Island

Rating:
Summary: GREAT!!!!
Review: Laymon is a great author. I am glad i picked this book. Laymon is a very disturbing author. Some of you will love Laymon, and some of you will look away and bowing your heads. If you like gory, and sexual, and intense you will love Laymon.

Rating:
Summary: Purile Idiocy
Review: Simply one of the worst horror novels to come down the pike in a long, long time. The late Laymon was perhaps the biggest misogynist to ever set pen to paper.

Avoid this drivel at all costs.

Utterly inane and devoid of any entertainment value whatsoever.

Rating:
Summary: Great book, bizaare writter
Review: This is the second book I've read from the Laymon collection. The only thing that bothered me was that the character Rupert was not the brightest of characters, but then again we arent his shoes. It is a good book and filled with intense moments and he does a great job of making it a page turner. That's just his style.

... Finally I have a found an author that can write a book that I dont have to put down all the time because its so boring and I just dont have the patience to read through a lot of [stuff]like [other] novels before something interesting comes along.

Though Laymon's writting style is different and at times his characters seem to have no concience. But who really cares, it served its purpose of having fun and keeping you turning the pages.

Rating:
Summary: don't waste time or money on this one
Review: I read a number of reviews from people about Laymon, and thought I'd give him a try. This is the second book of his I have read. I can't imagine spending any more more money on him. I couldn't care about any of the characters. The dialogue was juvenile at best. Some of the actions of Rupert either made no sense or were simply stupid. In reading this one and Darkness..., I was reminded of something a creative writing teacher said years ago to his class: sex is fine in a novel if it serves or furthers some part of the storyline. Don't just put it in to fill pages. Laymon should have been in that class. This neverending fascination with breasts is ridiculous. It kills the flow of the story and at times seems completely out of place. Save your money and avoid this one.

Rating:
Summary: Another 5 star Laymon novel? Yup!
Review: Yet another creepy, classic book in a series of them by an author that is quickly becoming one of my all time favorites. As with all other Laymon novels, it's unpredictable, engrossing, and a fun read. You can't go wrong to pick this book up - it's Gilligan's Island and Friday the 13th combined

YOU WANT THIS BOOK NOW!!!

Rating:
Summary: Pandering to the Lowest Common Denominator
Review: This is the type of novel that gives Horror Fiction a bad name. Laymon's formula can be quite simply stated - create a totally ludicrous premise, then add liberal doses of gratuitous sex and violence. Never mind plot development, characterization, suspension of disbelief, or the art of storytelling for that matter.

Laymon is clearly pandering to an audience that finds a ridiculous plot sprinkled with over-the-top violence and sex to be a page turner.

This book is an embarrasment to the publisher and the horror genre. Proof that people will buy anything these days.

Rating:
Summary: Good, tasteless adolescent fun
Review: Island is the first Richard Laymon novel I've read, and I must say it was basically what I thought it would be: an entertaining time waster. Rupert, the first-person protagonist, is an all too believable horny teenager; you've never in your life seen so many descriptions of women's breasts in one book. It's downright comical (intentionally so), especially at the beginning.

Rating:
Summary: Don't bother with this one
Review: To put it bluntly, this was one of the sickest books I've ever read. I guess it should be in the horror category though because I was horrified at the disgusting perversion and immorality it contained. Rape, verbal child porn, and savage abuse of women that bordered on animalistic was just some of its lovely content. If you have a heart, then read this one only if you want to be shaking with disgust for months afterward.

Rating:
Summary: I Couldn't Imagine Him Writing Anything Better...
Review: This is not a plot description (I hate when the endings or critical moments are spoiled in Buyer's Reviews), this is mearly my opinion:
This, "Island", was my first, but deffinately not last, Richard Laymon book. A lengthy book as it is, I couldn't put it down; I read through several nights, missing hours of sleep, finishing it all too soon on the second night. With an overwhelming sense of awe, comfort, and surprise, I held the book in my hands for several moments afterward. This is, without a doubt, my favorite book of all time; I can only hope that his other books are just as good, or even better. I've just purchased "In the Dark", and cannot wait to recieve it so I can start reading it.
Being 17 myself, I could completely relate to the main character (given that if I ever found myself stranded on a "deserted" island).
Another thing that really captured my attention was that no new characters or major settings were introduced after the first two pages. The eight or so characters and areas were quickly debriefed, and, being stuck on an island, there was hardly any room for newcomers. Given that here and there, a new and friendly face was seen, the main characters, setting, etc, remained relativley familiar, which made it even harder to tear myself away from the pages.
All in all, I felt a sadness when I finished the book, because I just knew there wasn't another one out there to duplicate it - I hope I'm wrong. :) Three cheers for Laymon, and "Island"!

Rating:
Summary: Laymon as Merry Prankster
Review: It took me three books ("Traveling Vampire Show," "Bite," and "Island," but I finally, finally get it. Initially astonished that such amateurish books were even written, let alone published, let alone read, I now understand Laymon's motive (if not his publisher or his popularity): Laymon is a Prankster, and his novels are elaborate Hoaxes. How else to explain his thoroughly dislikable characters posed as heroes? How else to explain the endless, adolescent fixation on sex, breasts and violence? How else to explain events that would consistently defeat Coleridge's attempt to "suspend disbelief"? Laymon is using his work to explore his own fantasies; now, Laymon may or may not have been one sick puppy, but the guess here is that he was functionally conventional and used, quite consciously, his fiction to vent his darker side. "Bite" is a messy hodgepodge of "Lord of the Flies," "Fantasy Island," and "The Catcher In The Rye," with Rupert as Holden Caufield. None of this begins to forgive these books: they are excreably written, unresolved and much too long. Nonetheless, read in the context of Novel as Hoax, the faults of "Island," as well as his other books, become comprehensible: Laymon just doesn't care about such "details." In fact, it's likely that writing such drek is a major part of the fun Laymon is having, with both himself and his readers. And for Laymon the most delicious punchline of his fictional jokes was undoubtedly that very few of his readers ever caught on.