The Ninth Nightmare

April 15, 2011

Masterton (Fire Spirit, 2010, etc.) continues his Night Warriors series by tossing half-a-dozen untried Warriors at a nefarious 12th-century amputee monk.

Something is definitely wrong at Cleveland's Griffin House Hotel. In Room 717, a disembodied voice predicts doom for charity worker Katie Kercheval. Police detective Walter Wisocky warns Rhodajane Berry, who's come to town for her grandmother's funeral, to report any odd doings in Room 309. Record promoter Lincoln Walker is attacked by a wraithlike figure who sets Room 104 afire. Rooms 237 and 239, where twin teen singers Kiera and Kieran Kaiser are staying, keep turning into an open field. The problem, cabdriver John Dauphin patiently explains, isn't just with the hotel, it's with these guests, all of whom are unwittingly sensitive to the dreams with which the walls have been infused ever since Cleveland Flats rapist/killer Gordon Veitch polluted them back in the 1930s. And the evil of these dreams goes back even further to the Cistercian monk Brother Albrecht, who's been plotting dream-borne revenge and reunion with his beloved ever since his arms and legs were amputated in punishment for adultery 900 years ago. The first third of this installment (Night Wars, 2006, etc.) hints at these developments in some truly creepy ways. The rest—revealing their superhero destinies to the Griffin House guests (refashioned as An-Gryferai, Xyrena, Zebenjo'Yyx, Jekkalon and Jemexxa) and arming them to enter the dream world and do battle with Veitch, now calling himself Mago Verde, and Brother Albrecht—is more routine action stuff.

The closest parallels to this novel are movies like Inception and comic books featuring the Justice League of America.

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May 15, 2011

Guests of the Griffin House Hotel in Cleveland begin experiencing grisly visions of brutal murders and suffer from strange dreams involving an odd traveling circus. Elsewhere in the city, a cab driver, twin singing sensations, and a social worker discover they are inheritors of a unique legacy: they are the Night Warriors who enter dreams to fight the evil creatures that would set loose a reign of chaos and nightmares upon the world. Their target is Albrecht's Traveling Circus and Freak Show, and their enemy is a mutilated 13th-century monk whose only dream is vengeance. The fifth installment of Masterton's series (Night Warriors; Death Dream; Night Plague; Night Wars) blends superhero fiction with graphic horror and a dash of pulp detective story to produce a compulsively readable tale of ordinary people transformed into heroes. VERDICT Not for the squeamish, this paradoxically likable horror story will attract series followers and the author's large readership.

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