Horror Story: The Devil’s Labyrinth, by John Saul
January 21st, 2012 § Leave a Comment
0 of 5 stars
After Ryan McIntyre gets beaten up by thugs at the public HS, his mother transfers him to parochial school, St. Isaac’s, hoping for a better social situation. What Ryan encounters there is far worse than bullying. In the bowels of his new school, his classmates are being terrorized literally out of their wits. For kindly young Father Sebastian has an agenda of his own….
With The Devil’s Labyrinth, John Saul has written an overwrought travesty of a horror novel that stretches credulity to the breaking point. Some passages read like such atrocious melodrama that they’re almost comical. Even in the more sensible sections, the dialogue is simplistic and hackneyed, with school personnel depicted as vindictive harpies and gullible dupes. There was one bright spot – Saul managed to stimulate my curiosity about the motives of the diabolical Father Sebastian. Alas, his motives were ludicrous.
Some of Saul’s other work is marginally better than this one, but this is the last of his novels that I’ll be reading.
