Henry Sutton (2) (1935–)

Sometimes trashy fiction is better than you expect it to be. I expected this to be lurid, but although it had some horror elements (tame by today's standards) it also had a surprising amount of history and mythology worked into the plot.

The plot is the hoary "academic comes across mysterious book with dire consequences," hardly original even in 1978. I confess I am a fan of the genre, but unlike many of the novels about, say, the Voynich manuscript, what was in this mysterious book was decipherable by our intrepid professor, and the secret was properly original and horrific.

The novel shows its age not by its setting but through a couple gratuitous sex scenes, cardboard (sex fiend) female characters, and instances of casual racism, all of which would have been inconspicuous in the '70s, but are uncomfortably noticeable now.

All in all, worth a read if you are a fan of light, trashy fiction. If you're also a fan of ancient history, you might learn something, too.… (mer)