Product Description

It had been one of the worst crashes in airline history, with over 300 dead and only one survivor. Now the dead were buried and the town of Eton tried to forget. But Keller, the survivor, wanted to know what unseen forces had left him still alive.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #19963 in Books
• Published on: 1999-11-26
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 263 pages

Customer Reviews

Great first half�lousy ending
With his third novel James Herbert finally manages to abandon the unnatural disaster genre he'd developed with The Rats and The Fog, and steps firmly into supernatural horror. Unfortunately he's only semi-successful.

The Survivor has a great premise - a lone man steps from the wreckage of a crashed jumbo jet. Why did he survive? What is haunting the crash site? The first half is great stuff, with the amnesiac survivor slowly piecing together his memories, while the spirits of those who died in the crash begin to take their revenge on the townspeople. Unfortunately the wings fall off the plot in the second half (if you'll forgive the expression), with a bad B-movie villain revealed as responsible for the crash, and a confusing and unnecessary subplot of an evil magician who - by complete chance - just happened to have been travelling on the doomed plane as well. This messy ending makes this ultimately one of Herbert's less satisfying works, but before the anticlimax there's some fun to be had along the way with some well done horror scenes. A great idea, but badly plotted book.

A descriptive and disturbing story that delivers the demons.
Now having read half the James Herbert novels I wish I had started to read them in chronological order so that I could see his development in story telling. The Survivor is I believe his third book and shows signs that Herbert was still developing his technique. The storyline is brilliant yet I was left feeling empty and unsatisfied with the final result. As usual Herbert provides plenty of ghost and ghouls and brings his familiar clairvoyant appearences (eg. 'Others') into the well structured story, yet I was left seeing little relavance as to why the demons were present and why the girl and doll were the main ghosts. Although don't believe what I'm saying, read it for yourself. Maybe if I read it a second time, I might understand it a bit better. If anyone can explain my misunderstandings, please let me know.

The most disturbing book I've ever read.
When I lent this book to a friend, she said she got very irritable and short-tempered while she was reading the book. Then when she went on holiday with the family, her son was acting the same way. She asked him if he was reading The Survivor, when he said yes, she immediately took the book away from him and told him he could not read it anymore until they were home. That's a great story about how this book can affect a person. It can disturb your mind. James Herbert is a fantastic writer. He is so graphic with his descriptions you almost feel that you're watching a movie as you turn the pages. This is the first book by him that I ever read and I've read everything since then. If you like horror novels, I guarantee that if you read this book you will become an avid James Herbert reader. He is the best. And The Survivor is his best. But be prepared. You just may have some strange reactions to this book.