Awards

• Winner of British Fantasy Award 1983
• Winner of British Fantasy Award 1983.

Overview

'Floating Dragon racks you with suspense Straub is a master at having whole communities rocked by the forces of wickedness.' Observer The terrors afflicting the sleepy town of Hampstead, Connecticut, were beyond imagination. Sparrows dropping dead from the trees like rotten fruit, disfiguring diseases spreading like wildfire, inexplicable murders and child drownings shattering the lives of the citizens - never can such a list of horrors have afflicted one town. But the evil madness had a long history. A catastrophe had struck Hampstead every thirty years since its foundation 300 years before - yet only Graham Williams, a writer and descendant of one of the original founders, had looked into the 'black summers' and their mysterious origins. When he discovers that descendants of the three other original settlers are back living in the town, he knows it will be the blackest summer yet

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9780006164944

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Reviews

'His best, his most horrifying. Straub seems determined to create a richer, more complex fictional world! Vastly entertaining.' New York Times Book Review 'The most deliciously frightening horror novel to come along in years.' Spectator 'Straub takes horror a long way beyond the obvious, but keeps his terrifying events down to earth.' Mail on Sunday

Like many another genre novelist who hasn't been able to come up with a fresh twist, occult/horror-man Straub has instead thrown a little bit of everything into this massive mess of a book: a haunted town, family curses, demonic possession, duels with Satan, telepathy, clairvoyance, ghosts, bats, plague, murder, suicide, and plenty of dead birds. Still, through about the first half of the excessive 500+ pages here, Straub's cross-cutting techniques and appealing characterizations do manage to stir up a curious, eerie mixture. In posh little Hampstead, Ct., in May 1980, assorted creepy things are happening. There's a hushed-up accident at a research facility - and a thinking cloud of DRG-16 (a bio-warfare gas) floats out, causing several citizens to slowly, revoltingly liquefy. There's a series of savage slash-murders. There are child suicides (by drowning), outbreaks of insanity. And the focus gradually closes in on four Hampstead residents, all with long local family histories, who are especially attuned to the goings-on: architect Richard Allbee, former child TV-star, haunted by his dead co-star; clairvoyant teenager Tabby Smithfield, son of a ne'er-do-well alcoholic; psychic Patsy McCloud, a battered wife; and aged writer Graham Williams - the sometime narrator who knows what's really going on. Back in '24, you see, Graham killed a homicidal Hampstead maniac named Bates Krell who was actually a reincarnation of Satanic, pre-Revolutionary villain Gideon Winter; and now, it seems, Winter has returned yet again to cover Hampstead in evil (he's taken over the body of the town's most beloved doctor!) - so it's up to the four heroes, the last of their families, to do battle against this Dragon. Veteran occult readers, then, will find a disappointingly standard plot waiting for them here, despite the enticing opening puzzles. Even worse, once the haunted-town setup is revealed, Straub doesn't move snappily to the inevitable demon-duel finale (with love-power triumphant); instead, he pads things out with over 200 pages of murk and gore - as Hampstead's woes escalate (fire, plague), as Graham reminisces, as Winter kills more (Richard's wife, Tabby's father), as the four heroes suffer through morbid hallucinations, frequent retching, visitations (bats, black dogs), and near-fatal clashes with Winter. And if considerably more readable than the pretentious Shadowland, this again fails to supply the ghoulish fun of Ghost Story - though genre devotees will certainly get their fill of gruesome special effects. . . and others, lured in by Straub's crafty first chapters, may also stay the course. (Kirkus Reviews)

Author Information

Peter Straub was born in Milwaukee, and is the author of fourteen novels, including Ghost Story and The Talisman (with Stephen King). He has won two British Fantasy Awards, two Bram Stoker Awards, the International Horror Guild Award and two World Fantasy Awards, and was elected Grand Master at the 1998 World Horror Convention. His books have been translated into more than twenty languages. He has lived in Ireland and England, and now lives in New York City.

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