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Fatal Flowers: A Novel of Horror
Laughter. "Her stepfather was right, then." I heard the voice in the background say, most clearly. "He called and said we might be hearing from her with some cock-and-bull story. Shock from the accident, he said." The man came back on the line: "Well, we'll look into it, Miss Whelan. Now you just calm yourself and get a lot of rest, you hear?: " He hung up and left me standing there listening to a dead line...I wanted to scream. But Alice Whelan isn't imagining the horrors that she finds on Falcon Island, home of her retired movie star mother, Diana Hamilton, and her sixth husband, Leland Braddock. Who's the mysterious girl named Sarah who's locked away in the mansion tower? What connection does the captive have with the elaborate greenhouse that Leland and his brother Justin are maintaining in the nearby woods? And what strange and unholy experiments are the two men conducting with their...FATAL FLOWERS? A novel of riveting horror and suspense by a master storyteller.
200 pages, Paperback
First published August 1, 1973
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
July 2, 2011
I'm trying to think of a way to summarize this book without spoiling everything.
*thinks*
*makes a cup of tea*
*thinks again*
Ah, screw it.
So there's this girl named Alice. She's on a train to visit her long-lost mother. From the window she sees a girl being kidnapped & stuffed into a limo. Nobody believes her story when she arrives...but then she sees the limo & driver at her mother's house. Being a nosy little thing, Alice begins to search the crumbling old mansion & finds a teenage girl named Sarah who is locked in an old solarium with glass brick walls.
From there, the story makes an abrupt turn into crazyville.
Full disclosure: I've read many Benedict/Alexander/Banis gothics & enjoyed all of them. He's definitely one of my favorite pulp authors. But I have admit this isn't his best -- the story is too bizarre, & the writing isn't as good as other examples. It's not terrible (even with the hiccups, I've read much worse), but it lacks the silky, semi-ethereal flow I've come to expect from his gothics.
As for this one...oh my.
You must understand that I've yet to read a Banis gothic that obeys the laws of normality. He definitely thought outside the box for his trashy little tomes, & that's a good thing. But The Fatal Flower manages to stretch even MY forgiving taste for goffick oddity. Not only do we have a conservatory full of carnivorous plants (which is fabulously macabre), but these particular plants eat people, thanks to a windbag scientist who somehow interbred the little monsters into a beautiful, deadly mass. Now these Frankenstein plants have adopted a little girl who fell into their clutches, injecting her with their venom. And not only have they infused her with gooey poisonous blood, but they've given her the ability to suck lifeforces at will. (The plants also cuddle her when she touches them & recognize her as their daughter, because why not?) As if that wasn't wonky enough, there's a mystery potion that was created to either cure or infect other people with the plants' immortality & life-sucking abilities...but whatever. By then I was neck-deep in WTF & didn't pause to question that final nail in the Coffin-o-Coherency.
Quite honestly, the details defy logical plotting. Don't get me wrong; I was mesmerized, & it stuck in my mind like Gorilla Glue. If nothing else it's an exercise in sheer WTFery, which may entice a certain breed of reader. (You know who you are.) But for most people, I wouldn't recommend it.
*thinks*
*makes a cup of tea*
*thinks again*
Ah, screw it.
So there's this girl named Alice. She's on a train to visit her long-lost mother. From the window she sees a girl being kidnapped & stuffed into a limo. Nobody believes her story when she arrives...but then she sees the limo & driver at her mother's house. Being a nosy little thing, Alice begins to search the crumbling old mansion & finds a teenage girl named Sarah who is locked in an old solarium with glass brick walls.
From there, the story makes an abrupt turn into crazyville.
Full disclosure: I've read many Benedict/Alexander/Banis gothics & enjoyed all of them. He's definitely one of my favorite pulp authors. But I have admit this isn't his best -- the story is too bizarre, & the writing isn't as good as other examples. It's not terrible (even with the hiccups, I've read much worse), but it lacks the silky, semi-ethereal flow I've come to expect from his gothics.
As for this one...oh my.
You must understand that I've yet to read a Banis gothic that obeys the laws of normality. He definitely thought outside the box for his trashy little tomes, & that's a good thing. But The Fatal Flower manages to stretch even MY forgiving taste for goffick oddity. Not only do we have a conservatory full of carnivorous plants (which is fabulously macabre), but these particular plants eat people, thanks to a windbag scientist who somehow interbred the little monsters into a beautiful, deadly mass. Now these Frankenstein plants have adopted a little girl who fell into their clutches, injecting her with their venom. And not only have they infused her with gooey poisonous blood, but they've given her the ability to suck lifeforces at will. (The plants also cuddle her when she touches them & recognize her as their daughter, because why not?) As if that wasn't wonky enough, there's a mystery potion that was created to either cure or infect other people with the plants' immortality & life-sucking abilities...but whatever. By then I was neck-deep in WTF & didn't pause to question that final nail in the Coffin-o-Coherency.
Quite honestly, the details defy logical plotting. Don't get me wrong; I was mesmerized, & it stuck in my mind like Gorilla Glue. If nothing else it's an exercise in sheer WTFery, which may entice a certain breed of reader. (You know who you are.) But for most people, I wouldn't recommend it.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
June 15, 2025
I feel like the story took a really long time to get through. The way that Alice kept saying what she saw and trying to convince the others was just annoying tbh. They were all just gaslighting her and it caused her to get herself into the weird plant stuff. So now she’s a plant creature with her “boyfriend” who she wasn’t really interested in (off and on).
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
January 20, 2025
It's everything I wanted it to be - bizarre, smart, disturbing, curious, fluid writing, and a little bit magical. It's like a fever dream.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews