Floating Dragon (1982)

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 HALLOWEEN REVIEWS 2024


by Peter Straub



Ancient evil and modern scientific malfeasance converge on the cursed town of Hampstead where four descendants of the town’s founders must contend with both a deadly force that arises every generation and the accidental release of a cloud of bioengineered poison.



 This weighty tome has many passionate devotees, but I cannot count myself among them. 



The plot seems strung together from a grab bag of horror tropes: the recurring evil, the menace from a government lab, and a couple psychics thrown in to boot.

 


These elements are not well integrated; the whole “thinking cloud” aspect is dropped early on. 



I prefer a more grounded type of horror than Straub provides here: characters regularly hallucinate (or do they?) bizarre images that effectively place them in volatile fantasy landscapes where it seems anything might happen. 



To paraphrase the late great Roger Ebert: “When anything can happen, it is difficult to care about what does happen.”

 


Sometimes the effect is downright silly; during the climax, one character confronts the evil with a shotgun that turns into a sword while the whole crew sings “When the Red, Red Robin Comes Bob Bob Bobbin’ Along.” 



Straub devotes a considerable page count to developing certain characters that are largely abandoned by the end of the book.


"Soaring Dragon" (Russian)

"Dragon" (Finnish)

"The Dragon of Evil" (Italian)

"The Breath of the Dragon" (German)

"The Floating Dragon" (French)

"Dragon Poison" (Dutch)

"Dragon" (Spanish)

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