Chris reviewed For fear of little men. by Blackburn, John
None
3 stars
Not what I was expecting. I'd heard of "For Fear of Little Men" as a lost-race story, expecting a horror novel in the Arthur Machen mould as it's set in Wales. What I got was essentially a techno-thriller set in Wales and featuring skulduggery in the aerospace industry, industrial pollution at sea (topical, that) and the occasional moment of kinky labourer-and-posh-lady sex. I was reminded of Dennis Wheatley's novels in that they tend to feature middle-class people sitting around and discussing stuff, occasionally you will have a foreign character but they tend to be similar. There was also a very strong whiff of CS Lewis in the notion of the legendary giant whose myth still permeates the area and who may not have been as mythical as all that. (this isn't so much the Lewis of Narnia as he of "Perelandra" and "That Hideous Strength.")
FFOLM bowls along nicely and …
Not what I was expecting. I'd heard of "For Fear of Little Men" as a lost-race story, expecting a horror novel in the Arthur Machen mould as it's set in Wales. What I got was essentially a techno-thriller set in Wales and featuring skulduggery in the aerospace industry, industrial pollution at sea (topical, that) and the occasional moment of kinky labourer-and-posh-lady sex. I was reminded of Dennis Wheatley's novels in that they tend to feature middle-class people sitting around and discussing stuff, occasionally you will have a foreign character but they tend to be similar. There was also a very strong whiff of CS Lewis in the notion of the legendary giant whose myth still permeates the area and who may not have been as mythical as all that. (this isn't so much the Lewis of Narnia as he of "Perelandra" and "That Hideous Strength.")
FFOLM bowls along nicely and I was surprised to find on my Kindle edition that I was nearly through with it. I don't' think it's the classic some people have made it out to be though.
One of Terry Pratchett's novels had the same quote as a working title but he changed it. It's from the poem that begins, "Up the airy mountain, down the rushy glen, we dare not go a-hunting for fear of little men." And just as the poem fails to deliver on the hidden menace of those first two lines - these should be truly fearsome creatures, boggarts and fae hiding in the shadows, watching to trip and snare humans, but they aren't - so also while FFOLM wasn't bad I was disappointed.