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Overanalysis
So I just finished Floating Dragon by Peter Straub. Being fairly unfamiliar with horror, I was oblivious to the fact that this was a famous horror author, and didn't really manage to figure out what genre I was reading until over halfway through the book.
I find myself rather annoyed now, at the end. It took some thought to figure out what it was that annoyed me so much about the book, but I think I've put my finger on it. The author did exactly what people who hate and don't understand fantasy complain about: he made a world where anything could happen.
I'm used to science fiction and fantasy tropes, where there are definite rules as to how the fantastic works. Even if you don't quite understand everything, even if the author made it all up, there's a sense of logical framework and of cause and effect. So when you get to the end, you look back and most of what was fantastic makes sense within this framework. And the heroes have worked out at least the basics of the framework and use that to defeat the villain within the framework.
I'm pretty sure there was no framework in this book other than "bad guy is evil and can do whatever he wants" and "weird shit happens." The author makes some handwavings as to why the villain comes back every thirty years and why he's extra strong this time. But there's never any good explanation as to why he seems to be basically omnipotent - his powers range from causing hallucinations to setting things on fire spontaenously to controlling people's minds to making dogs appear out of thin air to teleportation, etc etc etc. But for no good reason, the heroes gain random telepathy and mystical swords (in a book set in modern Connecticut). Also, they defeat him with the power of song. (No, this was not foreshadowed or explained in any way. Suddenly, the female character decides that singing is the thing they need to do. And lo and behold, it works!)
Another annoying thing was the rampant foreshadowing abuse. He introduces the pregnant wife, and immediately informs the reader that the hero is never going to get to give his daughter the name he wants to give her. And then repeats over and over the fact that the wife and daughter are going to die. But then sets up their deaths like it's a big surprise. Sorry, you don't get to spin any tension out of "why won't she pick up the phone?" It's probably 'cause she's dead, like you've been telling us was going to happen since you introduced the character.
In fact, he tells you ahead of time basically exactly who was going to survive. Because it's being told by a writer after the fact, he will repeatedly have interviews with people, so you know who's going to make it. And you're repeatedly hit in the face with heavy-handed foreshadowing, so you also know who's going to die. The only characters you don't know what's going to happen to are so minor that they got maybe a paragraph or three mention at the beginning and end. Who cares.
Finally, it feels as if every possible cliche of "things that are gross or scary" gets thrown in, for no good reason. For example, at one point, people are in the evil shack of doom where mass murders happened thirty years ago, which seems to be a locus of evil. They turn on a faucet, and disgusting yellow stuff sprays out and won't stop. What is it? It could be rendered fat of the bodies you think are in the basement, as an explanation for what the guy was doing to his victims. It could be more of the mutagenic chemical spill that started the plot. They go downstairs, you're sure they'll find the horrifying source, and there are...spiders. And ghosts and a mind-controlled mass murdered with chemical burns, but no explanation of the yellow gunk. Apparently it's just there to be icky.
In one book, we have an evil government conspiracy, biological warfare, a vengeful ghost, a dragon, mind control, hallucinations, a mysterious disease, rape, a mass murder, spousal abuse, arson, unexplained explosions, suicidal cats, dead birds, children drowning themselves, people being killed by their own dreams, zombies, spiders, bats, premonitions, the devil, hell, multiple dream sequences, an evil dog that herds people around, killer aurora borealis, a mobster, a blustery general who doesn't care if everyone dies, paintings that come to life, a mirror that is a portal to another dimension, flesh melting off people's bones, cannabalism, war, and seas of blood.
I think the only thing I can think of that wasn't thrown in was rats.
Oh, and at the end, after watching everyone in town go insane and kill each other and having his wife and unborn child brutally slaughtered and dismembered as a way of getting him and then brought back to life so that they can haunt him and try to kill him and if they touch him, his flesh sizzles and burns - the hero has a new wife and a new baby son like a year and a half later and totally isn't traumatized at all.
So yeah. I'm not a huge fan of horror, and maybe I'm just not being sympathetic to the tropes and I'm as bad as people who complain about fantasy and science fiction for being themselves. And I can certainly say that on a line-by-line basis, the author's quite good - excellent word choice, great building of characters in a few strokes. But the more I think about the construction of the plot, the more irritated I get.
I find myself rather annoyed now, at the end. It took some thought to figure out what it was that annoyed me so much about the book, but I think I've put my finger on it. The author did exactly what people who hate and don't understand fantasy complain about: he made a world where anything could happen.
I'm used to science fiction and fantasy tropes, where there are definite rules as to how the fantastic works. Even if you don't quite understand everything, even if the author made it all up, there's a sense of logical framework and of cause and effect. So when you get to the end, you look back and most of what was fantastic makes sense within this framework. And the heroes have worked out at least the basics of the framework and use that to defeat the villain within the framework.
I'm pretty sure there was no framework in this book other than "bad guy is evil and can do whatever he wants" and "weird shit happens." The author makes some handwavings as to why the villain comes back every thirty years and why he's extra strong this time. But there's never any good explanation as to why he seems to be basically omnipotent - his powers range from causing hallucinations to setting things on fire spontaenously to controlling people's minds to making dogs appear out of thin air to teleportation, etc etc etc. But for no good reason, the heroes gain random telepathy and mystical swords (in a book set in modern Connecticut). Also, they defeat him with the power of song. (No, this was not foreshadowed or explained in any way. Suddenly, the female character decides that singing is the thing they need to do. And lo and behold, it works!)
Another annoying thing was the rampant foreshadowing abuse. He introduces the pregnant wife, and immediately informs the reader that the hero is never going to get to give his daughter the name he wants to give her. And then repeats over and over the fact that the wife and daughter are going to die. But then sets up their deaths like it's a big surprise. Sorry, you don't get to spin any tension out of "why won't she pick up the phone?" It's probably 'cause she's dead, like you've been telling us was going to happen since you introduced the character.
In fact, he tells you ahead of time basically exactly who was going to survive. Because it's being told by a writer after the fact, he will repeatedly have interviews with people, so you know who's going to make it. And you're repeatedly hit in the face with heavy-handed foreshadowing, so you also know who's going to die. The only characters you don't know what's going to happen to are so minor that they got maybe a paragraph or three mention at the beginning and end. Who cares.
Finally, it feels as if every possible cliche of "things that are gross or scary" gets thrown in, for no good reason. For example, at one point, people are in the evil shack of doom where mass murders happened thirty years ago, which seems to be a locus of evil. They turn on a faucet, and disgusting yellow stuff sprays out and won't stop. What is it? It could be rendered fat of the bodies you think are in the basement, as an explanation for what the guy was doing to his victims. It could be more of the mutagenic chemical spill that started the plot. They go downstairs, you're sure they'll find the horrifying source, and there are...spiders. And ghosts and a mind-controlled mass murdered with chemical burns, but no explanation of the yellow gunk. Apparently it's just there to be icky.
In one book, we have an evil government conspiracy, biological warfare, a vengeful ghost, a dragon, mind control, hallucinations, a mysterious disease, rape, a mass murder, spousal abuse, arson, unexplained explosions, suicidal cats, dead birds, children drowning themselves, people being killed by their own dreams, zombies, spiders, bats, premonitions, the devil, hell, multiple dream sequences, an evil dog that herds people around, killer aurora borealis, a mobster, a blustery general who doesn't care if everyone dies, paintings that come to life, a mirror that is a portal to another dimension, flesh melting off people's bones, cannabalism, war, and seas of blood.
I think the only thing I can think of that wasn't thrown in was rats.
Oh, and at the end, after watching everyone in town go insane and kill each other and having his wife and unborn child brutally slaughtered and dismembered as a way of getting him and then brought back to life so that they can haunt him and try to kill him and if they touch him, his flesh sizzles and burns - the hero has a new wife and a new baby son like a year and a half later and totally isn't traumatized at all.
So yeah. I'm not a huge fan of horror, and maybe I'm just not being sympathetic to the tropes and I'm as bad as people who complain about fantasy and science fiction for being themselves. And I can certainly say that on a line-by-line basis, the author's quite good - excellent word choice, great building of characters in a few strokes. But the more I think about the construction of the plot, the more irritated I get.