Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #948376 in Books
• Published on: 1995-07
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 279 pages

Customer Reviews

For Completists Only
It took me a full 3/4 of the way through this book before I found a decent story. Most of the stories suffered from one or more of the following: 1) could have been set anywhere remote. The particulars of the Severn Valley locale played no role in the story. Have these authors even read anything by Ramsey Campbell? 2) bizarre or disjointed writing styles that only detracted from the plot 3) non-endings or endings that did not follow from the story. In several of the stories it seemed as though the author decided it was time to go to the pub and just wrote anything to end the story (or came back from the pub and finished drunk).

I liked Szymanski's "Random Access" as a nice expansion of "The Insects from Shaggai" with a computer program saving the day. Robert Price has a decent piece, if you can ignore a gaping hole or 2 in the story line. Campbell's own contribution is fine, and is perhaps the only story to actually USE the Severn Vally mythos and expand upon it in any significant way. C.J. Henderson's piece is also good and happily can be found in the fine anthology "The Occult Detectives of C.J. Henderson" so you don't need to buy this book to read it.

I'd recommend this book only to folks like me who just have to buy all of the "Call of Cthulhu" books for their collection. Feel free to buy it and put it on your shelf unread, you will be missing very little. Then go read some Campbell and Henderson elsewhere.

Not what I hoped for
The principal problem with MADE IN GOATSWOOD is poor writing. The author does not get his point across, or the characters are formulaic or the stories have no internal consistency, etc. I can forgive a lot in writing; I just want an interesting twist on a borrowed idea or a common story with a different perspective. Throughout most of this collection, I felt as if I were reading rough drafts of stories.

The highlights:

"Cross my heart, hope to die": The story of a young boy's attempt to escape from a cult. This was well written and motivated empathy with the characters. The real horror in this story is what people do to their own.

"The Queen": The narrative device and perspective alone make this story interesting.

"Free the Old Ones": a fascinating protrayal of the descent into madness. This was well fleshed out and believable; usually, the insanity part of a story is where I have to suspend disbelief, but in "Free the Old Ones" it is the story itself. Also, the cult collaborators are hilarious as parodies of student activists (even if you are a student activist, surely you know some people who actually would demonstrate for Cthulhu rights?).

Many of the other stories fell flat and seemed incomplete or amateurish. If you really want stories on Goatswood or the Severn Valley, try COLD PRINT by Ramsey Campbell.

Still seeking stories which will make Goatswood come alive
I wasn't impressed with this collection, though I had looked forward to reading it. I think the Goatswood mythos has possibilities, but these stories didn't light me up and slap my emotions and imagination around the way most of the Chaosium fiction series collections do. Chick says you can miss it.