15 years ago, Anthony's younger brother enters an abandoned house where The Conjurer lived in the 1800s and performed evil experiments. After a bright flash of light, Ant's brother has disappeared. 15 years after his brother's disappearance, Ant's parents are murdered and he brings his wife and son back for the funeral. While there, they keep catching glimpses of small figures but blow it off as movements of the trees. Little did they know that one of those figures was getting close to his son to finish a ritual started long ago...

This was a very good read. The characters were well developed and I liked them. The creepy factor built up well from the figures to the Conjurer's house in the end and the attention to the small details was excellent! If you haven't read a Gary Fry book, pick it up and dive in!

2 1/2 Stars

15 years ago Anthony and his friends watched his younger brother go into an abandoned home called "Conjure House." A place with a haunted past that was owned by a man named Peter Suman who was said to run experiments in the house. Anthony's brother, Simon, never came back out.
15 years later and Anthony's parents are killed and it pulls Ant back to the home and memories he's left behind. Memories of the day his brother disappeared. Memories that won't stay in the past.

This sound good, right. I thought so, too. However, it was either the pacing or the dull characters (where was the hair-pulling, foot-stomping, eye-blazing, reactions to make the reader feel, become a part of the story?) that made this read slow-going and at times boring. The idea is great, it just doesn't grab you. There was too much supposition and self analyzing of the characters and what was going on to stay in the moment.

It was a decent read.

Read my full review: http://bit.ly/1btkqcm My opinion: I must admit that I found this novella to be slow moving and not very scary...even the parts that were supposed to be. As a result, it was difficult in keeping my attention. I expected more from this book (I was thinking the movie Poltergeist) than what was delivered.

This one started off a little slow for me and was a bit repetitive at times. The base story with the childhood friends coming home for a reunion has been done and the characters seemed a bit tired. The three friends that came back for the reunion didn’t really have any “skin in the game” and I was wondering why they were there and why they would even come back.

I did find the underlying premise very creative with “art” being a gateway to summoning dark entities and melding time - God’s-eye view as it is referred to within the story.

It sounds like I didn’t like this story, but I did. I found some parts very intriguing and well thought out, but there were some parts that seemed to be hammering elementary concepts over and over. I couldn’t get over the fact that the main characters wanted to move into the house after brutal murder of Anthony’s parents and the menacing undertone of the “Conjure House”. I also had a very hard time identifying with the young son Carl as his thoughts and language did not jibe with the age set.

With all that said, I still rather enjoyed the read, wish it was trimmed down a bit and I am eagerly awaiting Gary’s new one – Lurker.

In what feels like a much older novel than it is, Conjure House offers up a solid, old-fashioned horror novel story, the kind where the real horror always seems to be just off the margins of the page. Gary Fry establishes each scene beautifully, engaging the reader's imagination so well that it's often a surprise to look back and realize just how sparse the details are upon the page, when they're so vivid and vibrant in the mind's eye. It's a neat narrative trick, and one that's not easy to pull off, but it really serves to draw you deeper into the story.

Horror novels are often a bit odd, requiring a kind of patience that we, as readers, don't extend to other genres. We're generally willing to sit back and let the author establish the scene, foreshadow the real horror, and build up the suspense before finally allowing our fears to escape. Here, however, we get two of the strongest opening chapters I've read in a horror novel in quite some time. By the time we're through them, we already have the background we need to appreciate the horror, some sympathy for the protagonist, and a burning desire to find out what's really going on behind the doors of the Conjure House.

Fry makes use of a lot of the standard elements of the genre here, including a haunted house; the tormented, secretive father; the sensitive, somewhat prescient mother; the child who is surprisingly mature for his age; and the small circle of childhood friends who have scattered over the years, but who immediately return home to put the past to rest. Anybody who has ever read a Stephen King or Dean Koontz novel knows the formula, and also knows that formula can work very well, with enough inspiration and talent behind it. Even if Fry doesn't quite pull it off, there's enough imagination and ingenuity here to justify the attempt.

The pacing lags a bit in the middle of the book, as old friends are brought back together, but there are enough eerie, creepy, unsettling glimpses of the true horror embedded in their journeys to keep the reader close. Unfortunately, Anthony and his family dynamic is the weakest part of the story, and the lack of likability/sympathy does keep the novel from achieving the full impact of its potential. As for the mystical mumbo-jumbo of the Conjure House, the philosophical concepts of folding time, and the Lovecraft inspiration behind it all . . . well, it's a big heavy-handed for such a short novel, and probably a bit too intangible for some readers. I didn't particularly buy it, and didn't find it lived up to the atmosphere Fry created, but I did find it a nice alternative to the typical religious/spiritual conflict of good and evil.

Overall, it's a good book . . . a solid read . . . and a nice addition to the genre. I doubt I'll have any strong memories of it a few weeks or months from now, but I am curious to give Fry another read, and have no hesitation in recommending this to fans of the genre.


Originally reviewed at Beauty in Ruins