Steve-Calvert.co.uk
Steve-Calvert.co.uk
A Passion For Horror
|
By
Christopher
Pike
The Eternal Enemy contains elements of horror, but could just as easily be classed as a science fiction story. Like most of Christopher Pike's books it is not particularly long and at just 167 pages it is probably more of a novella than a novel. The book does seem a little longer at first glance, however, because of the inclusion of the first chapter of Pike's book The Immortal, which adds an extra 25 pages. The Eternal Enemy is written in the first person and the central character is an eighteen-year-old girl called Rela. Her name might be a little on the unusual side, but Rela's tastes are all very normal. She likes beautiful clothes and loud music, long talks on the phone, cookies and boys. Her favourite cookies are chocolate chip and her favourite boy is Christopher Perry. Rela is an extremely intelligent girl, but when it comes to Chris she is as shy as she is smart and just cannot seem to pluck up the confidence to approach him. Rela is planning a party and, if she can pluck up the confidence, she intends to invite Chris, but gathering the courage to ask Chris to her party is only one of her problems. Rela's other worry is the entertainment: she needs a VCR. Fortunately, Rela has a part-time job at the library and has managed to save up two hundred dollars, so she should be able to afford that much-needed VCR. The only trouble is that the guy at the shop tells her that a two hundred dollar machine will not be much good. He insists that she will need a machine that has four heads instead of two, two just will not do, and so, taken by her good looks, Ed cuts Rela a deal and sells her a three hundred and forty dollar machine with a sixty dollar discount and accepts a postdated cheque for the extra eighty. Rela has not had her VCR very long when she discovers something rather strange about it: it can tape the future and tomorrow's news is only ever the touch of a button away. The ability to video the future proves to be as much of a curse as it is a blessing. On the one hand Rela knows which football team will win the game and so all of the gamble is removed from gambling and she is sure bet winner every time. On the other hand though, when she sees catastrophes on the news she feels a duty to help prevent them from happening. But everything else pales to insignificance when Rela watches the news of her own death and discovers that she will be brutally murdered in just two days time. As
far as I know most of Christopher Pikes books are written for
the young adult market and I cannot honestly call myself a young adult
and have not been able to do so for quite a while (decades). In most
cases, however, this does not stop me from enjoying Pike's books,
because they don't always come across as being written for a younger
reader. The Eternal Enemy
is, however, one that does - to me anyway. It is a decent story and
there is a lot more happening in it than meets the eye, but I have to
admit that I didn't enjoy it very much. It was Okay, and I think that
any 'young adult' who likes reading science fiction horror stories will
probably enjoy the book, but I don't think that this one works as well
for an older reader such as myself because it is rather hard to
identify with the characters and the language used and the way the
story is presented has too much of a 'young' feel to it. |
