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Once

By: James Herbert
Narrated by: Damian Lynch
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Editorial reviews

A thrilling combination of the romance and fantasy genres, Once tells the story of a man named Thom who discovers a world of fairies and elves he's long considered children's stuff. This is dark fantasy, written with ornate descriptive detail. James Herbert describes each scene minutely, as if his tool was not the pen but a magnifying glass. The book's plot is less important than its supernatural characters and their various interactions. The world Herbert creates in always sensual and often blatantly sexual. Listeners should turn on this audiobook prepared to indulge their fantasies of all kinds. An epic 15 hours and 28 minutes of fantastic adventures are waiting to be had.

Publisher's Summary

Upon a time. Remember the faery stories you were told as a child? Tales of tiny, magical, winged beings and elves, wicked witches and goblins. Demons... What if one day you found they were true? What if, when you became an adult, you discovered they were all based on fact? What if you met the fantasy and it was all so very real? That's what happened to Thom Kindred.

The wonders were revealed to him - but so were the horrors; for not far behind the Good, there always lurks the Bad. And the Bad had designs on Thom. The Bad would show him real evil. He would see the 'hellhagges' and the demons. He would be touched by perverted passion. And corruption. And he would encounter his own worst nightmare. The Bad would seek to destroy him. And only the magic of the little beings would be able to help him.

James Herbert was one of Britain’s greatest popular novelists and our #1 best-selling writer of chiller fiction. Widely imitated and hugely influential, he wrote 23 novels which have collectively sold over 54 million copies worldwide and been translated into 34 languages.

Born in London in the forties, James Herbert was art director of an advertising agency before turning to writing fiction in 1975. His first novel, The Rats, was an instant bestseller and is now recognised as a classic of popular contemporary fiction. Herbert went on to publish a new top ten best-seller every year until 1988. He wrote six more bestselling novels in the 1990s and three more since: Once, Nobody True and The Secret of Crickley Hall. Herbert died in March 2013 at the age of 69.

©2001 James Herbert (P)2013 AudibleLtd
  • Unabridged Audiobook
  • Categories: Erotica

Critic Reviews

"Herbert was by no means literary, but his work had a raw urgency. His best novels, The Rats and The Fog, had the effect of Mike Tyson in his championship days: no finesse, all crude power. Those books were best sellers because many readers (including me) were too horrified to put them down.” (Stephen King)
"There are few things I would like to do less than lie under a cloudy night sky while someone read aloud the more vivid passages of Moon. In the thriller genre, do recommendations come any higher?" (Andrew Postman, The New York Times Book Review)
"Herbert goes out in a blaze of glory" ( Daily Mail)

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Fifty Shades of Green

This was VERY different to his other books, like a porn director trying his hand at Hammer Horror. I found the sex scenes distracting, in the wrong way, and over done to the point of corniness. Maybe it seemed worse listening to rather than reading them but I couldn’t shake the feeling he’s ‘trying his hand’ at something different. Never the less, it is what it is, am and always a fan.

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loved it

loved it. I read this year's ago but listening to it gave it more life.

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