| Title | : | Floating Dragon |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 0425189643 |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9780425189641 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 595 |
| Publication | : | First published January 1, 1982 |
| Awards | : | British Fantasy Award Best Novel (1984) |
This quiet suburban town of Hampstead is threatened by two horrors.
One is natural. The hideous, unstoppable creation of man's power gone mad.
The other is not natural at all. And it makes the first look like a child's play.
Floating Dragon Reviews
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I keep on being drawn back to Peter Straub for my Horror fix. With this author it isn’t just about the nasty stuff: it’s about the presentation. Floating Dragon is a case in point: not only does Straub expose our fears; he toys with them.
The plot in a nutshell
What you’ve got here is essentially a town that is periodically plagued by a sequence of terrible events: serial killings; disappearances; children dying under mysterious circumstances. This only happens once every generation and only the individuals who know the town’s history exceedingly well are even aware of the pattern (they can be counted on one hand), the rest are blissfully ignorant. It’s time for the horror to start again, only this time it coincides with an industrial accident that releases a bio-weapon that is still in a very unstable phase into the atmosphere. The net result is gobsmacklingly macabre. The gas has a hallucinatory and psychotic effect (think military grade LSD) and in extreme cases causes an extremely grotesque disease.
From the author’s introduction
Anything like restraint or good taste was verboten, the aesthetic was grounded in a single principle, that of excess.
Thoughts
Kudos to Straub. He never quite lets his horror becomesplatterpunkoverly gory. This is good, because once you start gore-shocking your audience into submission, all other considerations (like, for example, good characters) go flying out the window. Like other reviewers, I would have to agree that this is quite a bit like
It, in terms of the general feel and presentation of the story, although Dragon was published before King’s novel.
Floating Dragon is better paced than the other Straub novels I’ve read. It consists of three set pieces, each one building on the previous, which helps maintain momentum. The characters are, as always, extremely well developed. It is a disturbing novel and probably one of the scariest I’ve read. Yes, there is a lot of weird imagery, but it is because the line between reality and illusion becomes increasingly blurred as the story progresses. It is often up to the reader to decide “what the heck just happened?”
It’s as complete a horror novel as you’re likely to lay your hands on, and quite clever, really. However, a word of warning, things get really, really weird towards the end. Total insanity and randomness might not be to everyone’s taste. If you only ever read one Straub novel it should probably be
Ghost Story, but if you read another, perhaps it should be this one. -
🌟🌟🌟🌟 1/2
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This book was really good. I thought it had some pretty dark and twisted parts. I felt like it took a while before anything really started to happen. I suppose this was necessary in order for the readers to get a true sense of who these characters really are. I did start to care quite a bit about a few of them. Some parts of the story where a little complex and confusing. More than once I started seriously considering the fact that I may not be smart enough to read Peter Straub. This was only my second Peter Straub read (third if you want to count The Talisman) so I should probably reserve judgement on that until I attempt to read more books by him. I enjoy how he seems to be more direct with the horror elements of his writing. I also felt like he did a fine job of capturing the feel of the small town. (or at least what I imagine a small town feel to be since I've not really spent much time in one) Overall, I thought the story telling was well done. I thought the imagery was rich and dramatic. I look forward to my next Peter Straub read.
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If Peter Straub should ever happen to write another book with Stephen King, then I'm sure to read something else by him. If not, this is where we part ways.
Grindingly Slow Moving Dragon was an ordeal and one of the few books in later years that I did finish despite feeling the way I did about the last 200 or so extremely dense pages.
But let's start at the beginning - the beginning was good, actually! This was suggested to me by my pro reading buddy Edward Lorn (and there should be no shadow over Edward's expertise this time either - especially since it was me who should have heeded his advice and put this one safely back on the shelf when the time came, just as he did). I brought the book along for a short business trip that included two train and four flight transportations and I do think this was what got me quite a bit into the book in quite a short while and also, what made me enjoy it enough to keep going. The prose is of the kind that demands your fullest attention and attentiveness, you see. Very little is explained, the characters are not very defined and the stories take off in many directions at once. Already from the start I wondered about Straub's writing process for this book - did he himself have a clear understanding of where the story was going, a beginning, middle and end? I also wondered about his editor - did he have one?
The prose is dense (even the print is, in my edition there's very little white on any page and staying on the same one for a number of minutes of course adds to the feeling that you are creeping forward in the developing stories...). The narrative is good, if long-winded, until a strange grip in chapter 3 of part I:
Instinct tells me that now is the time to emerge from the cover of the godlike narrator who knows what all his character [sic!] are thinking and doing at all times and[...]. Already, this pose has slipped, never more so than when I alluded to myself.
This is, in my humble opinion, awkward, cumbersome and incoherent. Every time I happened to think about this, such as on any of the numerous occasions the narrator (obviously) talked about himself in third person, or talked very much in the third-person-omnipresent, I went: "Oh, yeah, how would this work then?" (Because - you know - it really wouldn't.) It's even more inexplicable as the 'device' is very little used - he talks in "his own voice" here for a very short while and then returns to it just once, near the end and the reason given is that:
You see why I wanted to describe this series of events in the first person:[...] - Actually I don't - it would not have made any difference whatsoever to me. - why the pose of an objective narrator would have been no good, a lie to you and me both. - Which one are you, again?
And there in my last question lies my main issue with this book: the characters... After more than 600 pages, I don't have one of them clear in my mind. Each and every one turned up horribly mutilated in visions and hallucinations so many times that I can impossibly recall who died for real and when. And what happens when you don't feel anything for the characters, not even that they could be real, you really don't care that much what happens to them or, it directly follows, how the story with them in it really ends.
Parts one and two were good (at about 160-170 pages each), probably due to my full attention (and the fact that my alternate reading material was the tax free catalogue) and somewhat moving story. The third part, clocking in at about 250 pages of molasses-in-December-moving story (not to mention the name 'Tabby' uttered a ridiculous amount of times - anyone with the ebook at hand that gets curious - please let me know) was akin to the work of Sisyphus (even if his was a bit varied as he had to go downhill once and again).
I don't consider myself a lazy reader, but with so many captivating and grabbing books in the world, I simply cannot see myself struggle through another one of PS. -
Oh gentle child, beautiful as thou wert,
Why didst thou leave the trodden paths of men
Too soon, and with weak hands though mighty heart
Dare the unpastured dragon in his den?
-Shelley
Superb storytelling, five-star character development and flawless writing; no wonder I didn’t want a book of almost 600 pages to end.
You were dreaming for a long time and then you were not. You were asleep in a place you did not know and when you awakened you were someone else.
The Floating Dragon is a frightening, at times disgusting and horrifying and occasionally mystifying hell and double hell of a book.
A man named Gideon Winter known as the Dragon arrives in Hampstead three hundred years ago and Evil takes root. Bad things start happening. Very bad things.
There are no bad men they say. Devil doesn't exist they say…
Is it the place that makes Evil or is it the Evil which chooses the place? -
As a pretty regular reader of the horror genre, Floating Dragon was one of the most original takes on the "haunted town" story I've ever read, and I'm somewhat surprised by the mixed reviews here. There's not much that's totally new here (as far as 1980's horror), but Straub puts a fresh spin on some of the genre's most cliched tropes: ghosts, zombies, ancient curses, chemical outbreaks, psychos, psychics, etc. His "everything and the kitchen sink" approach may be what rubs some horror fanatics the wrong way.
For me, it was a terrifying novel that caused a lot of missed sleep, due to staying up way too late reading, and to the horrible images stuck in my head while I lay in my bed, wide awake with no chance of sleeping. You actually feel for these poor, doomed people in the haunted town of Hampstead, where evil literally lurks behind every corner. That is a sign of a truly great horror novel.
It's also extremely well-written. Straub's prose pulls you in with such captivating imagery that never becomes distracting. I never really had to pause and try to picture just what the heck was happening amid all the insanity, it all just flowed so well. Each and every character had their own distinct voice, and I cared about what happened to them, while the atmosphere of tension and terror in the story slowly just builds...and builds...and builds...
Any fan of King epics that have a vast array of primary and secondary characters in a smallish town setting should read this. I warn you, there are literally dozens of main characters to keep track of, with stories somewhat independent of each other. For this reason, I would recommend reading this within a short span, or else it might be easy to lose track of what's happening with certain characters that might not have been mentioned in a while. But don't let that deter you. Stick with it and you will be rewarded with a story that will keep you absolutely horrified while reading it, eager to read more when away from it, and totally satisfied after finishing.
5 Stars -
After the success of Ghost Story and Shadowland, Peter Straub wanted to try his strenght in tales that do not involve anything supernatural. Floating Dragon, published in 1983, was to be his final horror novel for a long time - till the 1999 return to the genre with Mr X.
As a novel, Floating Dragon operates on the ever familiar canvas of "horror in a small town", popularized in the 70's by Salem's Lot. While Salem's Lot was lean, swift and fast-paced, Straub's novel is much longer, much more complex, and stuffed up with much more things. I'm not putting one above the other, because aside from the same set-up they are as different as day from night.
In the introduction of my edition, Straub writes about his intentions and methods of composing the work. This paragraph perfectly illustrated what Floating Dragon is all about.
"Undead things in bandages, ancient curses, paranormal powers, the inanimate alarmingly animated, spontaneous combustion, visionary apprehensions, human beings uniting into ad hoc families to combat hideous literal evils, ghosts, ravening beasts, beckoning mirrors, vampiric entities, external horrors, that whole gaudy blaring blinding circus of metaphor made real – at a level just below consciousness, I had decided to take my leave of all this dear, goofy imagery by wrapping it all together in one gigantic package and then… blowing it up!"
And as the man said, he did. However, as he later remarks, Floating Dragon is far from hackwork often associated with the potboilers of the genre: it's a set of slowly escalating set pieces, which in the end result in outright lunacy.
As a novel, Floating Dragon shows all of Straub's strenght: his talent for characterization and mood, his great attention to detail and careful composition and escalation of atmosphere. The fictional small town of Hampstead becomes real: populated with all sorts of people with all sorts of backgrounds, who do all sorts of things.
The title, Floating Dragon is a gem in itself. It refers to Straub's unique approach: using two horrors, instead of one. The first is the poison gas which leaks out from a laboratory, a cloud of which settles over Hampstead. And the second...but I'll let you discover that on your own.
Although the paragraph from the introduction might sound a bit goofy, the novel itself is not: it's a serious, well-written work of fiction, bound to please anyone who's willing to suspend his/hers sense of disbelief. Straub's set pieces are captivating and populated by interesting characters, and although he makes the terrors he unleashes sound goofy they are anything but. The climax of Floating Dragon is indeed a moment of outright madness, but the journey there on the board of Straub's exquisite prose is worth it. -
This book was AMAZING. It's the kind of novel I was expecting to read when I've accepted Bob Pastorella's challenge of making a retrospective of Peter Straub's career in 2017 (I had never read Straub before).
FLOATING DRAGON is a sweeping supernatural horror novel inspired by the military paranoia of the 1980s. There are governmental secrets, transcendent grudges, transcendent horror and batshit crazy visions that plague an unsuspecting Connecticut town. What I ike about Peter Straub is that he never really settles for easy answers. The monsters are never like, werewolves, ghosts or vampires. It's never convenient like that. The monsters are always man-made and everyone is always responsible for creating them.
Of course, like in other Peter Straub novels, there are way too many characters and point of views that keep crisscrossing, so it gets really confusing at time but it's forgiveable for FLOATING DRAGON because there's an anchor point to all of the crazy stuff happening. One reason why they're all experiencing different terrors. In many ways it's a very conventional Peter Straub novel, but it's his most accomplished I've read so far. Really enjoyed this one. -
EDIT: 4.5/5 rounded up. I read this book back in January and it still hasn’t totally left my mind. I was nuts to not give this a 5 star. This is the craziest, most balls to the wall, everything but the kitchen sink, completely batshit crazy horror novel Straub has ever written, and it deserves to be rounded up to 5.
In the spirit of trying to save 5 stars for nothing but the absolute best of the best, this one just barely squeaking below 5 with a 4.4. But to be clear-this is an amazing horror book, and if it were my first Straub, I very likely would have gone 5. The truth is though, he has books that I like even more than this one.
Peter Straub has a way with his writing-it really gets into my head. It’s very rare I get creeped out by books, but this one did it. There is some phenomenally creepy and disturbing imagery in this book-this is something he is good at.
This was Straub’s balls-to-the-wall, a little bit of everything ode to the horror genre, and we do indeed have a little bit of everything. The horror comes from literally every direction, and it’s hard to imagine how the town of Hampstead can endure this cycle of terror every 30 years.
The book starts out jumping around in the timeline a little bit, and it can be confusing until Straub settles into his narrative a bit. We get a bunch of foreshadowing that doesn’t quite make sense yet and we are introduced to some of the important players. The horror starts soon after when we learn that DRG (the Thinking Cloud), a dangerous research chemical with widely varying and horrifying effects somewhat like LSD, has accidentally leaked and has settled over Hampstead, Connecticut. Things then start to get weird, and we begin to learn a little history about the town and quickly figure out that DRG is only one of two horrors heading straight for the town.
This book is incredibly gruesome-at times the horror is cartoony and campy. Other times, it is very real and as dark as it gets. The author isn’t messing around here.
After this, Straub went on to write my favorite book of his, Koko, which is also very dark but not horror in the true sense like this one. As far as I know, he never returned to the genre with anything like this. This is a dense, disturbing and relentless book that every horror fan should probably read. Comparisons can be made with something g like IT by King as there are similar themes and premises, but it turns out that the books are actually quite different. Highly recommended. -
First published in 1982, FD is one big, sprawling doorstop of a novel, but getting to the end was more of a labor than a labor of love. Straub must have felt a desire to incorporate every horror trope known into one book and while FD has it moments, a good editor would have pared this down substantially. The story centers on a small 'gold coast' town of Connecticut (Hampstead) that is being subjected to some serious trauma in the summer of 1980. The 'Floating Dragon' refers actually to two (ultimately related to a degree) disasters-- a toxic cloud of DRG 15 (an experimental chemical weapon, something like LSD on steroids) and an old, returning evil that blights Hampstead every 30 years or so. It just so happens that in 1980, the toxic cloud arrived at the same time as the returning evil.
DRG 15 produces all kinds of effects on people; some just have severe flu-like symptoms, some develop lesions that result in their skin falling off, some have LSD-like experiences, some are induced to suicide. You get the picture-- nasty stuff. The other dragon is something of a devil, an evil, that has haunted Hampstead for 100s of years, in fact, almost since the inception of Hampstead itself. Way back in the 17th century, Hampstead was settled by four primary families but an Englishman arrived shortly thereafter and started buying up land like a madman. This story is teased out in dribs and drabs, but no real spoilers knowing about this. Eventually, the four families got together hand offed the Englishman. Now, whether or not the Englishman was evil, or the evil deed of killing him aroused an ancient evil we never know, but in any case, every 30 years or so an evil manifests itself in someone from Hampstead and kills lots of people, brings fires and crop failures-- again, you get the picture. Further, the evil (named dragon) is stronger when members of the original four families are present in Hampstead, as is the case in 1980.
The four main protagonists are all descendants of the original four families and Straub takes us on a merry journey describing how they all managed to arrive to Hampstead. We are introduced to more characters than you can shake a stick at, and then some more. Straub also utilizes some nifty back and forth time lines along the way, further fleshing out the details of the story and the main characters. This has the makings of a good story, but Straub just tries to do too much here regarding the horror.
FD verges on the edge of being splatterpunk, with all kinds of grizzly murders and events. We have the current manifestation of the dragon acting as a serial killer in town, butchering women right and left. We have the toxic DRG cloud killing people in all kinds of macabre ways, such as skin sloughing off their bodies. All the pets in town go suicidal, running under the wheels of cars and trucks. Birds dropping dead from the sky. Visions (hallucinations?) of rivers of blood, buckets of blood, basements full of blood, bats with human heads and other assorted monsters. It felt like Straub was at times just dumping horror tropes left and right and hoping something would stick.
Perhaps the best moniker for such a book is literary horror, as Straub does employ a deft command of prose and is really gunning for epic here. It reminded me of King's
It, especially in the grand good versus evil motif, although FD is not a coming of age story. I have read several novels by Straub and seems he tries to make each novel more complex and epic than the last. Maybe this worked as he had a huge audience in the 80s. 3 stars. -
As an exercise in excess (which is what Straub admits to in his spoiler-ish introduction), Floating Dragon is a triumphant fireworks display that bombards the gluttonous reader with hundreds of pages of feverish horror set pieces. So infatuated with its own crackling prose and sense of narrative flair (the former more akin to the mannerisms of John Updike, the latter the self-referential glee of Martin Amis) the novel takes over 200 pages for its central storyline to emerge from a deluge of hallucinogenic, but deadly, hauntings, only for the plot to mostly be swept under again by even more tidal waves of blood. Readers unprepared for such an experience will recoil at the insistent brio and abandon, but those who are hungering for an experience similar to slowly swallowing a thrashing roller coaster will inch happily through this novel's beefy spine. The plot in a sentence? When the brutal murder of a woman in an affluent Connecticut community coincides with the accidental release of a sentient psychotropic weapon, four strangers are drawn together to battle an evil as old as America.
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"Floating Dragon" feels like what you'd get if Robert McCammon and Nick Cutter decided to ghostwrite a Stephen King novel together, switching back and forth between sections without anyone going back to revise. It's dense and absurdly overwritten, the individual scenes are often fantastic, but trying to pick up the bread crumbs from start to finish leads you on a winding road that not once gets you anywhere close to grandmother's house.
The story follows a band of characters who discover their ancestors formed a band of characters to fight off an evil that plagues the town of Hampstead, Connecticut, and who must now fight off an evil that plagues the town of Hampstead, Connecticut. An evil in the form of a floating poisonous gas that escaped from a government facility, and also a mass murdering psychotic doctor, and also the reincarnated spirit of the previous mass murderer who their ancestors had to defeat, who may or may not be possessing the psychotic doctor and may or may not have been responsible for the spilling of the government gas. And also in the form of the hallucinations that plague the town (along with the evil) causing fires that aren't really there but that still burn down houses or cause kids to go drown themselves in the river. And also there's a mirror and creepy things happen around and in it. Oh, and did I mention that some of our band of heroes have telepathy or can see back into the past, if only to allow us to read in real time everything that happened to those former band of characters?
I'm not sure I would have made it through this labyrinthine novel without having committed to a buddy read with Mr. E. Lorn, but as chaotic and downright frustrating as this book can sometimes be, there are also spectacular moments with some of the finest writing you'll ever read. It is Straub, after all. At times it feels like you're the only sober one listening to a drunkard's rambling tale and then in the next moment you feel those jaded little heartstrings being pummeled, emotions pulled from you you had no plan on revealing. I will say, as tumultuous of a flight "Floating Dragon" was, Straub completely sticks the landing. It almost makes that drunkard's tale worth listening to.
One of those books I'm glad I tackled but will never return to. As one of the characters says near the final showdown, "If we're going crazy, at least we're doing it together." I'd recommend this one only if you have someone to go crazy with too. -
Too much backstory and exposition but not enough actual suspense and action to keep me reading past the half way point. I tried...
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I don't know how this book isn't over a 4 star average on here. I read Ghost Story by Straub and the talisman series Peter Straub co-wrote with the King, but this is my favorite of his books by far.
It's a long novel but it's well paced. Lots of horrific and gory images and scenes throughout this book. Vicious killings done by serial killers, gross human decomposition and body horror done by a nerve gas, mass killings, suicide drowning, zombie and supernatural apparitions...I mean , the list could go on and on.
I found myself thinking alot of IT by King. It seems he got some ideas from this novel. The supernatural evil in this book is cyclical as well. It jumps from past to present , not exactly like IT but through visions and presentations and research by characters. Also , the main group of characters form their own type of psychic bond and comraderie.
Just an overall horror tour de force. 5 stars -
I'm sure there are those who will disagree strenuously with me on what I think about this book.
I reviewed this book "back a'ways" and someone brought my attention back to it. I originally put most of the review under the "spoiler line" below. I will say...in the clear...that I was disappointed in this book. I'd just read Ghost Story and found it great. This one not so much...didn't really care for it. It seemed to start with promise but I thought it sort of crashed and burned.
My taste of course, more below, but I couldn't recommend it.
****************Some Minor Spoilers Below *****************
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It took me over two weeks to finish reading this novel, Peter Straub's Floating Dragon (1983), which is a total rarity for me. I'm serious, guys. I start getting really friggin antsy if a book reading rocks on for more than four or five days. Why? I dunno; it doesn't help that Floating Dragon is only the second book I've read in 2016, so if I'm wanting to reach the number of book I read last year I had better get a move on!
Reading in January is always hard for me, though. Starting back to school and work after the holidays is a drag for anyone, and I am no exception. I often find my reading takes a back-seat to classes and my ever-changing work schedule (I work at my college, and my schedule changes with each semester), so I often can only read at night or in between classes . . . and that's if I'm not hooked on a particular Netflix show (how am I just discovering Breaking Bad???) or feeling downright lazy. However, don't let any of this -- my excuses, that is -- be any indication of the quality of this novel, which turned out to be one of the finest horror novels I have ever read. Seriously.
When going into a Peter Straub novel, one must know he or she is in for a dense, heady, and challenging reading experience. A Straub book isn't one for waiting in the doctor's office or riding the bus. Straub's works are genuine works of art, totally dedicated not giving up many -- if any -- of their secrets at once. Instead, Straub often puts his reader off-balance, creating a cold and disorienting world not unlike any Stanley Kubrick film. Floating Dragon is no exception, though its similarities to the author's previous novel Ghost Story as well as Stephen King novels such as IT and 'Salem's Lot make it, perhaps, a little more accessible and warm in comparison to something like Shadowland, a book I will readily admit went totally over my head at times.
Floating Dragon is an in-depth look at a small town in Connecticut, Hampstead, which is an upscale place only a short drive from New York City. One is more likely to find coffee shops and yoga studios than drive-in theaters and McDonald's there. Long story short, it's an upper-class town for upper-class people: painters, writers, realtors, et cetera. A poisonous gas cloud has accidentally been released from a top-secret government facility in a neighboring town, and Hampstead is about to become subject to a waking nightmare . . . a nightmare that is brought on not only by the gas cloud but by a mysterious cycle of violence that occurs in the small town every 30 years or stretching back all the way to the late 1600s, when the town was established. Straub studies almost every cycle of violence in depth, which makes up a good deal of this book's length. It's all necessary and fascinating stuff, luckily, with nary a hint of word diarrhea or draggy parts.
The latest cycle, taking place in summer of 1980, begins with the murder of a few prominent women in town and quickly escalates. The cast of the novel is a fairly large one, but four main players soon come center stage and must band together to try to rid the small town of this unspeakable evil once and for all. In typical Straubian fashion, it's these four's family histories that bind them together and make them the only ones able to take on the beast, but I won't go into too much detail there as I would hate to spoil anything. Essentially, like usual, Straub studies the way the past has such major impact on the present in new and invigorating ways -- ways I've yet to see from any other author.
This is a big book. Not only in size is it big, but also in its ideas and the points it covers. Straub could have easily created three novels out of all the story-lines presented here, but he somehow pulls it all off here, making every plot point harmonize. What the end result is a totally enthralling, terrifying, and full-of-heart story that ranks up there with the best of '70s and '80s horror fiction. If you've never read Peter Straub, starting here would not be a bad place though I always recommend Ghost Story to newcomers. Once you read that, come to this one. Stay a while in Hampstead, Connecticut . . . just don't look in any mirrors, and stay away from the beaches. -
A government experiment goes awry and a deadly gas is released over the affluent suburb of Hampstead, Connecticut. Meanwhile, the decendants of the town's original founders return to Hampstead for the first time in over 100 years, igniting a firestorm of events that are the continuation of an ongoing curse.
After I read (and was completely scared shitless) by Ghost Story in high school, I was afraid to read anything else by Straub. I remember passing up Shadowland and this book; by then I was involved with reading too many other writers to be concerned with him. But rereading Ghost Story last year got me thinking about investigating more of Straub's work and the 30th Anniversry edition of FD seemed like a good place to start.
I was mistaken about that as this book was a huge disappointment.
I think the biggest problem with Floating Dragon was that it couldn't decide if it wanted to be a supernatural or science-gone-awry tale. It begins with a pretty good setup of a DOD experimental project getting released into the atmosphere and then becomes the tale of a curse over Hampstead that recurs every 30 years or so. Even as the two threads continue, they never mesh in any significant way--in fact, the narrator of the story decides that the chemical accident was merely a coincidence. So the reader is left wondering why it was needed to bloat an already over-wrought story.
Then there is the narrator of the story, a black-listed author of novels/screenplays who ex-patriated himself to England and alcoholism until the McCarthy-era ended. He begins his story in the third person, but then breaks in with a chapter of first-person narration to explain his role in the affair. He says he got most of his information from the diaries of the three other protagonmists, but he may have made some stuff up himself--he's a writer after all, and he may not have remembered stuff very well. Then it's back to the third-person (though he does break in two more times for pointless POV narration.) So now we have a gleefully unreliable narrator to deal with.
Finally, the overall tone of the book is one of Straub being in love with his own writing. His unreliable narrator speaks as if he is smarter than everybody else in the room and he knows it. Add to this a setting of affluent people who feel they are better than everybody else and there's very little to care about in this confused and off-putting tale of death and destruction. In the epilogue to the story he talks about the narrator finally publishing "the excellent book Floating Dragon"--that actually made me laugh. But it just went to the overall arrogant and confused prose relating this tale.
There was about 100 pages (divided by one of the narrator's interludes) that were pretty good--those dealt with the main storyline of the curse, not the chemical accident. And I liked the climactic scene in the Gorge at Kendall Point. But overall, this was not a memorable reading expereince. If you are a newcomer to Straub, start with another title--I recommend Ghost Story; if you're already a fan, you'll probably like it.
But Cemetery Dance's edition of the book is beautiful (I gave it an extra 1/2 star for that!)
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Floating Dragon could have knocked my socks off, but unfortunately the novel’s middle part got bogged down by too many abstractions, too much 80′s horror imagery – the pulsing red light, blood everywhere, visions in various stages of decomposition. Granted that it was written in the mid-80′s, but I’m reading this now in 2011, and it was just too much. Many times the horror becomes ridiculous, even cheesy, even laughable, far from the subtlety of his short story collection, Houses without Doors, for example.
But it starts and ends beautifully enough. The beginning reminded me of Straub’s The Hellfire Club (which, by the way, did knock my socks off), with its huge cast of characters, its Gothic feel, invented history, and invented pop culture legacy referenced throughout the story (the show Daddy’s Here in Floating Dragon, the novel Night Journey in Hellfire Club). The novel starts like a crime story: a woman named Stony Friedgood is found brutally murdered in the idyllic, middle-class town of Hampstead. But then the story gets a hint of scientific disaster: an experimental chemical called DRG is released accidentally into the air, and settles on the town. This chemical, when inhaled, either kills instantly, or turns the person insane. Did DRG just create a serial killer? All over Hampstead, birds fall dead from the sky.
Still, that’s not all: when the town of Hampstead was built in the 1800′s, a man named Gideon Winter arrives in town and brings with him a destructive force that will visit Hampstead time and time again.
It’s worth a read, if only for Peter Straub’s superb writing. -
This book feels like a scratchpad for a more developed book. I kept going, "I can't even," while reading this. None of it makes sense, none of it hangs together, it feels like a desperate not-knowing of what one is writing about. It is, in many places, something I wanted to toss across the room, it feels so clueless.
And then I finished it.
The ending makes no logical sense but is one of the more moving things I've read lately. A state change. It reminded me of A Season of Mists, Sandman, when the two dead kids refuse to die, Death says "Fine," and they realize that they don't have to stay anywhere forever, etc.
So in the end I felt the book was a brave renunciation of that which was no longer wanted or needed, a portal into the real mysteries. I have to approve. -
Of all the Peter Straub novels, I think I was most looking forward to reading his 1983 novel FLOATING DRAGON, but mostly just because it was referenced in Stephen King’s THE TOMMYKNOCKERS. Having finished it, I have to say other than GHOST STORY, it might be my favorite Straub novel to date.
Set in 1980, FLOATING DRAGON is set in Hampstead, Connecticut, a quiet suburb where families go to be content. At the start of the story, once we’re past the prologue and introduction, several things happen almost simultaneously in Hampstead that make this a very interesting time to live there. In a neighboring town, a Department of Defense project has gone haywire, releasing a deadly gas into the air, where the winds will most likely carry it to Hampstead. As this deadly gas is being released, Stony Friedgood, adulterous wife of Leo Friedgood who was sent to the chemical plant to deal with the problem, is murdered by a man she’s brought home from a bar. Meanwhile, high schooler Tabby Smithfield has just moved back to Hampstead with his father after the death of Tabby’s grandfather, businessman Monty Smithfield. In another part of town, Richard Albee, child star and current home remodeling contractor, and his wife Laura have also just moved to Hampstead, marking the first time in 100 years that descendents of all the town’s founders are back in Hampstead at the same time.
And it’s a good thing, because the Dragon has also returned to Hampstead. Hundreds of years ago, when the town was flourishing, a man named Gideon Winter, who was also called The Dragon, came to Hampstead, leaving death and ruin in his wake. The town survived and flourished again, but over the decades the Dragon has returned to wreak havoc on the town and its people. The pattern has never been detected until now, and with Graham Williams and Patsy McCloud rounding out their group, Tabby and Richard set out to stop the destruction and death before Hampstead is irrevocably lost.
The town is caught in a whirlwind it can’t comprehend nor escape from as all the birds in town fall dead from the sky, a murderer makes his way through the town’s women and the children all find their way in the dead of night to the seashore where one by one they wade in past their ability to return.
The scope of what Straub pulled off with this novel left me astounded and humbled with each page. It’s not enough his prose is simply perfect, but the plot he’s created, the characters and the town inside FLOATING DRAGON were nothing short of the work of a master. Straub was 39 when FLOATING DRAGON was published. I’ll be 39 later this year. What the hell have I been doing with my life?
Straub didn’t just pick his four focus characters and tell their story exclusively, he really took great pains to tell the story of Hampstead, Connecticut as a whole, and that’s a feat and a half. It seems with every book I read, his skill just stands out more and more and I’m once again in awe of what he is able to accomplish. His mastery of the language is unmatched.
It wouldn’t be out of the question to say Straub might just be the best American writer working today.
It’s not just that his plots work, or that he hits upon the occasional phrase that makes a reader take notice. It’s more than that. His prose is flawless. I have never found myself mentally editing a Peter Straub novel as I read it, nor have I ever found myself stuck in the mire of some scene that seemed like it would never end and the characters hadn’t done anything in 40 pages. I don’t have to worry about Straub’s characters coming onscreen just long enough to utter some witticism to get my notice before then being flattened by a semi on the highway in the next scene. Though the cast of FLOATING DRAGON was pretty immense, none of them felt like walk-ons, each character was given the time and space to grow and really inhabit their part of the story.
Nearing the end of the book, I kept having that feeling of familiarity, but I couldn’t place what it was until I was almost at the last page, and then it hit me: the feeling I was having was similar to the end of Stephen King’s IT, which just proved, to me, how much of an influence this novel had to have been on King’s work around this time. If you think about it, the end of IT (and I don’t mean the actual climax, I mean the feelings evoked in and for the character at the end, but, yes, also I suppose the battle felt similar, too) is reminiscent of FLOATING DRAGON. King’s next novel was THE EYES OF THE DRAGON, which was dedicated in part to Straub’s son. King’s next novel was THE TOMMYKNOCKERS, which made a direct reference to FLOATING DRAGON. I think it’s safe to say I’m not the only one who dug this book. It really is awesome.
I loved the feeling of completeness in this novel. I loved getting to know and care about the characters. I loved how real the setting became to me. Once again, a Straub novel has left me pleased to be a reader. This is exactly the experience that reading a novel should give me. -
As I type this, there is blood and fire pouring out of my ears, my skin is falling off the bone, soon I will have to bandage myself back together, Then I will be known as just another Leaker :(
I have just knocked down 30 mailboxes on my home from work. Then I painted my entire house Pepto Bismal Pink, the entire inside is painted yellow... then I tore off my clothes and ran naked through the woods laughing and screaming hysterically about the man in the box I know for certain died last week. I mourn my pet cats, I wonder if they will ever come back. Where did all my neighbors go?
I am typing this from up in a treehouse . I only have a few moments before I am discovered so this will be short and sweet.
This book was terribly gripping, TERRIFYING, raw to the bone, shocking, intricately layered, intriguing original plot, loveable characters.
I couldn't get to the end fast enough and now I am sad it is gone forever.
When you read this book, come back and find me! SAVE ME, Ill be here waiting....Forever, or at least until the trains stop coming, then I will have to walk into the ocean. HURRY -
It was a really good potboiler. The biggest fault that I can see past the static characters is the confusing dragon itself. I don't think Straub really knows what caused this horror and his caricature of military and police types clashing has a real satric thrill that should have been developed. But it was still a good read. I read reviews here comparing it to Stephen King's It (which is probably the other way around considering It was written later) and The Tailsiman. I think Straub is in another category than King. His books don't blow the endings the way King's do. Further, his stories don't feel second hand. Though he uses familier elements, they seem more natural and less forced than King's often do. This belongs on the shelf with his masterpiece Ghost Story.
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Muy parecido a IT. En un pueblo no paran de suceder durante años extrañas muertes y sucesos. Un trío tendrá que resolver que es, y para ello pasaran mucho miedo, con distintas situaciones de terror.
Vamos que el que se quede con mono de leer IT lo más seguro que esto sea lo más parecido que encuentre. Y que se sepa que que está escrito en el 83. -
What would happen if a mysterious toxic gas leaked out of a research facility and drove almost everyone who came in contact with it completely and murderously insane? This book gives one possible answer to that question through excellent character development, pacing, and high-intensity suspense.
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An all-time favorite. So many things going on at once, and all of them lyrics, phantasm, and beyond terrible. It's like realizing the dream of seeing Grosse Pointe visited by plague, madness and catastrophe.
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It was long…but I finished it. It wasn’t bad, sometimes it was actually enjoyable. Nonetheless, I found it long, and so of course this little tidbit is going to prevent me from giving Floating Dragon a glowing review.
First off, I found that this novel’s strength was also its weakness. Early on in the novel, Straub delves into Hampstead’s history, a Connecticut town that almost literally goes all to hell. The town, and its inhabitants, are in terrible trouble from more than one facet of evil, simultaneously, and the manner in which Straub executes this within the narrative left me pretty confused at times. The strengths are that the many manifestations of evil are pretty disquieting, if not frightening; however, the evil event is described as something that is occurring everywhere, in many different ways, all at the same time, to many people (the whole town, in fact). This is where the problem lies: there was just too much going on in the narrative, to too many people, for me to really get in and become engrossed in Floating Dragon .
Then there’s the metafictional component: this is actually an aspect of the novel I truly liked. Floating Dragon is actually a novel about a novel called Floating Dragon . The problem is, I found out way too late. Yes, I sort of had my suspicions while reading the novel—often times I felt a sense of vertigo as the feeling of reality slipped in the narrative—it was just that, as with everything else about this novel, there was too much going on. I definitely would have to re-read Floating Dragon to get a sense, perhaps even an appreciation, of all the intricacies that Straub has woven into the text. My problem is, however, that I don’t really have the time, patience, nor desire to read this book over again. It was not that good.
Good enough for a once over, though. If you’re interested in experiencing an early Straub work, check out Floating Dragon . -
-La otra novela que colocó al autor en el podio de su género en su tiempo, pero un peldaño por debajo de “Fantasmas”.-
Género. Narrativa fantástica.
Lo que nos cuenta. En la acomodada población de Hampstead hay un mal que vuelve a manifestarse cada cierto tiempo. Ahora, un accidente en un laboratorio de armas químicas libera el peligroso gas DRG-16, que flotando en la atmosfera llega hasta Hampstead, donde por primera vez en bastantes años vuelven a coincidir los descendientes de los fundadores de la población. Novela también editada en español como “Dragón”, a secas. Publicada por primera vez en noviembre de 1982 en edición limitada, pero sólo tres meses después publicada en tirada normal por otra editorial.
¿Quiere saber más de este libros, sin spoilers? Visite:
http://librosdeolethros.blogspot.com/... -
While Straub's Ghost Story is a rather enjoyable read, Floating Dragon is a mess. The reader is repeatedly dropped into plot lines that feel like walking into a movie in the middle with no idea of what the movie is. Straub has a great writing style, but this book moves like a wagon wheel trying to traverse a muddy road. I gave up around page 169. I feel my time could be better spent reading something else.
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This is one of those books that either you love it or you don't. There is so much going on you gotta really pay attention to it.
Full Review on my instagram
ashley_the_bookworm -
I enjoyed this book for the most part and if forced to compare it to another in the general, I would say it's a bit like a cross between King's IT and Straub's own novel, Ghost Story. However both of the aforementioned novels are far superior to this one. I feel like this one was a bit too ambitious and while not being an extremely long read, it dragged on for far too long in my opinion. The characters are not poorly written by any means but they are unimpressive and ordinary. Ordinary in the sense that they are completely forgettable. Straub is a terrific writer and it shows here but when compared to similar books of the genre from this time period, this book is certainly closer to the bottom of that list than at the top. With all that being said, I did get enjoyment out of it and the small town setting was quite well done. Nothing amazing or even great (in my humble opinion, of course) but still a rock solid book from an author whose name has become synonymous with horror fiction.
