I read it because Shiloh's boyfriend lent it to me and because I had heard of Frank Peretti and because the thought of a Christian horror novel was hilarious.
The book is pretty well written, better than a lot of horror I have come across. Not anywhere near as good as Stephen King, but pretty smooth and some chilling imagery. The book proves that you don't need graphic sex scenes and skull-crushing detail to make really good horror.
It is set in spooky inbred Texas Chainsaw sort of America. Great vibe. Scary haunted house. Labyrinthine basement that keeps morphing.
Now a lot of horror novels get silly towards the end. Even the greats sometimes don't know how to untangle to spooky mess they've made. But House makes an additional mistake. It not only gets silly it also gets preachy. But it does it in a way that is a mistake I think Christians commonly make when they try to do art: it allegorises.
I don't think you need to have the death and resurrection of Aslan to be a Christian author. But that's exactly the mistake this book makes. More than that, it can't even contain its allegory - it spills over into reality. Yuck.
Strangely, if the whole thing was more openly Christian from the very beginning it would have worked better, rather than gradually seeping in this Christian stuff as the novel progressed.
"House" by Frank Peretti and Ted Dekker
