DNF. Plot not interesting enough !

I read this for a new edition to be published by Centipede, and I was really very impressed. Totally not the kind of book I'd usually read, but I was totally engaged and really into the story.

I read this book in high school and think about it from time to time. I remember really liking it which is strange because I generally don't like fantasy...my book club is reading Night Circus and again I was reminded of this book. Might have to find it again.

AWESOME. I love it when authors manage to root a world in a very tangible, realistic setting...then smoothly tilt everything all a-kilter...

The synopsis on the back of the book made it sound like a battle between Native American beliefs coming to defend their lands being taken from them. A battle of a god vs the white man. Sounds cool! I'm in! Then as i started reading it realized that wasn't the case. Okay fine, I still liked how this book started it seemed interesting I thought It would be now about how humans are hunting strange creatures just trying to live their own lives out in peace in a mystical forest that protects them. I'...

Starts off very strong, but sort of unravels toward the end. Beautifully written, though.

The beginning of this book had promise and it held me till about the last 100 pages.From there it started to get weird and just haphazard.I had trouble following it after that.

Can’t rate a book like this—some disagreeable choices (in characterization) which seem out-of-place, unsavory, and dated—yet there are also many lovely passages and fascinating ideas herein. I love and miss the Smokies & the Blue Ridge, and enjoyed imagining a Biltmore-esque situation for the chateau. This book is surprising to me as far as being such a flight of fancy (double entendre intended) and somewhat of a departure for Farris...but then again, his skill is such that he can veer around su...

Here's the cover of the 1986 Tor mass-market I have (445 pages), which is slightly different than the Goodreads image for this edition, in that it's foil-embossed (and actually looks a lot cooler than my photo suggests). ETA: Thanks Scott for updating the Goodreads image.As much as I enjoy 80s horror, there was a tendency in the post-Stephen King boom for the major publishers to only release books that had hundreds of pages of filler, almost as if this were a requirement. 445 pages may not seem

I have mixed feelings about this one. I'd always heard great things about John Farris, especially what seem to be his two most popular books: The Fury & All Heads Turn When the Hunt Goes By. In this case I found out about Wildwood when I was searching Risingshadow for horror novels published in the mid-to-late 80's and the synopsis for this sounded pretty interesting. Unfortunately I learned it was much more fantasy and hardly any horror. That said, I did enjoy the setting in the Blue Ridge Moun...

Although marketed as horror by Tor, Wildwood is best describe as urban fantasy, albeit of an unusual sort. Wildwood is a tract of land in the Smoky Mountains around Cherokee, NC, next to Smoky Mountain National Park. The lot was purchased in the Gilded age as the site for a 'cottage', that is to say, a cottage of 400 rooms. Edgar Langford was the mogul in charge; the son of a super rich man, Edgar devoted his energies into the ancient middle east as an archeologist, assembling a vast hoard of an...

Could not put this down. Excellent story and thrilling twists.

Pop Sugar Reading Challenge 2020-a book with a great first line (Crouched in concealment in the laurel slick, the quarry heard the hounds approaching, and feared them more than he feared the men with guns).I had no idea what was going on throughout most of this book, in a good way. You kept getting dribs and drabs of what was happening as the book went on and when it all came together it was amazing.

This is one of those rare novels that made such an impression on me that I have actually dreamed about it on several occasions. It is the story of a parcel of densely wooded land near the Smoky Mountains called Wildwood. It is a place where twisted creatures, part animal and part man, roam; both beautiful and terrifying. And where a rich mogul, Mad Edgar Langford's chateau seems to blink in and out of existence after disappearing during a masquerade ball in the 1900's. Farris' writing style has

The more John Farris books I read, the more convinced I am that he is the best kind of insane, the kind of insane that you channel into bizarre, excellent books.I get so tired of predictable stories, in movies especially but books as well, and after reading Wildwood I see even more clearly how unoriginal most things are these days. Not this; this is a book unlike any you have ever read, even if you are a Farris fan. Yes, it's a ridiculous book, but he has the sheer writing power to make ridiculo...

Not bad, all in all. It displayed to me Farris's intelligence in his crafting of prose, which I'm not sure I particularly notices before. As the endgame was spinning out it was riding on some tenuous threads for me a lot of the time, however.

Not a bad read but it wasn't the scary trip into the woods I was hoping for - billed as a "superior horror/fantasy story" it was lacking on the horror side for me. However, the fantasy element is good, the setting of Wildwood is quite atmospheric at times & it's inhabitants, the Walkouts, are fantastic creatures indeed. The Goat-man & Butterfly Girl could be straight out of a Grimm's fairy tale & described in such a convincing way...but the rest remain shadowy figures on the edge of the story. T...

After reading my first John Farris book, All Heads Turn as the Hunt Goes by, I knew I'd found a great author and I'd devour all his books. I mean, come on, he wrote The Fury! Yet I wondered if they'd all be as great as Hunt. Well, I was pleasantly surprised by Wildwood, the scope of genius that lies in these pages unfathomable. I don't think I've ever read descriptive brilliance like this, and the weird, eerie plot left me spellbound. Do not miss this one!

4.5 starsMaybe the best sexual metaphor disguises in the history of horror literature. Up there with Straub/King's The Talisman. Wonderful novel. Contains coming-of-age elements.

This book is well worth the time and trouble that it might take to track it down. John Farris is one of the few authors in the horror genre who continually tries new things and can be counted on to deliver from one book to the next.In Wildwood, he offers a truly involving mixture of fantasy (at times, this reminded me strongly of Robert Holdstock's Mythago Wood) and frightening, cosmic horror. In a relatively short time, Mr. Farris has become one of my favorite authors and I haven't been disappo...