A Librarian on Elm Street

 This was the most fun book I've read in the last six months! A British schoolboy and his friends start to investigate when his teacher seems to believe things that might not be completely acceptable in the Private School he attends.  I really liked the sense of the 60s this book conveys. Being a Yank myself, some of the different slang the kids used was foreign to me. But, it really did a great job setting the post-war English world in one's mind.  I've been meaning to get around to starting in on Ramsey Campbell as he is on most people's to-read lists if you like Lovecraftian Cosmic Horror, and I'm glad this is the first work of his I actually did read as that definitely comes across nicely. I don't want to give too much away, but there are secret and deep truths to be found aplenty in The Searching Dead. The mixture of a coming-of-age tale, a period piece, and then the Cosmic Horror of a very personal struggle with trying to do the right thing when grown-ups ...

 Holy crap. Ito is a force of nature. To say that Junji Ito is the "Japanese Stephen King" doesn't give Ito his full justice. The layers of horror in Remina are breathtaking to experience. The story is disturbing. The people are disturbing. The visuals are out of this world. The book itself being its tale in media res, then jumps backwards and proceeds to catch back up to itself. In some books or movies, I find this style sloppy or formulaic. Here, it isn't. Ito uses it brilliantly to shock and pull you into the story and its world. Absolutely fantastic.  The only criticism I can level against the book is that the main character, Remina, is underdeveloped. She is subjugated to a series of trying ordeals, but her personality is minimally shown or investigated. This is not a huge knock against the book as a whole as she is set up more of a foil against whom all of the other characters are measured and contrasted.  I've been saving Junji Ito's books to read down ...