Written in the '70s, The Book of Skulls is about four college roommates on a road trip toward immortality. The characters started out as interesting yet flawed young men, but their individual internal monologues shifted around the quarter mark to philosophical diatribes so long-winded and pointless the book should have a trigger warning for existential masturbation.

Wow. I've always known Silverberg is one of the Great Old Ones. A cornerstone of the genre, author of books like Nightwings, Thorns and Dying Inside that are classics in the genre, and would be classics outside the genre as well if the consensus cogs would get their heads out from up the bums of D. DeLillo, I. McEwan and so forth for long enough to notice. But it's one thing to admit a writer into your personal canon and and quite another to be reminded, knee to the groin, uppercut to the jaw, n...

My first Silverberg book and I'm impressed. Not only did he successfully give each of the four characters, all four college age males, their own unique voices, each chapter is told through first person and I knew who was narrating each even without their names being the chapter headings, but he was able to transform each one throughout the book in their own distinct way, which to me seems like a major literary achievement. What starts as a frat boy-esque college road trip transforms into a layer...

Together with Dying Inside, standing atop his prolific career as a classic.His 1971 novel The Book of Skulls, nominated for the Hugo Award, is a psychological thriller, really more of a horror book than sci-fi, and really – if I think about it – this is one of those works that does not fit easily into any recognizable genre.We’ll call it speculative fiction.Four travelers go on an unusual quest across the country looking for a mythical opportunity to live forever. Silverberg’s traveling companio...

I liked the idea behind this, and I even liked the way Silverberg set up the four characters, stereotypes that over the course of the novel are pried open and exposed for the often hypocritical things they are. The writing, too, is pretty good, lyrical and intense. The psychological building up and tearing down of the characters works really well, and it's not easy to predict who will commit the murder, who will be the sacrifice, etc. The only real problem for me was that I kept having to check

I was surprised by this book, first, because it was not science fiction. At least, in my opinion. Nothing supernatural happens, though the characters concert toward a supernatural goal. To me, this was a realist novel, driven by the four main characters. It is told in alternating first person, with each of 42 short chapters labeled with the narrating character's name. There is some repetition, and about 25% of the content relates to the sexual psychology of college-age males, with the backward p...

Updated review after a re-read in November 2020.--https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rmFZq...What a strange little book! I really had no idea what to expect when I got into this one, and I have to say that I was very pleasantly surprised. I would be hard-pressed to tell you what kind of book it is: fantasy, horror, psychological thriller? It doesn’t fall neatly into any category; the wide umbrella of “speculative fiction” is the only fair way to shelve this.The more I think about it, the less I und...

This little book about a motley gang of college flatmates on a quest to find eternal life shook me much more than I expected. What was meant to be some light holiday reading unexpectedly turned into a riveting roller-coaster of existential dread. When reading it at night it would slip into my dreams, and when reading it by day I’d catch myself staring vacantly at a wall asking myself all sorts of morbid questions revolving mostly around two themes: ImmortalityWould I want to live forever? Does l...

THE BOOK OF SKULLS is one of the best horror books I've ever read. Mostly because it's a psychological character study of a group of young men on a "spiritual" quest, that takes them on a journey to the SW United States. Here, they are to learn the secrets of a strange cult. But what do they really know about what they're getting into? And more importantly, how well do they really know each other? This novel is a bit of an unknown gem.

Similar in ways to Dying Inside, this is more an introspective, psychological thriller with supernatural themes than anything truly sci-fi or fantasy. It follows a group of four college friends that become emerged in the quest for an ancient path to immortality, shrouded in mystery. I enjoyed it, though not as much as I would have reading it in my 20's.

i have a soft spot for The Book of Skulls. it is a thoughtful tale of college students on a road trip slash quest slash metaphysical odyssey, their destination a secret to immortality. the only problem with obtaining this secret is that major bummer, The Grim Reaper. one of the group has to be sacrificed (i.e. murdered) and another must die by his own hand. the cast of 4 are stereotypes: the studly poor guy, the studly rich guy, the queer, the jew. although on friendly terms, they are decidedly

This hardcover is copy 40 of 300 produced and is signed by:Robert SilverbergJohn Anthony di Giovanni (cover art)Jim Burns (front piece)Malcolm Edwards (introduction).

This is a New Wave modern fantasy novel. I read it as a part of monthly reading for November 2021 at Hugo & Nebula Awards: Best Novels group. The book was nominated for Nebula and Hugo in 1973, but lost to The Gods Themselves by Isaac Asimov, who received both awards chiefly due to the fact that it was his return to SF after writing chiefly non-fic.This is a story of four young men, traveling across the USA, with stops in New York, Chicago and Phenix (among other places) to try their chance for

I am not sure why people describe it as horror...maybe because it is so horribly bad? There is no suspense, spookiness, gore or thrill in this story. The storytelling itself was lacking A LOT. No suspenseful up-building, the shifting narration doesn't make any sense in the end (plus I never cared much for the gimmick of telling stories from different views but here it adds zero cleverness to the presentation of the characters), even though this is a short one it felt dragged.The characters are s...

Robert Silverberg is possibly the most underrated sf writers of all time, considering that he has been writing sf since the 50s, won numerous Hugo, Nebula and other major sf awards, and is a Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America Grand Master. In spite of all this he never seems to be "in vogue" these days, most of the younger generation of sf readers today have never read anything by him. I believe this is indicative of how criminally underrated he is and the ongoing decline of civiliza...

Although this is part of Gollancz's "SF Masterworks" lineup, don't expect any robots or ray guns or tentacle-faced aliens; it would be better classified as mild horror or dark fantasy. There's a moral conundrum set-up that is not too much different from the classic episode of "NewsRadio" in which one employee is going to get the "Big Bonus" and another is going to get "The Shaft," albeit here on a metaphysical level. The book is awash in the conventions of the early 1970s and roles for female ch...

This heavily character-driven novel begins and continues like an interesting jaunt through america in a classic road-trip novel, but it eventually becomes something much more on two fronts that might possibly be just one.Is it really about joining a secret society cult based on a the Book of Skulls that promises immortality at a price? Or is it really about exploring one's sexuality, with the majority of emphasis being on homosexuality?I'm not saying that being a homosexual is the route to immor...

The Book of Skulls is a great psychological horror book! It also feels very sci-fi so I'll throw that genre in as well.The book starts off with one of the main characters Eli, finding a book about the House of Skulls. Eli is a college student studying to be a scholar when he comes across this old manuscript.Eli ends up convincing his three roommates to see if this House of Skulls really exists and whether the book is correct about the Ninth Mystery.The Ninth Mystery is about immortality and asks...

One of my friends here whom I usually agree with liked this book a great deal. He notes it is a psychological thriller (and indeed it is) and found it more a horror read. I can see that. But it never opened up to me that far...or maybe I just never got so involved.I go 3 stars here but I'm bound to say it was a close thing I considered 2. However I can see that this is a well done book. it was just a case of the book never drawing me in.We have here a shifting point of view as each of the partic...

Because he has garnered no fewer than eight Hugo and Nebula Awards over the years, has been inducted into the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America Hall of Fame, and has been, since 2005, anyway, an SFWA Grand Master, it might be difficult to credit the notion that Robert Silverberg might also be a writer of horror. And yet, there it is, the 55th book under discussion in Jones & Newman's excellent overview volume "Horror: Another 100 Best Books"; namely, "The Book of Skulls," which firs...