Ancient Horror History Unearthed: Pray, Serpent's Prey

Pray, Serpent's Prey. I love that title. I love that artwork. I could have and wished to love the book. But the best I could come up with is, it'll do.

OH...there's some spoilers below...so if you don't want to be spoiled, go read the book first.

It'll do, if you've never read another horror book from 1988. It'll do, if you've read everything else and need your fix. It will do if you're due for something to read on your flight, that's particularly turbulent and you want to keep your mind off the turbulence.

That last part was me. I was on a flight from Tampa, from a trip to visit some family members, namely my father, and brought a big stack of things to read with me on the trip.

This was the last book I read on the trip... which, of note, while I was there, I hit up a fantastic used bookstore in St. Pete, that was just amazing. I ended up grabbing 14 books while there! Some really cool and hard to find ones at that! All of which will inevitably be reviewed... eventually.

That being said, the book, right?

Published in 1988 by Critics Choice, which by all accounts, seems to be a fly-by-night cash-in publisher dedicated to schlocky horror. I'm yet to read anything by the publisher that was amazing, but I'll tell you, whoever did their artwork was fantastic. It was also the first work by Nicholas Randers, a pen name of Nicholas Grabowsky, who later founded the small press, Black Bed Sheet Books, which seems to have found some mild success.

Needless to say, the book reads like a whats-what on late 80s horror fiction. You've got a small rag-tag group of bored teenagers, some more troubled than others. You've got a small town plagued by an ancient evil. You've got some coming-of-age moments. Most importantly, to me, anyway, some really cool goopy monster moments and gore.

All major tenants of the genre at the time.

And, as such, it'll do.

P,SP tells the story of Chris, a teenager whose dad just came back from "Rumania" for a funeral. He came back acting all sorts of strangely...the former churchgoing family man is now a grumpy wifeslapper who wants to make sure noone touches his suitcase.

His behavior gets stranger and stranger, and starts to spread through a small town in Montana where the only thing to do is pledge allegiance to the Lord. Turns out, an ancient shapeshifting vampire-demon, Mrs. Langsuir, is to blame and the only way to fight her is...the good power of the Lord...

BOO! HISS!

Catholic faith is the hero of the day! I've always hated this plot device and felt it was a total copout. Can't defeat the monster? Just PRAY AND ITLL BE OKAY.

...I wish my prayers would eat up my monsterous student loan debt...

Anyway, it'll do. It's not the worst thing, it's certainly not the best. It's a straight up middle-of-the-road exercise in late 80s horror with little in the way of surprises or diversion from the regularly scheduled program.

Some fun gory moments zest it up a bit, but this is a pure exercise in a billion things you've already read.

As a straight-down-the-middle book, it earns a straight down-the-middle grade of 2.5/5.