[phpBB Debug] PHP Warning: in file [ROOT]/includes/bbcode.php on line 483: preg_replace(): The /e modifier is no longer supported, use preg_replace_callback instead [phpBB Debug] PHP Warning: in file [ROOT]/includes/bbcode.php on line 483: preg_replace(): The /e modifier is no longer supported, use preg_replace_callback instead [phpBB Debug] PHP Warning: in file [ROOT]/includes/bbcode.php on line 483: preg_replace(): The /e modifier is no longer supported, use preg_replace_callback instead [phpBB Debug] PHP Warning: in file [ROOT]/includes/bbcode.php on line 483: preg_replace(): The /e modifier is no longer supported, use preg_replace_callback instead [phpBB Debug] PHP Warning: in file [ROOT]/includes/bbcode.php on line 483: preg_replace(): The /e modifier is no longer supported, use preg_replace_callback instead [phpBB Debug] PHP Warning: in file [ROOT]/includes/bbcode.php on line 483: preg_replace(): The /e modifier is no longer supported, use preg_replace_callback instead [phpBB Debug] PHP Warning: in file [ROOT]/includes/bbcode.php on line 483: preg_replace(): The /e modifier is no longer supported, use preg_replace_callback instead [phpBB Debug] PHP Warning: in file [ROOT]/includes/bbcode.php on line 483: preg_replace(): The /e modifier is no longer supported, use preg_replace_callback instead [phpBB Debug] PHP Warning: in file [ROOT]/includes/bbcode.php on line 483: preg_replace(): The /e modifier is no longer supported, use preg_replace_callback instead [phpBB Debug] PHP Warning: in file [ROOT]/includes/bbcode.php on line 483: preg_replace(): The /e modifier is no longer supported, use preg_replace_callback instead [phpBB Debug] PHP Warning: in file [ROOT]/includes/bbcode.php on line 483: preg_replace(): The /e modifier is no longer supported, use preg_replace_callback instead [phpBB Debug] PHP Warning: in file [ROOT]/includes/bbcode.php on line 483: preg_replace(): The /e modifier is no longer supported, use preg_replace_callback instead [phpBB Debug] PHP Warning: in file [ROOT]/includes/bbcode.php on line 483: preg_replace(): The /e modifier is no longer supported, use preg_replace_callback instead [phpBB Debug] PHP Warning: in file [ROOT]/includes/bbcode.php on line 483: preg_replace(): The /e modifier is no longer supported, use preg_replace_callback instead [phpBB Debug] PHP Warning: in file [ROOT]/includes/bbcode.php on line 483: preg_replace(): The /e modifier is no longer supported, use preg_replace_callback instead [phpBB Debug] PHP Warning: in file [ROOT]/includes/bbcode.php on line 483: preg_replace(): The /e modifier is no longer supported, use preg_replace_callback instead [phpBB Debug] PHP Warning: in file [ROOT]/includes/bbcode.php on line 483: preg_replace(): The /e modifier is no longer supported, use preg_replace_callback instead [phpBB Debug] PHP Warning: in file [ROOT]/includes/bbcode.php on line 483: preg_replace(): The /e modifier is no longer supported, use preg_replace_callback instead [phpBB Debug] PHP Warning: in file [ROOT]/includes/bbcode.php on line 483: preg_replace(): The /e modifier is no longer supported, use preg_replace_callback instead [phpBB Debug] PHP Warning: in file [ROOT]/includes/bbcode.php on line 483: preg_replace(): The /e modifier is no longer supported, use preg_replace_callback instead [phpBB Debug] PHP Warning: in file [ROOT]/includes/bbcode.php on line 483: preg_replace(): The /e modifier is no longer supported, use preg_replace_callback instead [phpBB Debug] PHP Warning: in file [ROOT]/includes/bbcode.php on line 483: preg_replace(): The /e modifier is no longer supported, use preg_replace_callback instead [phpBB Debug] PHP Warning: in file [ROOT]/includes/bbcode.php on line 483: preg_replace(): The /e modifier is no longer supported, use preg_replace_callback instead [phpBB Debug] PHP Warning: in file [ROOT]/includes/bbcode.php on line 483: preg_replace(): The /e modifier is no longer supported, use preg_replace_callback instead [phpBB Debug] PHP Warning: in file [ROOT]/includes/bbcode.php on line 483: preg_replace(): The /e modifier is no longer supported, use preg_replace_callback instead [phpBB Debug] PHP Warning: in file [ROOT]/includes/bbcode.php on line 483: preg_replace(): The /e modifier is no longer supported, use preg_replace_callback instead [phpBB Debug] PHP Warning: in file [ROOT]/includes/bbcode.php on line 112: preg_replace(): The /e modifier is no longer supported, use preg_replace_callback instead [phpBB Debug] PHP Warning: in file [ROOT]/includes/functions.php on line 4668: Cannot modify header information - headers already sent by (output started at [ROOT]/includes/functions.php:3815) [phpBB Debug] PHP Warning: in file [ROOT]/includes/functions.php on line 4670: Cannot modify header information - headers already sent by (output started at [ROOT]/includes/functions.php:3815) [phpBB Debug] PHP Warning: in file [ROOT]/includes/functions.php on line 4671: Cannot modify header information - headers already sent by (output started at [ROOT]/includes/functions.php:3815) [phpBB Debug] PHP Warning: in file [ROOT]/includes/functions.php on line 4672: Cannot modify header information - headers already sent by (output started at [ROOT]/includes/functions.php:3815) Horror World • View topic - My Thoughts On Deep Night by Greg Gifune
The best way to describe this book would be to say that its basic plot resembles an intellectual version of Stephen King’s “Dreamcatcher”. Four guys are in a cabin out in the woods in Maine when a stranger comes to visit and infects all of them with …something. The infection begins to take them over slowly with its final ambition being world conquest.
Aside from the description above and the two books sharing some thrilling action scenes, there is little else they have in common. While King’s characters may have been a bit cartoonish at times, a couple of them were at least likeable, or identifiable. In Deep Night, with one exception, the characters seem as distant as second cousins. The rain is always chilly in Deep Night and the snow is always bone cold, a direct reflection of the characters.
Though the story seems to be straightforward, the plotting is muddled at times. There is an abundance of exposition relayed through flashbacks, dream sequences, and conversation that tends to be repetitive and I hate to say, boring at times. More than once I was tempted to skip over pages and pages that related to the main characters relations with his parents, that night they all spent in the woods, and in the bedroom that main character shared with his brother when they were kids.
Despite all of the above, there is a good story buried in Deep Night (with a little editing, it might be a great story!). The scenes where action does take place are filled with tension and suspense and had me glued to the pages. The subtext, the very nature of God (of which, the more I read of Gifune, the more I believe is a common theme in all of his novels) is laid out in a way this is not preachy and integral to the story. And I also thought that the premise, that man’s own very nature was the catalyst for the success of the infection, was original and explained very well. The ending of the book I thought was excellent, Gifune did a good job explaining and tying together all the different aspects of the meandering plot and it left me emotionally spent. I was also happy to see that everything was not put to bed all nice and neat.
If you have already read some of the other Gifune novels we have discussed here and enjoyed them, you should read Deep Night, it will give you a different perspective on his work. But if you are a Gifune virgin, I would recommend not starting with Deep Night. The Bleeding Season, Children of Chaos, Dominion, or Saving Uncle would be a much better place to start.
Tony, I'm actually kind of shocked that you didn't respond more enthusiastically to this novel. I would have though its existential qualities would have appealed to you of all people. Just goes to show ... something or other, I'm sure.
My take on it was a little different.
* * *
There’s a moment in the movie THE THING (the 1951 version) when a blizzard has been raging throughout the night, and the people in the outpost suddenly realize they’re trapped with some unnamed horror. Even repeated viewings don’t diminish that chill.
Snowfall can be terrifying. Ask any of the characters in Greg Gifune’s Deep Night.
As always with Gifune’s work, the muscular prose gets a headlock on the reader almost at once. A night of snowbound trauma permanently marks a group of friends, one of whom has suffered from night terrors all his life. (In a curious way, this gives him an advantage, because unreasoning fear constitutes a new experience for the others.) When they can’t bring themselves even to discuss the events of that night, demons track them down, one by one, an easy task since the group now carries a spiritual infection within them ... and demons thrive on this sort of thing.
Be warned. The level of creeping dread grows increasingly intense. This is a profoundly unsettling book, on many levels a philosophical consideration of the nature both of demons and of evil itself. But then Greg Gifune’s writing rarely offers conventional thrills. Though enough visceral terror lurks in these pages to satiate even the most avid pulp fan, the horrors at the heart of Deep Night are no less existential than those haunting The View from the Lake or The Bleeding Season, never mind the flashes of razor-sharp wit or the complex moral issues presented.
“Their eyes met as both men tried their best to quiet the echoes of screams bellowing in their minds – screams of relentless agony and terror – all the while ignoring the shadows growing along the walls and everything hidden within them.”
Strong stuff, but then Gifune’s work has never been for the weak hearted. Or the weak minded. He remains the thinking reader’s horror writer, and his fiction always evokes serious issues. For instance … what is insanity? What if it could be spread like a disease from mind to mind, plunging individuals into neverending nightmares. And if reality is nothing more than consensus, what happens if all members of a group have gone mad?
Or have they?
Maybe it’s all true. Demonic possession. Alien abduction. Everything people fear in the dark. Perhaps there are malevolent entities that exist between worlds. And perhaps some “gifted” individuals really can see them. And be seen by them in turn.
Imagine being trapped in an elevator with a madman: no escape … until the cable snaps. That experience is not unlike reading a novel by Greg Gifune. Deep Night offers all the joys (and metaphysical terrors) that his ever-growing number of fans have come to expect: three-dimensional characters so richly conceived as to be virtually unique within the genre, fascinating and natural dialogue (an especially high order of accomplishment considering the heightened unnaturalness of the situations), and the inexorable horror of a plotline constructed like a steel trap. Gifune has a way of demonstrating that nothing is as it seems, that anything might happen at any moment … and that the worst events imaginable are imminent.
The concept of deep evil, deep woods, deep night will haunt the reader for a very long time.
I'm smiling as I'm writing this because your review reads much like one I've submitted for publication on a Steve Vernon novella. When I look at words like existential and metaphysical (both of which I used in my review also) I tend to see more of a spiritual grounding to nature rather than an internal dialogue or ruminations pertaining to faith. I guess it could be argued that there is a strong connection between the two, however I think faith is a more of a personal issue whereas nature is more of a collective one.
Your review is excellent and I agree with just about everything you wrote (though I think the characters, with one exception, are not three dimensional), my issues dealt more with the mechanics on the writing of the story rather than the plot and the emotional impact of it. I just felt that it should have been edited down some.
Tt
edit: fixed a word.
Last edited by ttzuma on Sun Mar 08, 2009 4:21 pm, edited 2 times in total.
Quick question... Do all of his novels end up dealing with "evil"? By that I mean demons, religion type things? The Bleeding Season = hell type evil Children of Chaos = Cult type evil
The Bleeding season was well written. Very dark. The kind of book that when you put it down it sticks with you. I enjoyed the writing. However I am curious if he veers from this "type" of book.
Now see when I think of supernatural I think of ghosts and monsters and spookie what the hell are they type things.
I am reading these books more as man made items. Hmmm how to make this make sense.
In Children it was as crazy man who became in his own mind and others mind a cult leader. In Bleeding it was a mental decent into a form of madness due to a buddy who pretty much lost it and became a serial killer.
Both are more "man/religion" based.
Does that make any sense at all
Both of those dealt more with the mind then with a actual creature or monster or things that goes bump in the night.
Joined: Mon Mar 10, 2008 2:58 pm Posts: 6411 Location: The Back of Beyond.
Greg's writing makes you question a lot of things. That's why he's such a fabulous writer.
Whether he's writing about actual evil as defined by religion, or just the dark side of human nature, you'll always walk away with what his writing implies stuck to your mind.
Good writers always make you think. And when you can take short books like Saying Uncle or Blood In Electric Blue, and have them swim around in your mind for a hell of a long time after you've read them, that's when you know you're on to one hell of a powerful writer.
_________________ "There's no law, no law anymore - I wanna steal from the rich and give to the poor." ~The Ramones~
Boy, after re-reading these posts I'm starting to feel like a pariah here. Look, I've enjoyed EVERYTHING I've read by Gifune. I do think the guy is a remarkable writer, a real genius as an author to tell you the truth. And to be even more honest with you, I think when it comes to atmospheric horror, he's may even be better thanTom Piccirrili who I think is the best. I just think that Deep Night has some flaws, flaws that I have not found in anythng else I've read by him.
I will continue to read the rest of my Gifune books, and I will buy everything else the man releases. I am a fan for life!
Ugh...hows this... I would smother myself in bar-b-que sauce, and let wild dogs gnaw at me before I would let anyone pry a Gifune novel out of my clinched fists!
Or ugh... how about this...If Uma took off all of her clothes and begged me to spank her and then make mad monkey love with her, I wouldn't if I was reading a Gifune novel.
(Uh oh...I think I made her angry at me).
Last edited by ttzuma on Sun Mar 08, 2009 4:47 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Joined: Thu Nov 02, 2006 8:01 am Posts: 189 Location: Massachusetts
You guys are hilarious.
Thanks for the feedback, it's appreciated.
My hope for DEEP NIGHT was for it to be an entertaining and unique contribution to the whole alien invasion angle. I actually agree with the criticism that it could've been a little shorter, but I knew going in it would be a long novel and something of a slow burn because that's how the presence in the novel worked as well. What interested me about the concept for the novel was a presence psychological in nature rather than physical, so it meant having to go very deep (no pun intended) into the minds and pasts of the characters so the novel (particularly at the end) would make sense.
Joined: Mon Mar 10, 2008 2:58 pm Posts: 6411 Location: The Back of Beyond.
Yep, hilarious and often psychotic, Greg. But we got your back.
Greg, I forgot to ask you if there is any plan on re-releasing your short stories? I want to own every piece of writing you've done, and I love short stories, but everywhere I look used copies of Heretics are priced pretty insane; Heretics is right up there with Kealan Patrick Burke's The Turtle Boy at $90 and above. And I can't even find a copy on eBay. I know you mentioned A View From The Lake was being released again soon, so I was wondering about your short work.
Deep Night is my next read after I finish Dominion, and Dominion is leaving me speechless. Then I have to cash out my Judas Goat jar of money I've been saving for the last month. I can't wait to get my hands on that. I've heard the look of the book itself is pretty damned amazing. And then I have Night Work which I'm going to read last.
_________________ "There's no law, no law anymore - I wanna steal from the rich and give to the poor." ~The Ramones~
Joined: Thu Nov 02, 2006 8:01 am Posts: 189 Location: Massachusetts
>>Yep, hilarious and often psychotic
That must be why we all get along so well.
>>But we got your back.
Right back atcha, my friend(s).
>>any plan on re-releasing your short stories?
Well, kind of. My collection DOWN TO SLEEP is being released in Kindle and Digital Download formats from Delirium, and HERETICS (the novelette not the entire colleciton) is as well. As for the collections being released in hard copy books again, there are no immediate or future plans at this point. But you never know, maybe one day.
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