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Ludlow's Mill
paperback book
- GenresHorror
300 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published January 1, 1981
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
November 18, 2022
I was not expecting a great read here, but being that Ludlows Mill is set about 30 miles from where I live (Central Florida) and that is was published in 1981, I thought I would give it a go. The only reason this is a two star instead of a one, unfortunately, is the setting. This had the bones of a great story, but the author failed to pull it off; the stilted dialogue, incredulous plot 'twists', and ham-handed attempts to make this a 'sensual horror' combined for a, lets say, lackluster reading experience.
Our main protagonist, Karen ('Kar' to friends) is a youngish widow with a 15 y.o. son. She is a graphic illustrator for children's books and lives in a small, sleepy town in Central Florida. The book begins with her eagerly awaiting her 'kid sister' (now in her mid/late 20s) arriving from the 'big city' of Cleveland, Ohio for a few weeks of vacation. Somehow (it is never clear exactly how) her sister Jen's body is taken over by a Lamia- an ancient, snake-like being who likes to drink the blood of young, healthy people and then instigate wild sex with boys.
Karen, and her beau Patrick (who lives in Florida somewhere), at first do not know what to make of Jen. Jen seems like the old Jen one minute, and then some evil, lecherous monster the next. Further, young women are being found killed and mutilated and some are missing shortly after Jen's arrival. At first Karen and Patrick are sure Jen is a monster, but then (about midway through), after Jen pulls a 'nice' phase, believe they were overreacting and Jen is just fine. Walters really asks a lot of his readers for us to suffer such a suspension of disbelief with the flipflops on how Karen and Patrick see Jen. Toss in some incest (Jen and Karen's son) and things get a little hairy, if not outright icky. Karen's son, although 15, acts more like 10 here, making me wonder if Walters ever knew a 15 year old boy
The 'sensual horror' aspect is really pretty tame-- more depictions/descriptions of 'heavy, large breasts' and such than anything else. Again, this had the bones of a good, spooky story, but an almost complete fail on execution. I really wanted to like this but it was like Walters did everything he could to sabotage his own story in inaneness. Interestingly, this was published by Tor, but distributed by Pinnacle, which later came under the umbrella of Kensington, which published under the Zebra and Pinnacle labels. Really felt like a bad Zebra novel! 1.5 stars, only rounding up for the nice depiction of small town FL.
Our main protagonist, Karen ('Kar' to friends) is a youngish widow with a 15 y.o. son. She is a graphic illustrator for children's books and lives in a small, sleepy town in Central Florida. The book begins with her eagerly awaiting her 'kid sister' (now in her mid/late 20s) arriving from the 'big city' of Cleveland, Ohio for a few weeks of vacation. Somehow (it is never clear exactly how) her sister Jen's body is taken over by a Lamia- an ancient, snake-like being who likes to drink the blood of young, healthy people and then instigate wild sex with boys.
Karen, and her beau Patrick (who lives in Florida somewhere), at first do not know what to make of Jen. Jen seems like the old Jen one minute, and then some evil, lecherous monster the next. Further, young women are being found killed and mutilated and some are missing shortly after Jen's arrival. At first Karen and Patrick are sure Jen is a monster, but then (about midway through), after Jen pulls a 'nice' phase, believe they were overreacting and Jen is just fine. Walters really asks a lot of his readers for us to suffer such a suspension of disbelief with the flipflops on how Karen and Patrick see Jen. Toss in some incest (Jen and Karen's son) and things get a little hairy, if not outright icky. Karen's son, although 15, acts more like 10 here, making me wonder if Walters ever knew a 15 year old boy
The 'sensual horror' aspect is really pretty tame-- more depictions/descriptions of 'heavy, large breasts' and such than anything else. Again, this had the bones of a good, spooky story, but an almost complete fail on execution. I really wanted to like this but it was like Walters did everything he could to sabotage his own story in inaneness. Interestingly, this was published by Tor, but distributed by Pinnacle, which later came under the umbrella of Kensington, which published under the Zebra and Pinnacle labels. Really felt like a bad Zebra novel! 1.5 stars, only rounding up for the nice depiction of small town FL.
November 14, 2025
weird book; serpent incest, sisterhood, rushed ending.... 4 stars
July 16, 2021
{1981} Ludlow's Mill by R.R. Walters. It's a novel of "sensual" horror. Eh. No more than some non-sensual tagged horror novels I've read. I picked this to read cause there was something about it that reminded of Twin Peaks and actually when it first started it totally did. The first chapter is in the perspective of the disembodied evil creature called the Lamia which I guess in mythology is a kind of a lady vampire snake creature. She hunts healthy young women to drink their blood. She finds one. Massacres her. There are some pretty brutal death scenes in this book. Next chapter we meet our star, Karen or Kar as her friends call her. Her sister is in town. She hasn't seen her in three years. She picks up her sister acting weird; her eyes looking all snake and she seems to be hitting on her fifteen year old son. Tight. Sensual incest. At this point I was like, nooooo. Also,I was really hoping it was going to be a mystery of who the evil entity was inhabiting but twas not. So basically it goes back and forth with Kar being weirded out by her sister and then being like, nah she's cool. Back and forth and back and forth. More young ladies are slaughtered. Young men are boned. I guess killing makes the Lamia horny. With all this killing and weirdness going on it finally comes to a head with a pretty exciting showcase showdown. The end was good. The middle dragged. It would have been better with a mystery element...and no incest.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews