Product Description

Remember the fairy stories you were told as a child? Tales of tiny, magical, winged beings and elves, wicked witches and goblins. Demons ...What if one day you found out they were true? What if, when you became an adult, you discovered they were all based on fact? What if you met the fantasy and it was all so very real? That's what happened to Thom Kindred. The wonders were revealed to him. But so were the horrors, for not far behind the Good, there always lurks the Bad. And the Bad had designs on Thom. The Bad would show him real evil. He would see the hellhagges and the demons. He would be touched by perverted passion. And corruption. And he would encounter his own worst nightmare. The Bad would seek to destroy him. And only the magic of the little beings would be able to help him. Once, James Herbert's masterful novel of erotic love and darkest horror, will take you to a realm where fantasy and refairytaleside, where faerytales really can come true.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #53352 in Books
• Published on: 2007-05-04
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 300 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
Once is the latest in the welcome new phase of James Herbert's career after he distanced himself from the straightforward "horror" tag afforded to him by earlier novels such as the Rats trilogy and cannily reinvented himself as a writer with considerably more psychological insight and elegance of style.

Trading on a grotesque reinvention of fairy stories, Herbert has his protagonist Thorn Kindred encountering witches, goblins and demons, and being obliged to turn to some very strange sources to save his soul. The new ambitiousness of Herbert's writing may be found in the underpinning of the narrative here: this is a grim and persuasively realised spin on Nietzsche's epigram: "When fighting monsters, beware of becoming one yourself." But long-time readers needn't worry about a lack of grisly chills: Herbert is too fine a writer not to keep us permanently on the edge of our proverbial seats. And he's better than ever at orchestrating his fear-filled climaxes, so that there is a carefully worked out structure to the book that never has the stop-and-start jerkiness of the early novels. Rather in the nature of Sondheim's musical Into the Woods, fairy tale motifs are exploded and reconstituted in this dark and erotic fable. After reading Once, fairy tales will never seem the same again. --Barry Forshaw

About the Author
James Herbert is not just Britain's No. 1 bestselling writer of chiller fiction, a position he has held since publication of his first novel, but is one of our greatest popular novelists, whose books are sold in thirty-five other languages, including Russian and Chinese. Widely imitated and hugely influential, his twenty novels have sold more than 50 million copies worldwide.

Customer Reviews

very disappointing, Herbert running out of original ideas...
I have been a die hard fan of James herbert since I was 11 years old, The first book I read was "The Fog", since then every book he has written has been bought, borrowed and even stolen! His whole collection of thrilling horror adorn my bookcase,all in original condition,lovingly taken care of,re-read at least half and dozen times each. In short, I think he is the greatest horror writer ever and I respect him enormously for keeping me awake and on the brink of nightmares after reading his books.

So imagine my excitement when ONCE came out, immediantly I seized it, (paid for this time!- a present) in Hardback, not wasting time, I read the whole thing in an afternoon.
I was very disappointed. What can I say...it had a familiar ring to it, Herbert wrote, the fantastic "The Magic Cottage", ONCE was a watered down version.
Both have a Magical Cottage with strange things happening, while the occupier tried to figure out what was going on and what was going "bump in the night", both showed the "good" and the "bad" slowly emerging out of the woodwork. Both have a Forest. Both feature the Baddie being defeated. This did not feel like Herbert usual sharp rivetting style at all.
Instead it felt like a Writer who has writers block, and is desperately grabbing at old stuff and trying to churn it into new and Modern.
Inshort: RE-cycled. To read one review who compared him to JK Rowling is an insult to an Old Fan of Herberts.

The book is Pretty, illustrations will never be replace our imagination, and all I felt that effect acheived was just to reassure me that it wasn't as horrible as my imagination pictured!

After reading ONCE, I picked up my old Hardback of The Magic Cottage (of which I have two, one signed by Herbert himself years ago) and was convinced that, yes, he has lost the "magic" with his new offering.

Herbert, please restore my faith in you!
ONCE has no BITE at all.. "For adults"? Only the sexually explicit scene with a faery and a lesbian rape. Something cheap and nasty to be found in Adult mags lining the top shelf.
He has alway had a Sex-horror element in a few of his work, but it was there for a reason.This was just thrown in to pep-up the bland storyline.

I recommend MAGIC COTTAGE, ONCE you read that,(pardon the pun),you will know what I mean, to all old fans of Herbert, I am sure you will agree with me.

Once
I had heard so much about this book, and one person I kn ow really raved about it, I am not normally one for mainstream horror but, thnought I would give this a whirl .. and I am so glad I did!

The story surrounds Thom Kindred returning to his childhood home after suffering a stroke, and finds more than he bargains for, this was such a well written book and my 1st by JH, I had heard from reviews that this is maybe not the best of JH's books to read but, I really enjoyed it, but watch out for the bits about the spiders, that really creeped me out!

A brilliant book, and if you have any interest in Faeries or Wicca I am sure you will love it!

An excellent fairytale with that added extra for adults
I have never been a great fan of James Herbert, only liking a few of his books, but this is a great read. It offers that quaint English charm that often appears in JH's books making you wish you could visit these places of which he writes and also helps you to relive the stories of your childhood. It is not as scary as I would have liked it to be, but I am glad I read it as it has reminded me what a joy it is for a child to believe in these things and I will make sure that my son gets his fair share of fairy stories when he is old enough to understand. I also thought that it was a nice surprise to see pictures in the book, which are greatly drawn. The immagination can only go so far and sometimes needs a push in the right direction! All in all, I would reccomend this book to anyone, be they a horror fan or otherwise. It is scary enough for all the non-horror fan's but with just enough for the horror reader.