there since he was a young child, haunted by a fire which killed his mother and baby brother and which he inadvertently started. Scarred both mentally a physically from that night, Harold gets a job as a porter in the local hospital, but struggles with the part of his job which involved burning aborted foetuses.
Not far away, the man who has been convicted of the only two murders Exham has seen in decades has escaped from prison. It being the only place he knows, Paul Harvey is returning to his hometown, knowing he won’t be welcomed by residents of Police. He largely stays in hiding, but his needs for food and murder draw him out occasionally and whilst the Police know he is the cause of the decapitated bodies that have started appearing, they don’t know where he is.
The final novel here, “Shadows”, opens in New York, where supposed miracle healer Jonathan Mathias claims to have unlocked the secrets of the astral body and believes it can be separated from the physical body. Meanwhile, psychic investigators in Oxford and Paris are looking to see if they can locate the area of the brain which controls this, one by using drugs and the other by hypnosis. However, it seems that this part of the brain may control our dark sides and separating it may not have unpleasant consequences.
Considering these three novels were written so close together in the early years of Hutson’s career, it’s incredible how varied they are in quality, although many of the style elements that have defined his writing were already in place. “Relics”, which as the latest novel here should have shown the most development, was a complete mess, both in the plotting, the writing and in the actual events. Most of the murders and accidents involve the removal of limbs and internal organs, accompanied by showers of blood. This can be a wonderful thing in a horror novel, if it is done well, but there is a repetition in the murders and their aftermath which actually does more to bore the reader by the end than it does to traumatise them and that is definitely not a good situation for any novel to find itself in.
This repetition extends into the writing, as not only are the set pieces the same in terms of detail, but Hutson also writes them with the same language every time. Everything is reeking and fetid and the sex scenes having throbbing organs and the repetition means than the whole thing becomes ludicrous and loses any ability it had to scare, or indeed evoke any sort of emotion at all. Fortunately, he had found this again in “Spawn”, which had hints of Frankenstein’s monster in miniature, with a combination of vampirism and mind control. The whole concept is quite frightening and frequently disgusting and some parts are written with sufficient detail that it’s occasionally nauseating, which is a level and quality of writing that I’ve not often come across in Hutson’s novels.
Even more remarkable was “Shadows”, which was a novel so different from the others in almost every way that it was almost recognisable as a Shaun Hutson novel. "Shadows" is a far more focussed and feels like a much better researched work than his others, meaning it only has a single plot and whilst there are several aspects to it, none of them stray too far away from the main story, as has been his habit in the past and all the strands are clearly linked and come together towards the end instead of falling away.
The single plot aspect was particularly important, as both “Relics” and “Spawn” had sub-plots which didn’t seem obviously linked to the main plot and which disappeared when it suited them. Having read a lot of Hutson’s work, it is evident that he rarely has the attention span to maintain and develop a single plot for an entire novel and so he has sub-plots which are there to fill pages and which are discarded, or folded into the main plot in a sudden and unrealistic way when he’s done with them.
The one thing Hutson does well is that whilst his language use is often repetitive, he does write in fairly simple language and in short chapters, which is a writing tool James Patterson also uses to keep the pages turning. He also switches regularly between plot and sub-plot which also helps maintain a fairly high pace and with the novels from his early career being fairly short, it passes very quickly, which is something of a relief when the sub-plots are pointless and some of the set pieces are poorly written and repetitive, meaning you’re rarely sad when a Hutson novel ends.
I see Hutson's writing frequently compared to Richard Laymon and that makes sense to me, as I haven't liked any of Laymon's work all that much, either, although I don't recall any of his writing being this poor. The novels in this collection do improve as they go and whilst the best of them is acceptable rather than being good, it does mean there is something to like, even if you’ve had to trawl through a couple of novels that were poorly written with worse plotting and whilst some of his set pieces were fairly imaginative, there wasn’t enough here to convince me that a Hutson novel is worth much more than 70 pence.
This collection contains three of his earlier novels, originally released between 1983 and 1986. The first novel here, "Relics", opens with an archaeological dig which has unearthed some tunnels containing hundreds of skulls from several time periods. , thanks to a nasty accident suffered by one of those doing the digging. The dig is on borrowed time thanks to the land being owned by a local developer who was just finishing off building a leisure centre nearby and now wants to start building on the land used by the dig and in woods where satanic rituals take place.
This means that when people from the building company start dying in horrific accidents and horrible murders, there are no shortage of people unhappy enough to have carried them out. However, the circumstances and other events suggest an unnatural and potentially non-human cause, both due to the sheer levels of violence and the suggestion that some of the victims were literally scared to death during the process.
The second novel, “Spawn”, follows Harold Pierce, who is about to be released from Exham Mental Hospital as it is moving to a new building. He’s been there since he was a young child, haunted by a fire which killed his mother and baby brother and which he inadvertently started. Scarred both mentally a physically from that night, Harold gets a job as a porter in the local hospital, but struggles with the part of his job which involved burning aborted foetuses.
Not far away, the man who has been convicted of the only two murders Exham has seen in decades has escaped from prison. It being the only place he knows, Paul Harvey is returning to his hometown, knowing he won’t be welcomed by residents of Police. He largely stays in hiding, but his needs for food and murder draw him out occasionally and whilst the Police know he is the cause of the decapitated bodies that have started appearing, they don’t know where he is.
The final novel here, “Shadows”, opens in New York, where supposed miracle healer Jonathan Mathias claims to have unlocked the secrets of the astral body and believes it can be separated from the physical body. Meanwhile, psychic investigators in Oxford and Paris are looking to see if they can locate the area of the brain which controls this, one by using drugs and the other by hypnosis. However, it seems that this part of the brain may control our dark sides and separating it may not have unpleasant consequences.
Considering these three novels were written so close together in the early years of Hutson’s career, it’s incredible how varied they are in quality, although many of the style elements that have defined his writing were already in place. “Relics”, which as the latest novel here should have shown the most development, was a complete mess, both in the plotting, the writing and in the actual events. Most of the murders and accidents involve the removal of limbs and internal organs, accompanied by showers of blood. This can be a wonderful thing in a horror novel, if it is done well, but there is a repetition in the murders and their aftermath which actually does more to bore the reader by the end than it does to traumatise them and that is definitely not a good situation for any novel to find itself in.
This repetition extends into the writing, as not only are the set pieces the same in terms of detail, but Hutson also writes them with the same language every time. Everything is reeking and fetid and the sex scenes having throbbing organs and the repetition means than the whole thing becomes ludicrous and loses any ability it had to scare, or indeed evoke any sort of emotion at all. Fortunately, he had found this again in “Spawn”, which had hints of Frankenstein’s monster in miniature, with a combination of vampirism and mind control. The whole concept is quite frightening and frequently disgusting and some parts are written with sufficient detail that it’s occasionally nauseating, which is a level and quality of writing that I’ve not often come across in Hutson’s novels.
Even more remarkable was “Shadows”, which was a novel so different from the others in almost every way that it was almost recognisable as a Shaun Hutson novel. "Shadows" is a far more focussed and feels like a much better researched work than his others, meaning it only has a single plot and whilst there are several aspects to it, none of them stray too far away from the main story, as has been his habit in the past and all the strands are clearly linked and come together towards the end instead of falling away.
The single plot aspect was particularly important, as both “Relics” and “Spawn” had sub-plots which didn’t seem obviously linked to the main plot and which disappeared when it suited them. Having read a lot of Hutson’s work, it is evident that he rarely has the attention span to maintain and develop a single plot for an entire novel and so he has sub-plots which are there to fill pages and which are discarded, or folded into the main plot in a sudden and unrealistic way when he’s done with them.
The one thing Hutson does well is that whilst his language use is often repetitive, he does write in fairly simple language and in short chapters, which is a writing tool James Patterson also uses to keep the pages turning. He also switches regularly between plot and sub-plot which also helps maintain a fairly high pace and with the novels from his early career being fairly short, it passes very quickly, which is something of a relief when the sub-plots are pointless and some of the set pieces are poorly written and repetitive, meaning you’re rarely sad when a Hutson novel ends.
I see Hutson's writing frequently compared to Richard Laymon and that makes sense to me, as I haven't liked any of Laymon's work all that much, either, although I don't recall any of his writing being this poor. The novels in this collection do improve as they go and whilst the best of them is acceptable rather than being good, it does mean there is something to like, even if you’ve had to trawl through a couple of novels that were poorly written with worse plotting and whilst some of his set pieces were fairly imaginative, there wasn’t enough here to convince me that a Hutson novel is worth much more than 70 pence.
December 28, 2012
I picked this book up at a hostel bookswap since it was the only thing in English and I needed something to read on my flight home. It's pretty horrendous. Don't get me wrong, it's definitely sufficient if all you're looking for is senseless gore punctuated with sex and cheap, cliche horror flick scenes. I could only get through half of it (though it's a light read and only took me a couple of hours), and most of the time I was either guffawing aloud or grimacing at the tastelessness. Another thing I found extremely irritating was that many chapters ended with a horribly cheesy "clincher" template that always happened to be a sentence fragment indented onto its own line, usually beginning with "as."
Ex: The wood on the bottom and sides was scorched almost black.
As if it had been subjected to a powerful source of heat.
Ex: And to the plastic sheet on which they lay.
Shrivelled and contracted.
As if it had been burned.
Ex: As if, prior to death, each had witnessed something so dreadful it had simply caused their hearts to burst.
As if they had been frightened to death.
Yes, I might have nightmares about that bit.
Ex: The wood on the bottom and sides was scorched almost black.
As if it had been subjected to a powerful source of heat.
Ex: And to the plastic sheet on which they lay.
Shrivelled and contracted.
As if it had been burned.
Ex: As if, prior to death, each had witnessed something so dreadful it had simply caused their hearts to burst.
As if they had been frightened to death.
Yes, I might have nightmares about that bit.
May 20, 2009
All three of these stories are designed to scare, thrill and terrorise the reader and that is exactly what they do. Each story is well written with good characters and Shaun has obviously sorted some of the weaknesses of his previous writing. A brilliantly and deliciously scary read, these stories are not for the faint-hearted
August 11, 2016
I like a good piece of horror every once in a while. Especially horror that leaves a lot to the imagination of the reader, the kind where your imagination then goes overboard and gives you nightmares.
This is not that kind of horror. It is an accumulation of gore and bloody scenes. If you enjoy that kind of explicit descriptions I can actually recommend it, because otherwise the stories are not too bad. I actually sort of liked Spawn, but the others did not leave much of an impression (apart from the gore.)
This is not that kind of horror. It is an accumulation of gore and bloody scenes. If you enjoy that kind of explicit descriptions I can actually recommend it, because otherwise the stories are not too bad. I actually sort of liked Spawn, but the others did not leave much of an impression (apart from the gore.)
Want to read
September 27, 2010(one of 24 books found today at 2nd hand shop...24 for $10!)
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews