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Happy Cage
James Peck doesn't want much. Just to live forever. And he knows how to do it. All he has to do is take over another human being's body.
The trouble is, the first body he invaded--the catatonic hulk of his wife--turned out to be a mistake. But now he has escaped from that nightmare prison. And this time he wants to make absolutely sure that he will be "born again" and live happily ever after--no matter how many destroyed bodies he has to try on for size...
The trouble is, the first body he invaded--the catatonic hulk of his wife--turned out to be a mistake. But now he has escaped from that nightmare prison. And this time he wants to make absolutely sure that he will be "born again" and live happily ever after--no matter how many destroyed bodies he has to try on for size...
- GenresHorror
268 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published July 1, 1989
33 people want to read
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
July 18, 2019
By the late 80s/early 90s, it seemed most midlist horror novels had a tendency to get either more experimental (ala the Dell Abyss imprint), gorier (ala the splatterpunk movement), or just take tired old tropes and crank the insanity levels up to 11. This falls firmly into that last category. It's a possession story in essence, only this being can hop around from person to person -- or even dead bodies -- as it pleases. It's up to second-year grad student Andrew and his psychologist friend Jeanette to get to the bottom of it. But could they have somehow been responsible for it all in the first place, with their strange but seemingly innocent psych experiments at a home for the mentally ill?
My 3 star rating (3.5, actually) doesn't really reflect how much I enjoyed this -- well, the majority of it, at least. Eventually everything just became way too batshit crazy, even for me. The creepiness slowly turned into straight-up silliness. I kind of dug the silliness, but it went so over-the-top that I wish it had just stuck with the initial freaky vibe. Still, it's a fun, relatively well-written cheese-fest that's worth checking out if you happen to come across it cheap like I did. And you're a fan of the campier side of horror.
3.5 Stars.
(ETA: Daniel Raven is actually a pseudonym for horror author Gene Lazuta, whose first published novel, The Shinglo, was written under the name Alex Kane.)
My 3 star rating (3.5, actually) doesn't really reflect how much I enjoyed this -- well, the majority of it, at least. Eventually everything just became way too batshit crazy, even for me. The creepiness slowly turned into straight-up silliness. I kind of dug the silliness, but it went so over-the-top that I wish it had just stuck with the initial freaky vibe. Still, it's a fun, relatively well-written cheese-fest that's worth checking out if you happen to come across it cheap like I did. And you're a fan of the campier side of horror.
3.5 Stars.
(ETA: Daniel Raven is actually a pseudonym for horror author Gene Lazuta, whose first published novel, The Shinglo, was written under the name Alex Kane.)
Displaying 1 of 1 review