Skip to main content
PBS logo
 
 

Book Review of Once

Once
perryfran avatar reviewed on + 1221 more book reviews


I've read a few other books by Herbert, who is sometimes considered the "Stephen King of Britain", and for the most part they have been enjoyable horror tales. This one was quite a departure from his usual fare. I guess you could call it an adult erotic fairy tale.

The protagonist, Thom Kindred, who is only 27, has had a stroke and needs time to recover. To do this, he goes back to his childhood home of Castle Bracken where he and his mother lived in a nearby cottage called Little Bracken. During his childhood, his mother told him tales of fairies and other mythical creatures up until her sudden death but she never disclosed who Thom's father was. The master of Castle Bracken paid for Thom's schooling but was it out of kindheartedness or was it for some other reason? Upon Thom's return home, strange happenings start to occur involving elves, witches, fairies, and other creatures who live in the woods around the castle. This included some very erotic sequences that definitely were not written for children! In the end, the tale was a classic good vs. evil story with a clash between the forces of darkness and the goodness of the "faeryfolkis."

I know this Herbert novel has received some very mixed reviews with some hating it and others loving it. I was kind of in the middle and would mildly recommend it for lovers of fairy tales.