A-Z Wednesday: Usher's Passing

A-Z Wednesday is hosted by Reading at the Beach.

Here are the rules: Go to your stack of books and find one whose title starts with the Letter of the Week and post the following:

1. A photo of the book
2. Title and synopsis
3. A link (Amazon, B&N, etc.)
4. Come back here and leave your link in the comments

If you’ve already reviewed this book, post a link to the review as well. Be sure to visit other participants to see what books they have posted and leave them a comment (we all love comments, don’t we?) Who know? You may find your next “favorite” book.

THIS WEEK’S LETTER IS: U

My “U” Book is:

Usher’s Passing

by Robert R. McCammon

(New York: Ballantine Books, 1985)

Paperback, 407 Pages, Fiction

ISBN: 9780671769925, US$3.95

From the Cover: The House of Usher has towered over a century with its apocalyptic warning against the powers of madness and evil. Yet the House of Usher is no mere tale. And neither did it really fall. Today the House of Usher is a multibillion-dollar corporate empire standing poised on the brink of its most devastating onslaught against an unsuspecting world … crafting fantastic superweapons that can level the planet … summoning demons of destruction from the darkest reaches of the earth. Unless one young heir to the House of Usher can, at long last, break the unyielding spell of terror. Before it breaks him.

My Review: My first thought for “U” was to post Stephen King’s new novel Under the Dome … but then I remember this book, and I figured I should get back to my habit of posting obscure books.

So, Usher’s Passing is a book that my brother recommended to me a number of years ago, so of course I immediately ordered it online (from ABE Books) and started reading. It’s been a number of years since I read Usher’s but I remember liking it, and what I loved the most about the book was that McCammon explored the background to Poe’s infamous story, and then extends out from Poe and takes Poe’s story into all new directions and goes about “explaining” certain aspects of “The Fall of the House of Usher” and giving Poe’s original story all kinds of new depth and meaning. Quite honestly, I love it when an author does that … Dan Simmons has done that in both The Terror and in Drood and I think that that is one of the things that I loved so much about those stories.

McCammon, as I remember, pulls out all the stops and makes a pretty damn scary novel and has some genuinely frightening moments. It’s harder to find than the more common McCammon books, such as Boy’s Life, Gone South, Swan Song, or some of the more recent releases (I’ve never seen Usher’s in a book store, used or otherwise) but I will say that it is well worth the effort that you’ll need to expend in order to track it down.