Product Description

The carnival is a world apart, endlessly travelling from town to town, providing thrills and magic for new kids every week. And the biggest, most popular attraction is the Funhouse – the ghoulish creepshow of ghosts and skeletons, rattling chains and make-believe terror… Young Amy Harper is the most beautiful girl at her school, but to her life seems wretched. Terrorised by her mother, Amy’s little brother Joey, is her only real friend. Their mother’s days are regulated by religious obsession, and nights by the bottle and drunken confessions. When the carnival comes to town, Joey plans to escape his troubled home and join the revellers. But Amy and Joey fall under the carnival spell, unaware that their mother’s secrets are buried here and that vengeance for past deeds lies in wait for them in the make-believe world of…the Funhouse.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #369743 in Books
• Published on: 1993-08-26
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 320 pages

About the Author
Dean Koontz was born into a very poor family and learned early on to escape into fiction. His novels have sold over 200 million copies worldwide and more than thirty have appeared on national and international bestseller lists. He lives in southern California with his wife, Gerda and a vivid imagination.

Customer Reviews

Didn't enjoy it as much as I thought I would
The synopsis of this book sounded intriguing. I'm a regular Dean Koontz reader and found this in my local library.

The first thing I wanted to mention in this review is that this is the first Koontz book where I didn't have the 'energy' to read it in one sitting.

I felt that some vital 'visual descriptions' and links weren't as obvious as the author had intended. I think Koontz could have worked more with the material he had at his disposal. I felt the story had a strong amount of predictibility although that didn't spoil the entire enjoyment.

On the positive side, I enjoyed the genre and there were a few pages that did make me jump and scared what was going to happen to the main character next.

To me, this reads more as a film script [which is actually how Koontz intended it to be read initially; before the film was released] but this is personal preference. Maybe it was because I wasn't familiar with this style of reading from Koontz.

If you're a Koontz fan, its still worth giving it a read, it still contains a good amount of horror for one night!

Just another average horror novel.
What you have here is just another run-of-the-mill, bog standard horror novels, with the same story line as a thousand novels before it and predictably another thousand after it. If you're looking for a novel to unplug your brain to and race through then this is as good a book as any. You can guess the twists involved from the minute you open the book. It's just another one of those books that looks super scary when you're a kid and you gaze at the cover in wonder, but when you grow up you realise what they are. Just mindless fun. And why the hell not! Just don't expect a masterpiece.

Dire...
This novel was truly awful.
As a big Koontz fan I still have trouble believing that he penned this work.
Unlike his usual dark and striking thrillers this is a bland and uneventful affair whose 'twists' are wholly predictable and the characters/plot/conclusion...incredibly weak.