Loved it right up to the end. Not that it was a bad ending but after such an epic buildup I just didn't think the ending lived up to it. Good but not among his best. ( )

I have read Ramsy Campbell's books for more years than I care to recount. I started with [The Hungry Moon] and [The Doll Who Ate His Mother] and have been hooked on his books ever since. In spite of my fondness for this author, I found this one a bit frustrating, for lack of a better word, to read. It was excessively descriptive and seemed to just plod along until almost the last. The plot was interesting, but I didn't feel that it ever really fleshed out. The father of the family relocated to a big house that his grandfather had lived in and immediately begins to get obsessed with the forest that had been planted many years ago. This forest seems to have some type of energy that remains unknown to the reader throughout the entire story. It never becomes clear what is in the woods... what is illuminating the frozen forest... and what exactly is in the center of it all. It was strange and somewhat eerie at times, but ultimately i felt it was unfulfilling. The main character simply does an implausible turn around, conveniently tying things up in very short order...making it all a bit pointless. 3 stars because I know this author can and has done better and I do have hope for the future. ( )

Midnight Sun is a book that I picked up from my local used bookstore. Overall, I would say that it was a decent horror novel. It did seem to be a bit slow to get going, but otherwise it was pretty good.

This is the story of Ben Sterling. As boy his family dies in a mysterious car crash and he is raised by his aunt. The book begins with him running away so he can visit his old home town of Stargrave, and when he gets there something strange happens involving a cold being. After he is returned to his aunt, he promises to be a good boy and we get several chapters of his childhood. Then he's an adult who is a struggling children's book writer. His aunt dies and he inherits her house, and the house of his parents. He eventually moves back into his parents' old house and we finally get to the part where weird stuff starts to happen.

As you can guess, it takes quite a while to get to the good stuff, though there are a few killings by the cold monster before then. Even the not-particularly-scary portions of the book aren't boring, but in some ways it almost feels like there are two novels fighting against one another. One is the non-genre story of a family trying to break into the publishing world, and the other is the story of a boy/man and his encounters with a familial frost monster thing. Separately, either one would make a good story, and while they still work well together, I think they would have been better separate. ( )

Even though it received great reviews when published, this just didn't work for me. The buildup was too long and the ending didn't mesh with the first part of the book. Ben's actions never seemed to be related to what he was doing 20 pages before. Part of it may be that the story is a Cthulhu mythos kind and I hate Lovecraft. There are some really beautiful lines in the book, and it avoids the graphic horror in vogue at the time it was published.