The reader assumes it refers to the horned creature confined behind a 'silver' door, but it actually has another meaning entirely. The major difficulty, though, has to do with the writer’s theme, something I can explain best by talking about the meaning of the novel”s title, The Devil in Silver. So what’s wrong? First of all, Lavalle’s prose, although likable, fails to make music or create an atmosphere, two things I believe essential to the hypnotic spell cast by any first-class horror writer. In addition, his hero is likable and his fellow patients are people you can root for.

Lavalle’s writing style is likable and disarming, allowing him to perform old-fashioned gothic tricks and other tricks too (direct addresses to the reader, lengthy digressions, unexpected shifts in point of view) in an offhand manner, appearing casual, even inartful. And-if the testimony of other patients can be trusted-this other being, superhumanly strong, is equipped with horns. Just as he is beginning to adjust to the other patients and the staff, he becomes aware of “the devil”-a being who is confined behind a silver door at the other end of the ward, a being who preys on the other patients at night. Its hero is a big man called Pepper who finds himself confined to a mental institution (for observation) after becoming embroiled in a fight with three undercover policeman. Plus, the book has a first-class “elevator pitch”: think One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest meets the Legend of Theseus and the Minotaur. Lovecraft who wrote another book based on Lovecraft’s most racist short story ( The Ballad of Black Tom, based on “The Horror at Red Hook”) intrigued me.

First of all, the idea that it was written by a young black man-well, young as far as I’m concerned, he was forty when he wrote it-a fan of H.P. I was looking forward to this horror novel, and-as often happens when I look forward to something-I was disappointed.

The changeling book victor lavalle