The Darkest Part of the Woods by Ramsey Campbell

The Darkest Part of the Woods Reviews

• 
  Aksel Dadswell

  I'm not sure how I feel about this book.
  
  On a technical level it's something close to a masterpiece, the horror's slow ooze engulfing the reader with glacial deliberation. The prose is a kind of vernacular poetry unto itself; Campbell plays with sentence structure and character interaction in some really clever and illusive ways. This kept me on edge the whole way through, not necessarily because of the narrative's momentum, but because the prose has this delicate intricacy to it that punishes even the slightest lapse of attention. The way Campbell draws the woods as the novel's dynamic nucleus and builds the atmosphere is wonderful, and the hints of hallucinatory weirdness are deft and restrained.
  
  On the other hand, I'm not sure how well this all works within the broader context of the book. The whole thing consists of characters talking in this beautiful rhythm to each other. Their world is so tiny, and I get that this insular, almost claustrophobic feel is kind of the point, but what I didn't so much enjoy was being stuck with this cast of characters, none of whom I ever really came to like or feel close to. Because they all mostly talk the same way, it felt like I was listening to a group of people sharing a private joke: it's fascinating and I want to know more, but they won't let me in. I felt held at arm's length the whole time.
  
  The ending felt like both a letdown and a promise, a missed opportunity that didn't build the kind of character-breaking tension or stakes to the extent it could have, or even to the extend that just got my blood racing. Having said that, the last few lines are powerful and playful and just awesome, so it redeems itself there for sure.
  
  There's no doubt I enjoyed The Darkest Part of the Woods. There's no doubt it's a well written and crafted book. This was my first Ramsey Campbell, and I'd definitely go back for more after this, but it felt to me like there was some small thing missing here, something flat that needed a little contouring, a jagged edge.
• 
  Lynette

  Well. I'm not sure where to begin with this one.
  
  It's possibly some of the worst writing I've ever read. Here are some quotes from the book, with my thoughts:
  
  Pg. 59
  "Who's in my room now?"
  "Right now, nobody," Heather said, since that was how the question had sounded. "It's Sam's room." (There was never any indication that anyone was currently, at the moment, in the room. The clarification was unnecessary.)
  
  Pg. 83
  That was Worlds Unlimited, which Sam realized now had been the first destination he could think of. "Past the, right," he said. "I don't mean right, I mean right, straight on. Right now, right here." He felt as if he was playing a video game on the monitor that was the windscreen, and clumsily too. "Along, right, no, just along. Here." (WHAT. THE. FUCK?)
  
  Pg. 111
  "She would have dropped the bottle if she hadn't clutched it with both hands." (No words for this one.)
  
  Pg. 123
  "You aren't incompetent at all, and I don't believe you ever will be," Heather said. She hadn't taken her hand away from hanging the receiver up when the phone rang. (Okay, so we get excruciating details about EVERYTHING else, including directions, and yet the author doesn't bother to tell us the character hangs up the phone? No "goodbye"? Nothing?)
  
  Pg. 135
  The gravel turned Lennox's shadow scaly as a tree-trunk and Sam's too - Heather didn't care about the doctor's. (See what I mean? Why not just NOT mention the doctor at all? Excruciating detail that is useless. I suppose it has to do with the repetition ad nauseam of the wood/forest/tree/stick/twig motifs.)
  
  Pg. 149
  As frequently happened, the search engine displayed just the start of the opening sentence to be found on the site. (Seriously? I know this book was published in 2002, but I don't think we need the Internet explained to us. Except, you know, he has to fit in every single possible word he can ever think of because he is a terrible writer, and oh my god, how is he going to fill this whole book with WORDS?
  
  Pg. 220
  "Hello?"
  "It isn't Mrs. Price, is it?"
  She was being told that rather than asked, and by a woman's unfriendly voice too. "It used to be Miss and now it's Ms," she said. "Who did you say you were calling for?"
  "The person I'm speaking to."
  (Most of the dialogue is like this. It goes back and forth, back and forth, completely nonsensical. People do not talk like this. People are not constantly evasive and mysterious.)
  
  Pg. 236
  Beyond it the tail end of a lorry quaked and grew gelatinous. (How does a lorry become gelatinous?)
  
  Pg. 257
  "Do you mind if we lie down till dinner?"
  Heather had to remind herself that she wasn't being referred to. (Yes, we know. Sylvia refers to herself and the baby as "us". We know there's a baby on the way. Why does Heather have to keep reminding herself of this? Is she stupid? Does Campbell think his readers are stupid? This happens at least half a dozen times!)
  
  Pg. 318
  Could anyone saner than Selcouth find the book suitable for reading to even or perhaps especially an unborn child? Some of it had to be, otherwise Heather would be on the phone to the police. (First of all, where are all the commas? That first sentence is gibberish. Second, why would she call the police because Sylvia was reading it to her unborn child? It's unborn. Even if it hears her, it can't understand her. And even if it could, would reading about demons be considered child abuse? Later on, around page 322, he repeats the part about Sylvia reading it to her unborn child over and over. He just about beats us over the head with it!)
  
  Pg. 339
  "I'm the father" ...
  "You mean she put [the idea] into your head?" (God, she is THICK! How on earth could someone "put" the idea into someone's head unless they'd had SEX! I almost threw the book across the room at this point.)
  
  Pg. 350
  "Wait for the light," she cried. "Look where you're going! You'll fall over something. You'll hurt yourself." (What, is Sam eight years old? This is so embarrassing. It was at this point that I really started wishing Sam would just kill her.)
  
  The family stuff is nauseating. Margo is obsessed with her daughters, constantly saying things like, "I want both of you," and "you're both here, what more could I want?" without any reason. Or talking about when she was pregnant with them, or their emergence from her body. It's just inserted into almost every encounter she has with her daughters. It's creepy and gross. The way that they talk about the baby as "our baby" is nauseating. It's Sylvia's baby, period. It doesn't belong to the rest of the family. It's PART of the family, but it's not THEIRS.
  
  Sam's father is inappropriate with his son, too. He's constantly trying to run his life, in a completely inappropriate way. He pries, he pushes, he tries to convince Sam of what he wants. It, too, is exceptionally creepy.
  
  After page 138, nearly the only way that Sylvia is described is "voluminous". And her stomach is only referred to as her "midriff". And, because apparently Campbell has never heard of a thesaurus, these words are repeated over. And over. And over. Sometimes several times on the same page. I'm seriously starting to wonder if he even had an editor. If I'd been thinking about it at the time, I would have started a word count.
  
  I really don't understand how this author's mind works. At one point, Heather is pulling up to her house and sees Sam. So, what does she do? Does she pull into the driveway? No, she leaves the car on the street, leaves the door wide open, and runs up to the house and says, "You wanted me." They chat for a moment, and then she says, "Wait while I bring in the car." WHY was this necessary? Why couldn't she just park in the driveway? What planet does this person live on?
  
  Regarding the journal, I have a really hard time believing that a librarian would be so eager to destroy this journal. Later, when she sees the burned books in the cavern, she feels some regret that the books were destroyed, but then when she realizes what was in them, she's glad. I find this all very disturbing. So, destroying books is bad, unless you don't like them?
  
  This book wasn't remotely scary. It wasn't written well. The plot was crap. Characters appeared for no real reason. For instance, the crazy woman who calls, and then shows up at the house - her point is to show us that Sylvia was in a mental hospital, but then that's the whole point. Why not just stick to the phone call? Why go so far as to make her an actual character? And why is she so nervous? I thought it would point to something bigger, something more mysterious, but then nothing happens.
  
  I'll never read anything else by Ramsey Campbell after this. It was seriously one of the hardest books I've ever had to get through. Every single metaphor, every single simile is based on trees. Yes, we get it. They're unnaturally tied to the woods. So much of the writing in this book just made me feel tired and irritated.
  
  
• 
  Morganlise

  This is probably a hard book to like, judging from the previously posted reviews. I quite enjoyed it, but I have almost infinite patience for even the slowest-moving books. And it's certainly slow at the start. The action doesn't really start until you're about a third of the way in, and even then, it then takes more time to build upon that.
  
  I did really enjoy this one though, for several reasons. First of all, the writing was surprisingly good. It took me a few chapters to get used to the author's style, but once I did I really liked it. Second, his characters are wonderfully developed and their dialogue is crisp and witty. Even when you want to bonk a certain character over the head for being thick, you still understand where she's coming from and care about her and her family. Third, the suspense, when it hits, is excellent. The scene where Sam tries to leave Goodmanswood to head to London for a job interview but gets derailed along the way is probably the most frightening description of a descent into lunacy in four pages that I've ever read. [House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski would take that title, but his characters require hundreds of pages to go mad. Seriously, like 4 pages for Sam in this book. It scared me.:]
  
  Overall, this is a great book, but you must be patient, it's going to take a while to get there. A passing familiarity with the C'thulu Mythos of HP Lovecraft will also help. I loved it.
• 
  James Parsons

  After so long and trying a few of his short stories a while back, this is the first full novel from this very celebrated veteran UK horror author that I have read.
  Knowing his reputation (Clive Barker has praised Campbell for many years) I was expecting something very well written, a horror novel of a very good high standard. I will admit that I had struggled to engage with some of his short tales previously, though I had really wanted to like his work.
  This book has been suggested as one of his best. This may possibly be true. It is quite long and dense for a horror/supernatural story, and it is very much about the small group of main characters. A family is drawn to a local woods, which contains a disturbing and influential power.
  It is very clear that Campbell is genuinely very talented as a writer, his style and characterisation developed well. Did I hope to expect much more actual horror? Was that wrong? The power and atmosphere of the story is built up over the more than three hundred pages and in the last fifty or so it does come to a dramatic end well.
  This is probably a tale which will stay in the mind for days after reading, shadows and tall trees to be avoided.
• 
  Michael Sellars

  Far and away my favourite Ramsey Campbell novel, and one of my favourite horror novels, period. The extraordinary patience with which Campbell crafts his stories borders on the supernatural itself, and here he takes that patience and craftsmanship to a new level. Hardly a page goes by without the author conjuring up dark, woodland imagery, even in the most unlikely places. The woods seep out, infecting everything, including the reader. This is not an easy book to read but it is extremely rewarding. So long as your idea of a reward is a few nights of broken sleep and an inability to go for a woodland walk ever again without feeling deeply uneasy.
• 
  Nancy Oakes

  First off, I thought it was okay. My objection to the story was the author constantly reminding the reader about trees, woods, forests, bugs...not just when appropriate, but even down to smells in the library where the character Heather worked. I'm thinking...way too much description, way too much setting...let's move along and get to the story! But I stuck with it and when isolated from the overabundance of tree description, the story wasn't so bad. One other thing...if you're a Lovecraft reader and familiar with the Cthulhu mythos, then this book will be a LOT easier to understand. In fact, not that it's relevant, but in one of the newer Lovecraft imitators anthologies, there is a story by Campbell that takes place in these very woods.
  
  
  The Price family came to Goodmanswood because Lennox, the father, was doing a study on popular delusion, and heard about some strange lichen in the woods there that caused hallucinations. Lennox tested it, of course, and was promptly locked up because of his delusions. (Again, a common theme in Lovecraft's work...the people with "delusions" locked up in a mental home). Anyway, the story takes place years later; his daughter Heather now lives in the family home with her son Sam; artist mom Margot lives nearby. As the story opens, Sylvia, the sister who left, has returned and the family is subjected to all kinds of eerie happenings that seem to emanate from the woods, all related to an ancient evil inhabiting the woods.
  
  As I noted, if you can just isolate the story itself and not have to put up with the constant unnecessary description of pretty much every tree, leaf, smell and insect, you'll find a story that is creepy. It was a bit of a task combing through the book to keep focused on the story.
• 
  Bogart

  Unquestionably Britain's finest purveyor of scares and horror, Ramsey Campbell here delivers what I think is his masterpiece. Rarely making explicit the horrors that stalk a family unlucky to live near the outskirts of a most unwelcoming wood, Campbell builds up a fine sense of creeping unease as things lurk always at the edge of vision or just out of sight. His prose is wonderful, his use of similes as ever is utterly unique, and his characters are sympathetic and well-drawn. The wood of the title becomes the heart of something to be truly feared, and its sticky branches reach past the page to leave the reader unnerved in that rare way all too few scary stories manage.
• 
  Tom

  Gave up after about 1/4. Incredibly clunky awkward dialogue, poorly constructed sentences. I was reading an ebook which might have been badly formatted, but still it was virtually unreadable.
• 
  Sean

  A terribly slow driven, painfully plodding story that only takes a slightly interesting shape more than two thirds into the novel.
  
  If you like slowly paced and atmospheric reads then you may like this a lot better than I. I am more of a fast-paced reading kind of a guy. I don't need a hundred or two pages describing trees to set the background scenery up.
  
  I've read only one other book by Ramsey Campbell and liked it, Far Away & Never, but that was just some loosely tied together fantasy short stories. I WISH this was stripped down to a short story.
  
  It took me about ten years to get through this book. I randomly bought it at a store back then, have picked it up a few times since then, started reading it then gave up almost immediately. There just is nothing to keep you going in the beginning. Plus, the font that the publisher TOR used is so tiny (and the margins so wide the left side is almost covered by the binding) that reading this wasn't even relaxing. This made it doubly difficult for me this time since now I am spoilt by my Kindle. No matter who sets up even the most tiniest or ugliest font, I can change it to a nice leisurely looking size that is just for me.
  
  I am glad I finally finished this sucker (and can now donate it to some book collection charity) since I am a big Lovecraft fan. The completist in me made me finish this thing so I can honestly say I know what Ramsey Campbell's
  Severn Valley mythos tales are about. Maybe, and that's a huge maybe, if I want to continue reading stuff in Campbell's mythos setting I'll check out some of his short story collections or his 'tribute' book Made in Goatswood.
  
  I dunno. I didn't really feel like a 'complete' horror fan by not ever reading Campbell. Now I just don't get it, this guy is so celebrated what the heck? After a looooong break from this, perhaps I'll try out one of the top two rated books of his on Goodreads to give him another chance. Perhaps this one is just not for me (Lovecraftian, How?). If his stories dwell on setting like this all the time, forget it.
  
  
• 
  TheHollowHalo

  Chilling!
  
  If you've ever seen The Ruins, (Carter Smith, 2008), or The Descent, (Neil Marshall, 2005). It might help to understand what is going on in this book, even if I think the plot in this book is on its own.
  
  Who could forget Sam and Sylvee? I think the thought still lingers in my mind of how the two form a union. The Darkest Part of the WOODS is what is incubating inside them. In Sam, we find some of C. Dexter. W., Lennox, too. I felt these characters reminded me of ... or gave Brichester and the Price family a Lovecraftian tone. Accolades to Lovecraft, he's the man!
  
  The story is fun!! I don't think the aim of the author was to write a literary masterpiece, if it was- Fail!
  
  The narrator, provides the reader with a feeling of horror, which could only come from the WOODS. In the book the characters make us believe they too have succumbed to the hallucinogenic moss that Dr. Lennox finds, and this is done through the way they all talk. It is unlike anything I've heard. This was a good book because this is the type of book that would form a discussion among friends.
  
  The author makes it hard to follow, at least, for me. I felt the whole middle portion of the book was like I was sitting in a loud convention hall around lot's of commotion, not to say that in places the book it was noisy, but just a pointless passing of time. The thought, however, of dead spirits was pounding my noggin throughout, and I wanted to try to take this story seriously, even with a powerful sense of suspension of disbelief, and an everlasting love for the horror genre, but the author never sucked me in.
  
  It was the first time I heard of R. Campbell. I think he had used many words, like belatedly over and over again. But, I guess that's alright. In terms of art. Mr. Campbell paints a Stephen King like landscape, though I think the latter prevails.
• 
  Kirsten

  A very dark, atmospheric fantasy. If you like Robert Holdstock's stuff, you may enjoy this -- it explores some of the same themes. Basically, there's this small English wood called Goodmanswood where strange, supernatural things have always happened. The protagonist's father apparently traced these "supernatural" happenings to a kind of hallucinogenic lichen, only to apparently fall prey to the madness it causes. Now Heather (the protagonist) is beginning to suspect that her son, sister, and mother may be falling prey to the same madness, and other people from the village have been "seeing things" as well. It's marvelous, and probably not something to read before you go camping.
• 
  Thee_ron_clark

  Ramsey Campbell produces a great story that spans centuries and crosses into science, historical events, and horror in the story of a family infected by some odd substance found in an old forest. As the family members continue to find themselves drawn to the same area over and over, the mystery unfolds and the terror begins.
  
  This is definitely a good read with a very creative and interesting storyline.
• 
  Jim Cunningham

  Tedious. Incredibly detailed about irrelevant things: where someone put their purse down, or how they folded their hands, or who is looking at who while speaking ... until I felt like clawing my eyes out. But then, when something major and important (that I suppose was supposed to be scary) happens, it's glossed over in three sentences. In fairness, I didn't get very far. Life is too short.
• 
  Scott

  I trudged through this.....this was the most uneventful ghost/legend/horror novel I have ever read. Some of the "mysteries" lore was captivating but the characters had little personality other than being a family.
• 
  Adam Nowicki

  This is a fantastic novel in the vein of Lovecraft. If you don’t like or know Lovecraft then I cannot recommended this book to you. But if you do enjoy that cosmic horror, and sense of hopelessness and disempowerment that is trademark Lovecraft, this is a great modern tale.
  
  The woods that are so prominently featured in this novel serve as a different landscape as opposed to other Lovecraft tales. While there is undoubtedly wilderness and rolling hills, Lovecraft never dealt with the all encompassing ancient power that Campbell uses when describing the woods. I will most likely never look at any kind of forest the same way ever again, even from the safety of a trail. When looking into the forest I might find myself hoping (or fearing?) a glimpse of the Goodman. And frankly, that can be no greater praise for a novel.
  
  Admittedly, when I first started reading this novel, the characters felt slightly off. The dialog was stilted and seemed unrealistic, however as the family’s connections to Goodmanswood was established and explored, and the inexorable link revealed, the wooden character made a lot of sense. They seem off and stilted because they are off and stilted. They don’t act or talk like normal people because the woods have affected them in such a permeating manner. Even Heather, the character who rejects the eldritch power of the woods is so self-reflective of her actions and how others perceive her and her family, it’s obvious that she understands her own weirdness and is attempting to compensate for it.
  
  This book is a slow burn. It’s 30+ chapters of build up, a chapter of semi-revelation, and an epilogue. I loved it. But take that with a grain of salt. For me it’s a 5/5, and for a modern Lovecraft fan, I feel this is a great book. Again, I must caution, if you don’t vibe with that kind of tale, this may not be for you.
  
• 
  Nicholas Kaufmann

  As other reviewers have pointed out, THE DARKEST PART OF THE WOODS moves at a snail's pace. I'll admit there were times, particularly in the first half, when I almost put the novel down for good. I also found it overwritten. Not every description has to include a metaphor or simile involving trees, and yet page after page, I encountered them over and over again like a thematic sledgehammer. As with the pacing issue, this led to occasions when I felt myself fighting to keep reading.
  
  However, if you prune away (ha ha) all the elements that slow this novel down, at its center is a compelling cosmic-horror tale about a haunted forest with its own dark intelligence, and the legacy of a magician who tried and failed to turn that intelligence to his own purposes. Strange inhuman creatures abound on the periphery of the story, along with madness and terrible family secrets, only hints of which emerge in the telling.
  
  I'm glad I didn't give up and kept reading all the way to the end, but I'm not going to pretend it kept my attention throughout. Do I recommend it? Yes, but only for readers with patience. If you're looking for a fast-paced thriller, you may want to look elsewhere.
• 
  Matthew

  This book was my introduction to Ramsey Campbell. He certainly knows how to create suspense and invoke the illusion of impending dread into the mind of the reader. This novel was a little above average for me. It wasn't great but not bad at all. It is a very verbose piece of fiction and Campbell definitely will have your head spinning after what seems like the millionth description of the woods. I found the characters to each have their own inner demons and Campbell does do an adequate job of making the reader care about their fate. However this book, at times, especially in the middle, tended to move at a snail's pace with very little happening. I think the heavy amount of dialogue and bombardment of malevolent nature imagery is what caused me to shy away from a higher rating. However, with all that being said, I still think this is a solid read by one of horror's most accomplished writers. 3.5 stars
• 
  F.E. Feeley Jr.

  This was a great premise but the writing was so full of bloat that I just couldn't wade through it anymore. The trees...the trees...the trees again....more with the trees and the trees and the...you get the idea.
  It was frustratingly slow and none of the characters really seemed to pop out of the book except for, you guessed it, the trees.
  I'm a fan of trees, of course, they produce so much of the world's oxygen, they give shade when you need it, they can give cover if you're hiding from a nefarious drone in a book written by someone else (free plot point for an aspiring novelist, you're welcome), but in this case, I just wished someone would come along with a contract to build a Super Walmart and just be done with it.
  
• 
  Tina

  I loved the book at first. The tone was very much like Lovecraft and I even started dreaming about the book. However, it just dragged on and on. The characters were stiff and awkward and they made me uncomfortable. In a book such as this one, that could have been a design decision by the author, however, I'm not sure it was.
  
  Overall, I enjoyed the horror aspects, but all the characters (except Lennox, the father) were contemptible and the written was long-winded.
• 
  David

  2.5. Pretty good up until the last 3 or 4 chapters, and then it devolved into a typical Ramsey Campbell snorefest of nothing.
• 
  Janice

  It took me a while to get through this book. The inital story, of a family with a father beset by obsession and (possibly) madness, was a little slow and uninvolving for me. The hints it dropped of mysterious goings-on in the nearby Goodmanswood (the forest) were intriguing though, so I soldiered on.
  
  My persistence was rewarded by the slowly building sense of dread and worry that the story built up as it went on.
  
  Now I'm going to worry every time I go into a spooky wood. Thanks, Mr. Campbell. O.o
  
  Seriously, it's a horror novel that is more effective as it goes on. There's no gore, no physical violence, but the emotional toll taken on the characters is pretty heavy. The writing is a bit slow in parts, and I had a bit of trouble really loving the characters. But as an evocation of that feeling you sometimes get in the wild, of forces that are large and possibly malevolent lurking just out of site, full marks. Very effective at that.
• 
  Suzanne Synborski

  The Darkest Part of the Woods by Ramsey Campbell is an exquisite treatise on the human fascination with those dark shadows and glowing eyes that hide in the mysterious obscurity of the forest, or perhaps, on what it is that hides in the labyrinthine nightfall that lurks inside our skulls.
  
  ONCE YOU SEE YOU GO ON SEEING. Lennox Price
  
  The story takes place in Brichester, a small rural town in England. It could be any town except for the Goodmanswood, a small, ancient forest that haunts the surrounding landscape with legends of witchcraft and the evil necromancer Nathaniel Selcouth.
  
  The Price family has been fascinated with Goodmanswood for many years beginning with the patriarch of the family, Lennox, who is institutionalized due to fluctuating mental issues. In the past, he had studied a hallucinogenic growth that only existed in this mysterious woodland. The mind-altering substance is long gone, but the forest refuses to release its hold on Price, and now, his family. Is the psychoactive element truly some sort of natural growth, or something much more, some supernatural force that procreates madness?
  
  Lennox Price does not simply waste away in the Arbor. His psychosis sweeps through the institution and creates a cult-like following of inmates he leads on an ill-advised field trip to the Goodmanswood. When a long-gone family member returns to England from America revealing an enigmatic pregnancy, the family is reunited, and all become involuntarily entangled in Price’s obsession with the forest.
  
  Except for Price, the human characters on the surface seem like ordinary people until the madness takes control and their complexities are exposed. Readers spend enough personal time with the family to become intimate, to care about them. In addition, it could be said that the main character of the novel is the Goodmanswood itself. The forest breaths, sighs, whispers, guides, and entraps as it lures the Price family into its malignant depths. Like a sleeping god, it engenders dreams and illusions.
  
  The extremely complex, compelling and utterly original plot unravels at a leisured pace. Campbell drops hints like breadcrumbs as he leads mystified readers through the trembling forest. His masterful manipulation of language creates a beautiful mirage of visual images that may urge readers to wonder if they had themselves inhaled the fumes of the magical fungus.
  
  As the plot evolves, it speeds up and the intensity will leave readers breathless as Campbell, a master manipulator, pulls the rug out from under them at the last moment with a shocking, inevitable, and elusive conclusion. Things commonly considered natural and innocent have deeper, larger, cosmic meanings.
  
  As Campbell’s readers have come to expect, the literary quality of the prose is exceptional. Readers will witness the darkness between the trees, smell the rotten leaves, hear the whispering of the breeze as it passes between the trees. The words transmit meaning and mood with exceptional grace. The dialogue is real and often visceral.
  
  The Darkest Part of the Woods is not a book one reads and quickly forgets. The mood lingers, festers, and will no doubt haunt a reader’s dreams with dread of the approach of an inexorable, inescapable presence. The relentless, disturbing mood of the prose will leave readers with germinating questions.
  
  Since the beginning of man’s reign on this planet, legends have described the forest as the home of the gods. Some cultures believe that man’s original form was that of a tree and that souls of the dead perch in treetops awaiting rebirth. So, it could be said that the forest must by its nature be a place of awe, a place of rebirth, reflecting one of Price’s many prophetic statements: The grave shall be cradle.
  
  The Darkest Part of the Forest will challenge, thrill, mesmerize and comes highly recommended.
  
  Take Ramsey Campbell’s hand and follow him into the darkest part of the forest, “Because you were called.” Lennox Price
  
  Rougeski Reads
• 
  Willow

  I absolutely loved the beginning of this book. Campbell sets up a great plot based on the Greenman and other fairy folklore. It has great atmosphere and the descriptive writing is vivid, though a lot of the dialogue is odd, hard to follow at times, and the twig/branch/stick description is beaten over the readers head.
  
  So I set out knowing Campbell is one of the classic horror authors and a multiple award winner for Bram Stocker and World Fantasy no less, I had my expectations high.
  
  I should have kept my expectations level. The literal first half of the book uses fairy and rural English folklore to great effect, setting up great plot points for the woods, the hallucinogenic lichen, the asylum, the Greenman, and the university. I was loving it.
  
  At exactly halfway through though it turns into a Lovecraft fanfiction. A Mashup of The Case of Charles Dexter Ward and the Dunwich Horror, probably a few others. And it wasn't subtle either, Campbell mentions Joseph Curwin and the Necronomicon in the same chapter if you had doubts. From there its what you would expect of a sloppy Lovecraft fanfic.
  A lot of the great plot points of the first part of the story are never resolved or mentioned again.
  
  I give it 3 stars for the writing and the dangled Greenman and fairy references. But don't bother if Lovecraft is not your thing.
  
  That's right, I called Ramsey Campbell sloppy and unoriginal. I'm Disappointed 😞
  No more Ramsey Campbell for me.
• 
  Kimi

  This book had the potential to be good. All of the elements were there. But it was soooooo sloooooow and all of the characters talked exactly the same (if I have to ever read the phrase "I'm sure I know/don't know" again, I'll rip my eyeballs out). Also, you could tell the author thinks he's so clever that every single metaphor or simile was about a tree. It was not subtle at all. Then you get to the end where everything happens, but then at the same time, nothing happens. I should have quit reading after the first 50 pages when I could tell I wasn't going to like the book, but I finished it out of some desperate hope that it would get better. Blah.
• 
  John Cook

  This is a really creepy book that is light on action but heavy on atmosphere. However, it does pick up towards the end. Campell's engrossing plot and disturbing imagery combine for an unforgettable experience. I highly recommend this book.
• 
  Alison

  The author dragged out this story WAY too long. Two thirds in I knew the father and was bored. The weird print of Selcouth was hard to read and the entire novel basically unsatisfying a waste of reading time. A reader cheater
• 
  Ashley Cruz

  Absolutely terrifying.
• 
  Zei

  Five and a half stars ladies and gentlemen
  So. This book.
  I actually was very invested to start reading this book. I heard about Campbell only from blogs and his notoriety and the literary awards spiked my curiosity to read this particular book. I felt compelled to buy it, I who has no desire to purchase goods on the web did everything in my power to acquire it (they didn't have it in the bookstores in Berlin) so it involved creating a Paypal account (really???) and an Amazon account and giving away some of my private information. Which is to be fair one of my biggest paranoia issue-causer.
  This book called out to me and I had no choice but to answer the call. And like with every other good book, I got schizophrenic during and after reading it.
  That there be mysterious things more than meets the unexperienced random eye is not to be argued, but to manage to make the reader think that it could exist an entity powerful enough to confuse and dupe generations during centuries, selecting just a few "chosen ones" outof the heard and endowing this minority with Knowledge...that, my friends, is art.
  The dialogues were quite absurd. How people kept trying to say things to each other and still refraining from it, or how protagonists would hear and react to only parts of their peers' repliques was unnerving. You would follow each member of the Price Family and know their intentions and actions; still you would assist through satirically shallow conversations from persons (in my opinion both Heather and Terry were abnoxiously one sided, a tiny bit materialistic and controlling, which made their stubbornness and lack of imagination resemble denial or sheer deafness) who you ended up thinking are dumb. Or was it because of the frightening proximity of the woods?
  Or maybe just the English way of Communicating?