Neither book references things that happened in the other, and in fact one character who died rather horribly in The Ritual shows up alive and well just a few chapters into Premonition. I covered Martin's background in my review of The Ritual, but the basics you need to know are that Ruben's kind of a dead ringer for Basil Rathbone's portrayal of Sherlock Holmes, he teaches Psychology at the fictional Badler University in Indianapolis, and takes on side gigs as a practicing parapsychologist.īoth The Ritual and Premonition seem to stand alone despite sharing a main character. This book is part 2 in Williamson's sort-of trilogy starring parapsychologist Marin Ruben. It's 80's horror.much like VHS cover artwork of the same era, you gotta understand that what they show on the outside may bear little to no resemblance to what comes on the inside. A total missed opportunity, but then again, it's hardly Williamson's fault that the artist and copy editor decided to feature a completely non-noteworthy aspect of the story in an attempt to sell more books. It's not a story about rides coming to life or strange creatures stalking the Funhouse or anything like that. It's not a lie, since the primary location is an island with an abandoned amusement park, but that's all it is: an abandoned amusement park. What's slightly more frustrating is the back of the book copy takes great pains to point out the location as an abandoned amusement park, once noted for 'a horror house that boasted '1,000 Chills and Thrills!''.

It's just a pity this scene appears nowhere at all in the novel. Quite often the cover artwork had nothing at all to do with the book, or depicted scenes that never took place, but the point was to get you interested enough to give it a look, and in this case, I think the artist did a fine job. But in this era, you could almost always count on publishers like BMI, Leisure, and Zebra to deliver the weird goodness that drew readers to books like sparkles to vampires. Paperback artwork from the 80's, especially on horror novels, is a real treat-we just don't see the same level of detail or over-the-top weirdness in today's releases, which seem to opt mostly for shadowy painted images of dark forests it seems. The car in which the freaked out kid is seated also bears the number '666' stenciled in just above the author's name. You can't tell from the scan, but the title font is embossed in raised, metallic ink, and the wooden scary face is also embossed in a faux wood grain style, giving it some texture if you run your finger over it. First of all, before I say one word about the plot or the characters, I just want to point out how freaking metal that cover is.

The Evil One by J.N. Williamson