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Fear
Possessed by an evil entity, a young man becomes a psychotic murderer, turning the peaceful New England town of Quarry into a nightmare of horror and death
- GenresHorror
318 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published January 1, 1988
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
July 19, 2023
While Fear has it moments, I still haven't found a Gates book near the quality of his Grimm Memorials. The story takes place in a small town in Eastern Massachusetts close to Worcester. After a brief, bizarre prologue featuring some proto humans in Africa (more on this later), we have three teenagers making a trek up to a hill above an old quarry to see the first lunar eclipse on the Eastern seaboard in 100 years. Also making the trip is our main protagonist Denny, a 12 yo with psychic abilities who comes from a very abusive home, living with his single mother.
The eclipse is super, but along with it some strange shooting stars appear directly above; one of the teens, pouting after a tiff with the other two, gets coated in some odd ash from the meteors, and feels sick after wards. Denny for his part sees all this, but also has one of his rare 'visions', where two struggling teens are shot to death by some guy right below him and then the guy comes for him. Denny splits the scene with aplomb, leaving his telescope on the hill and the three teens make their way home to smoke another spiff.
So much for the sitrep. Rick, the teen who got the dose of ash from the meteor becomes obviously infected with something, puking his guts out and blacking out repeatedly. What is this infection? To be mildly spoilery, it quickly becomes apparent that it is some sort of alien organism (which Denny calls 'the Monster') that feeds on fear; a psychic vampire of sorts. Rick soon finds that the only thing that can make him feel better is to induce fear in others, and goes (at first under his blackouts) on a homicidal rampage, focusing on kids in town. One the 'Monster' has feed, it is able to spread to others, and then the real foo kicks in!
The plot is rather thin, and the prologue/epilogue are a bit ridiculous, but the foo between just about puts this into splatterpunk territory. While not for the squeamish, the gratuitous violence and seeing people's worst fears come to life are the primary redeeming feature of Fear. Having most of the main characters be subsumed to the 'Monster' is like 10 miles of bad road! That stated, not the best introduction to Gates. If you want some killer old school horror, check out his Grimm Memorials. 2.5 monster stars!
The eclipse is super, but along with it some strange shooting stars appear directly above; one of the teens, pouting after a tiff with the other two, gets coated in some odd ash from the meteors, and feels sick after wards. Denny for his part sees all this, but also has one of his rare 'visions', where two struggling teens are shot to death by some guy right below him and then the guy comes for him. Denny splits the scene with aplomb, leaving his telescope on the hill and the three teens make their way home to smoke another spiff.
So much for the sitrep. Rick, the teen who got the dose of ash from the meteor becomes obviously infected with something, puking his guts out and blacking out repeatedly. What is this infection? To be mildly spoilery, it quickly becomes apparent that it is some sort of alien organism (which Denny calls 'the Monster') that feeds on fear; a psychic vampire of sorts. Rick soon finds that the only thing that can make him feel better is to induce fear in others, and goes (at first under his blackouts) on a homicidal rampage, focusing on kids in town. One the 'Monster' has feed, it is able to spread to others, and then the real foo kicks in!
The plot is rather thin, and the prologue/epilogue are a bit ridiculous, but the foo between just about puts this into splatterpunk territory. While not for the squeamish, the gratuitous violence and seeing people's worst fears come to life are the primary redeeming feature of Fear. Having most of the main characters be subsumed to the 'Monster' is like 10 miles of bad road! That stated, not the best introduction to Gates. If you want some killer old school horror, check out his Grimm Memorials. 2.5 monster stars!
May 3, 2025
Well that was fucking insane. Seriously, R. Patrick Gates is demented. This novel certainly has some serious flaws, foremost of which is a lack of early character development. There's enough there to get you into the story, but Gates never goes further with it, and I thought he was going to. Putting that aside, what the book lacks in any real depth, it more than makes up for with absolutely unhinged mayhem. This is easily the goriest, craziest, full blown grossest 80's horror novel I've ever read, and it ain't close. The pacing is frenetic and only seems to get more and more nutty as the novel progresses, until the amount of brutal deaths occurring feels almost too hard to keep up with. And goddamn, this book is mean! No one is safe in Gates's book, not old people, not kids, not animals, not the disabled. If this was published now, it would undoubtedly be considered extreme horror, but I don't really get the sense that the author was just trying to be as gross a possible, so much as he was legitimately writing the kind of book he wanted to write. Man, I wish this had been made into a trashy 80's horror film, it would have been up there with Dead Alive on a splatter level. And that ending! Even more maniacal than everything that came before! I'll have to get around to reading Grim Memorials in the not too distant future!
November 1, 2017
Ancient Horror History Unearthed!!! Fear by R. Patrick Gates, straight outta 1988!
Fear came to me, via suggestion. Actually, not even for this book. Several readers recommended I check out his sophomore effort, the semi-cult classic, Grimm Memorials. I am yet to read that, but I ordered it months ago. I wanted some foundation for the authors work prior to jumping into what is arguably his best known work. So, I started with this, his first published novel, originally published by Onyx in October 1988.
Copies of this thing are pretty expensive, as it's been long out-of-print, so when I found a copy for a reasonable cost, I was pretty excited. Much more excited when the book arrived...an added surprise was that it was actually signed by the writer!! AND dated November, 1988!! This thing was signed by Gates himself a month after the book's initial release! Definitely a prized possession on my shelf.
Thankfully, the book is equally as prized to me. I can't wait to crack into Grimm Memorials after this. It's quite a ways out on my to-be-read list, but it's coming sooner than later, because I just have gotta read more by Gates after this fantastic time.
I've read mixed reviews and I can totally understand the negative perspective, to be frank. This is a novel where you have to completely suspend disbelief. It's also not a novel with some highly involved plot. There's not a whole bunch of story here, a relatively standard tale of a town overtaken by otherworldly evil driving people mad and to unspeakable acts of violence. You've probably read a very similar book before. But not quite like this.
Fear takes its tried-and-true formula, throws it in a blender and sets it to 10, then runs the resulting puree down a funhouse mirror, having an over-sugared 12 year old jump up and down in front of it, pointing and screaming "LOOK AT THIS! LOOK AT THIS!!".
Point blank-Fear is wild. It's borderline feral reading.
This is quite honestly, what I was hoping for when I first read Johnstone. It's what I wished Johnstone would be.
The kitchen sink approach is just ludicrous, in all the right ways. Everything you'd want to read as a fan of loud, obnoxious horror reading is here. Pages and pages of gore, stomach turning moments, insanely bizarre thought processes and actions on behalf of the books characters, and a pace that is to be reckoned with.
This is a relentless dark ride, unhinged in all the right ways. The book reads like a funhouse, throwing endless gags and nasty bits in your face in such a non-stop way. And it spares none.
Children are brutally discarded in vivid detail, little old ladies are ripped to shreds and in one of my favorite moments in the book, the 12 year old psychic hero just decimates his abusive, alcoholic mother who is melting. Over pages of the book. It's an entire scene, unfliching from every gruesome detail. Other writers would turn away, protecting their readers from the nastiest moments, but Gates forces you to stare at it, with your eyelids taped open.
This isn't perfect reading for everyone, but I'll be absolutely damned if it's not perfect reading for me. Sure, it's a thin tale. It's a ridiculous tale. And it's not very well written, a lot of repetition here.
But I simply don't care. I love this book. It's like reading a carnival attraction designed to make you queasy. It's everything I want from a late 80s horror paperback.
And this is his FIRST BOOK!!! I can't wait to read everything Gates has published.
I give it a 5/5. If you're into the disgusting, it's for you all the way. If you're into brainless, over-the-top-of-tops action, it's for you. If you want insanity, done in all the right ways, while tying in all of the standard 80s horror tropes...look no further.
An absolutely putrid great time.
originally posted on my blog http://undivineinterventions.blogspot...
Fear came to me, via suggestion. Actually, not even for this book. Several readers recommended I check out his sophomore effort, the semi-cult classic, Grimm Memorials. I am yet to read that, but I ordered it months ago. I wanted some foundation for the authors work prior to jumping into what is arguably his best known work. So, I started with this, his first published novel, originally published by Onyx in October 1988.
Copies of this thing are pretty expensive, as it's been long out-of-print, so when I found a copy for a reasonable cost, I was pretty excited. Much more excited when the book arrived...an added surprise was that it was actually signed by the writer!! AND dated November, 1988!! This thing was signed by Gates himself a month after the book's initial release! Definitely a prized possession on my shelf.
Thankfully, the book is equally as prized to me. I can't wait to crack into Grimm Memorials after this. It's quite a ways out on my to-be-read list, but it's coming sooner than later, because I just have gotta read more by Gates after this fantastic time.
I've read mixed reviews and I can totally understand the negative perspective, to be frank. This is a novel where you have to completely suspend disbelief. It's also not a novel with some highly involved plot. There's not a whole bunch of story here, a relatively standard tale of a town overtaken by otherworldly evil driving people mad and to unspeakable acts of violence. You've probably read a very similar book before. But not quite like this.
Fear takes its tried-and-true formula, throws it in a blender and sets it to 10, then runs the resulting puree down a funhouse mirror, having an over-sugared 12 year old jump up and down in front of it, pointing and screaming "LOOK AT THIS! LOOK AT THIS!!".
Point blank-Fear is wild. It's borderline feral reading.
This is quite honestly, what I was hoping for when I first read Johnstone. It's what I wished Johnstone would be.
The kitchen sink approach is just ludicrous, in all the right ways. Everything you'd want to read as a fan of loud, obnoxious horror reading is here. Pages and pages of gore, stomach turning moments, insanely bizarre thought processes and actions on behalf of the books characters, and a pace that is to be reckoned with.
This is a relentless dark ride, unhinged in all the right ways. The book reads like a funhouse, throwing endless gags and nasty bits in your face in such a non-stop way. And it spares none.
Children are brutally discarded in vivid detail, little old ladies are ripped to shreds and in one of my favorite moments in the book, the 12 year old psychic hero just decimates his abusive, alcoholic mother who is melting. Over pages of the book. It's an entire scene, unfliching from every gruesome detail. Other writers would turn away, protecting their readers from the nastiest moments, but Gates forces you to stare at it, with your eyelids taped open.
This isn't perfect reading for everyone, but I'll be absolutely damned if it's not perfect reading for me. Sure, it's a thin tale. It's a ridiculous tale. And it's not very well written, a lot of repetition here.
But I simply don't care. I love this book. It's like reading a carnival attraction designed to make you queasy. It's everything I want from a late 80s horror paperback.
And this is his FIRST BOOK!!! I can't wait to read everything Gates has published.
I give it a 5/5. If you're into the disgusting, it's for you all the way. If you're into brainless, over-the-top-of-tops action, it's for you. If you want insanity, done in all the right ways, while tying in all of the standard 80s horror tropes...look no further.
An absolutely putrid great time.
originally posted on my blog http://undivineinterventions.blogspot...
March 20, 2023
Overall, a decent, violent read. An alien (in the form of dust?) finds its way to earth and feeds on fear. You can pretty much guess this right off the bat, even though it is not really mentioned until the end. Up till then they just call it the monster. The story tries to be vague as to what is happening, but not enough depth to make it hard to figure out. The deaths are brutal, and not too descriptive. Very imaginative, different deaths though, thinking of the girl who choked to death and the man who bleed to death with her giggidty lol. Also, the ending was very quick, and sort of lackluster. Lots of characters, but you don't need to worry too much about it as not many make it thru till the end. Overall, it just felt sort of "eh" when finished. It was a fun read, but just feel it could have been more.
October 21, 2025
I’m always lamenting that these vintage horror novels never really GO for it. Well… this one certainly does. It’s cool finding these rare little gems.
May 4, 2016
Particularly great read for people who are familiar with the Fitchburg and Cleghorn area.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews