The Burning

A page turner. This book really fked me up. But in a good way.

I have been reading a lot of Little (hey! an oxymoron!!) and have greatly enjoyed his writing. With The Burning he has changed his writing style and it's refreshing. Based in part on the horrors of the great American West and what the immigrants suffered at the hands of the white man, it speaks about racism, also the American Spirit. A great read. Looking forward to much more from this talented author.

It is really refreshing to see that there are authors out there who don't hammer on the same old ideas and still expect to sell books. Bentley Little will surprise you. He may not use extraordinary prose or intricate language, but he comes up with some of the most intriguing plots and settings that you can imagine. I would definitely recommend "The Burning". Then again, I would recommend all of his books. If you haven't read a Bentley Little book, yet, you are missing some great stories. Densel Myers Yukon, Oklahoma

Bentley Little is a name I've come to feel some fondness for over the last five or six years. It all started when I decided to read "The Store," a book I still consider his masterpiece, and I haven't stopped reading his stuff since. In fact, I've read almost his entire canon. I've held back on "The Summoning" and "Dominion" only because I wish to keep a couple of his books on reserve in order to savor the experience. If you're not familiar with Bentley Little's unique brand of horror, I suggest you mosey on down to the local bookstore/library/online retailer (well, you really can't "mosey" online, but you get the idea) and pick up a couple of his novels. You won't have trouble finding one; he churns out at least a book a year, two if we're lucky, and they're for the most part great fun to read. His stories usually take some mundane aspect of our daily experiences--such as chain stores, homeowner's associations, or the postal service--and turn them into horrific encounters that threaten bedrock American values like personal liberty and family. "The Burning," however, represents a new direction for Bentley Little's talents. You won't find a fascistic evil down at the chain store here. Nor will you see an insurance agency run amok. Instead, "The Burning" introduces us to four diverse characters that soon come to face an ancient evil so encompassing and all-powerful that it threatens the very existence of the United States. Of course, the novel doesn't start out that way. Little spends a large part of the story introducing us to the characters. First up is Angela Ramos, a Californian from the barrio starting her new life as a college freshman in Arizona. Then we meet Henry Cote, a divorced park ranger working in Utah. The other two characters, a cross-country traveler named Dennis and a former Border Patrol agent called Jolene, soon march across the page. All four start experiencing a host of horrors, including but not limited to talking graves, skeletons popping out of mud pits, black mold that turns mild mannered college kids into raving racists, a pair of Chinese succubi, and weird creatures that stare into windows in the middle of the night. And then there's the train, a malevolent phantom train that pops up out of nowhere and seems to head nowhere. What the heck is going on? As these horrific events unfold, we soon learn the origin of the train and its terrible purpose. The nightmare began back in the nineteenth century when one Chester Williams, a rich racist with a hatred for Chinese immigrants, decided to embark on a national campaign to rid America of the "Yellow Peril". Fed up with railroad companies hiring Asians to lay track, Williams hits the road as a professional rabble-rouser. The resulting violence against the immigrants leaves hundreds of innocents dead. In one instance described in the opening chapter, none other than President Ulysses S. Grant helps cover up one of Chester's worst outrages. The victims of these depredations swo

When first starting to read this book, the formula seemed very different from most Bentley Little stories. It began by telling the tales of 4 seemingly unrelated individuals in completely different locations, experiencing seemingly unrelated supernatural phenomenon. This lead me to believe I was in for a plot similar to The House; a book that would veer from the author's standard fare of social and political horror, dealing instead with more mainstream frights. Near the novel's mid-point, however, I was definitely proved wrong. Any reader familiar with Little's style will know that he has a knack for taking seemingly normal entities and turning them into something frightening. Whether dealing with corporations or social entities, Little turns them into something massive, mysterious, and consuming. Before long, it becomes apparent that the "entity" being tackled in this book is the human emotion of racism and hatred. Human bigotry is transformed, via Little's supernatural touch, into a frightening, phyiscally destructive force that operates on a grand scale. Little has a way of walking a fine line between offensive political opinion and horrifying entertainment. Each of his novels is as much an observation of society as it is a supernatural tale. In this book, he manages to push the envelope further than he ever has in the past, but any fan of the author's "thinking person's" style of horror should be able to appreciate the approach he uses here. I strongly disagree with many of the reviewers opinions of this book's ending. I felt that the climax of this book was everything I've been wanting Bentley Little to write. His resolution here goes far beyond the simplistic endings he's written in the recent past. I give this book 5 stars. My only complaint is that it wasn't a hundred pages longer.

Stephen King crowned him thus in an ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY column a few months back. Been a follower of Little's since day 1 and am glad to see him deliver such a timely on-topic novel of horror after his fantastic DISPATCH. This novel is grand in scope...with characters from at least 3 previous books making appearances..one who is from THE SUMMONING gets a pretty big role and we will probably see him soon in another Little offerning. Terrifying at times, well written and believable characters. This is why "BENTLEY LITTLE IS THE BEST HORROR NOVELIST" running right now.