Funland

This was my first entry into the Richard Laymon catalog, and I must say that I was blown away with the story. Richard is definitely a powerful writer because I am still twisted up after reading that book a few days ago. Yes, it is a long novel, and although there was some drags in the tempo of the story, I definitely could not put the book down. Very good characters, very good plot, nice twists and one hell of a turn of events near the end of the book. Once the last few chapters arrived the story seemed to kick into overdrive, going from telltale suspense to shocking horror, with a lot of genuine scares and a decent amount of gore. The one thing that I noticed about this novel was the way that Laymon didnt over do it in contrast to some other horror stories that I have read.I am still in awe at how attached I became to the characters, possibly because I could relate with what the main character was going through. Tales of belonging, tales of male machismo, young love, and acceptance. Laymon did a wonderful job bringing them all to life with fire-breathing results.Bottom Line: I am impressed enough that I am going on in his collection to see what other treasures await me. So for any of you out there that love carnival horror/suspense, or are interested in trying a Laymon novel, this was an interesting place to start and a great, great book.-CW

"Funland" takes place in the fictional California town of Boleta Bay. The town's boardwalk, home to the eponymous carnival Funland, is rife with homeless and bums, who are nicknamed "trolls." They are suspected to be behind a series of disappearances, so in response a group of local teenagers calling themselves "trollers" have banded together to beat up and embarrass the bums. Into this picture comes Jeremy, the new kid on the block who is trying to be hip 'n cool, and hence gets involved with the trollers. Another newcomer, a young banjo playing runaway named Robin, arrives, and tries her best to avoid both the trolls and trollers. Also in this picture are Joan and Dave: two cops who patrol Funland during the day, and deal with failing relationships at night. All of these characters eventually intertwine as things start to heat up at Funland, and the secrets under the carnival buildings start to become more and more dangerous.The funny thing about this book is, even though the danger under Funland is what gets advertised, the storyline is really more about the various characters, their lives, and their dealing with other issues. You have Joan and Dave struggling to hold back their love for one another. You have Robin trying to fit in and deal with her runaway lifestyle. You have Jeremy trying to make friends and look cool before the trollers, as well as dealing with his lust for Tanya, the troller leader, and his love for Shiner, a fellow troller. There's also the steady decline of Tanya's sanity, as she becomes more and more macabre as the book goes along. The attacks and actual "horror" moments are so sparse compared to the other parts of the book that, halfway through, you might wonder, "Hey uh...weren't there monsters living on the boardwalk or something?" Don't get me wrong, I'm not using this against the book. It was just an amusing thing I discovered while reading. Like Victor Hugo's "The Cathedral of Notre Dame" (the original title for "Hunchback"), the title for this book seems to be just as much about the characters surrounding the location, rather than the more bizarre parts of the location itself. Don't read this expecting people to die every single chapter.Things REALLY pick up in the last quarter of the book, when the characters discover Funland's darkest secrets. One thing I was surprised by was just how quick some of the character deaths went; sometimes it seemed way too quick, as if Laymon suddenly decided the body count needed to rise, and it needed to rise fast. For someone considered infamous for his descriptions of gore and violence, a lot of the deaths didn't seem that bad, or were so briefly described that they didn't feel all that gory. The actual climax of the book was especially amusing to me. I won't give too much way, but I will say that, as I read it, I felt like the vision in my head was the final boss battle in a video game. Again, I won't give any spoilers, but if you've ever played a video game, then once you get to that part, you'll know EXACTLY what I mean. The only downside of the climax is that a lot doesn't seem to get resolved afterward. What were the motivations of the villains? How did this thing get fully organized? Questions like these are either answered partially, or not at all. The ending almost felt a little rushed in that regard.Like the other Laymon book I read ("The Cellar"), characters are for the most part weak in their delivery. If you gave me a line of dialogue from any character, I would probably be unable to tell you who exactly it was, since they all use the same swear words, the same kind of slang, etc. I was especially amused how EVERYONE in Boleta Bay, even the more liberal ones, referred to the homeless people as "trolls." Nobody ever refers to them as the homeless or any other name, except maybe in passing or in the book's description. The only dialogue that might stand out to me would be from Cowboy (a troller who talks in wild west speak) and the bums (who of course have drunken accents). Ironically, the two characters who stood out the most for me in their personalities were the trolls Mag and Charlie. I say ironic because they're in a small section of one chapter, and (to my recollection) are never mentioned again; however, their banter and antics made me hope they would come up more often in the book (sadly, they didn't). Poppinsack was also a fun character, even though the book takes a few dark turns with him. All that being said, I did feel at least EMPATHETIC with a lot of characters: I actually cared about Dave and Joan, and found myself become involved in the Jeremy/Shiner/Tanya love triangle (if it can be called that). Strange as this might sound, while I didn't find a lot of the characters unique, I did end up still interested in what they were doing, in one way or another.I was also amused by certain elements of the story line. Apparently, after so many accounts of disappearances and the assault/rape of a minor, all of which are connected to the trolls, nobody thinks to try to push the homeless out, or put more police on the boardwalk, etc. It seems like all the police do in Boleta Bay are patrol Funland and give people rides around town. One would've also thought there would be far more trollers out there, or people who would just be more curious as to WHY so many people are disappearing over by Funland. I'm also amused that hundreds upon hundreds of dirty, drunken, and very aggressive panhandlers didn't hurt Funland's business or attendance, given not only the fact that there are past crimes attributed to them, but by the very real fact that most businesses out there don't like frequent panhandlers harassing their customers, as it turns many away.Despite all the problems or shortcomings I may have listed, the book is still fun as a read, even if as a guilty pleasure. I enjoyed getting it all the way through, and by the time I got to the third act, I couldn't put it down, and ended up staying into the late hours of the night finishing it. I didn't regret my time spent on it, from the shocking beginning to the happy conclusion - a conclusion which had quite a surprise ending for one character. But I won't give it away. Read it.

Let's get my biases out of the way first: I've read enough Richard Laymon to know I don't like him very much. I was a fan of horror back in the '80s but I think it's pretty safe to say my preferences for fiction lay more on the lyrical/literary side of the scale than the splatterpunk/grindhouse side. (Of course, horror fiction being horror fiction, only at the farthest edges will you find something that doesn't have at least a touch of both but I hope you can grant me the efficacy of my hasty, hackneyed metaphor.)Laymon was always too far over on the grindhouse side for my tastes. The original publication of The Woods Are Dark seriously screwed up thirteen year old me (as a priapic teen, I couldn't help but go back for the copious sex and nudity, even as things grew progressively more and more awful). But even as a teen at my most helplessly lustful, I found elements of Laymon's worldview strangely hollow and unconvincing.In my experience, Laymon pretty much writes consistently from this worldview--that of a teenager with a boner--even when the POV is from one of his female characters. As in the slasher movies of the day, no situation is so awful that a character can't find themselves aroused by noticing someone else's ass, or suddenly being aware of the fabric rubbing against their too-sensitive nipples. The world of Richard Laymon is an EC Comic written as a Penthouse Forum letter, where either a violent beheading or a passionate slide into second base (or, not infrequently, both) is only a page-turn away. I suppose I would be fine with that if the sex was sex-positive, but it's frequently squalid, obsessive and more than a tad objectified. It's pretty typical sex-hatey sex, the type usually written by lonely, inexperienced dudes for lonely, inexperienced dudes.Anyway, let's move from the general to the specific. If I don't like Richard Laymon, why did I pick up Funland? The honest answer is, it appears to be one of the few books of '80s horror available on the Kindle at what I consider to be a fair price. (In fact, I believe I picked it up as a Deal of the Day for $1.99, which is better than fair.) I'm all for the writer and publisher seeing the maximum return on their royalties, so I don't begrudge any professional author or publisher for not charging less than $2.99...but a lot of the books from that era really shouldn't be charged more than that, either. They were designed to be disposable reads at disposable prices. Anyone who reads this book more than twice either needs a life or professional counseling.All that said, as a non-fan of Laymon, Funland is probably the most enjoyable book of his I've read. Although the book's view of humanity is still smutty and dismal, it's not as unrepentantly smarmy and s***** as some of his other books I've read. (Although, as always, Laymon always makes sure to save an extra dollop of disgust for the overweight girl who's interested in sex, which I always find depressing.) It probably helps that Funland takes a chunk of its central conceit from actual occurrences in the '80s--during a brief period where Santa Cruz teens terrorized the homeless--and Laymon works his plot to make sure there are at least one or two good characters on each side of the conflict, as well as a fair share of maniacs on both. I also have to say Laymon does a great job of catching and describing the Santa Cruz boardwalk in the boardwalk of his fictional "Boleta Bay."And Laymon takes the time to build his two main protagonists--a male and female cop team who patrol the boardwalk--into more than just libidos with firearms: the couple is kept apart for most of the book by their own efforts to respectfully end the bad relationships they're in with other people. In fact, although the male cop's relationship is with a shrill and unpleasant harridan, the female cop's failed relationship is surprisingly nuanced, and handled with far more care than I've seen in Laymon's other books.Considering this is only one of three romantic relationships portrayed in Funland, I wonder to what extent this book was written by Laymon in part to either extend his audience or extend his own writing range. Although Laymon uses romantic interest as a plot accelerant in his other work, it barely moves deeper than that. But at least for a few pages here and there, he dips his toes in the water of romantic regret and it's surprisingly effective. There are other sections where the author goes overboard with the sentiment and the syrup (you always know it's going to be tough going when one of the characters is a musician and their original lyrics get quoted at length) but I prefer it to the rape-threats and diseased sexual-organ fondling. (I'm a soft touch that way.)By Laymon's standards, Funland is a slow build. In the early pages, people get stalked, grabbed, and swiped by mysterious "trolls," but things cut away before anything gets too graphic or Laymon-esque. (Although this may be because the scenes with homeless people in the daylight give the author enough time to indulge his usual disgust with scabs, sores, stenches, and poor hygiene.) But by the end, the teen trollhunters and the mysterious inhabitants of the shut-down funhouse are thrown into direct conflict with another, and things get as gory and grindhousey as a horror reader would want. The shocks are bloody, cheesy, and occasionally surprising as the author happily rockets things over the top.Like a pungent cheese or a sausage of mystery meat you find floating in a jar of pickled brine, Richard Laymon's work is an acquired taste and any resulting nausea you might feel afterward is entirely your own fault: his books are quite open about what they are, and he is unrepentant about the type of author he is. Chances are good you'll find his work enjoyable in its efficiency and unpretentiousness, or you'll find them crushing in their cynicism, repetitiveness, and cynicism. For me, Funland was a surprising mix of both. Although I suspect that means it's less-than-optimal to either the standard Laymon fan or the dabbler in commercial horror fiction, if you want a few hours of efficient but disposable fiction that edges toward darkness without being utterly nihilistic, this may be an effective way to enjoyably kill some time.

I enjoyed funland. I am big Richard laymon fan. He's a great author but his books are very hard to find. I'm glad I went shopping on Amazon and found few of his books. Thank you.

It was a nice read.

One of Mr Laymon's best. I smashed this novel over a weekend; I could not put it down. Huge twists, cool characters and plenty of that sick "Laymon content" we loathe to admit we can't get enough of.

Richard Laymon is one of my fav authors, though I do find some of his books are repetive and similar in characters and plot. Funland is packed with different characters with different struggles. I love how they're brought together at the end so they share the one problem- how to survive. If I could change anything it would be the very end. I don't want to give anything away but I thought it was a tad far-fetched and silly. The rest of the book more than makes up for it, in my opinion, so I'm giving a full five stars.

Funland is a little bit camp,arch and soapy, but speeds along and has some deliciously horrific moments - it would make a terrific movie and often reads like one. After reading Funland I would not be afraid of a Ferris wheel, amusement park after dark, or a museum of oddities after reading Funland, but I will no longer venture willingly into the darkness under a boardwalk.Full review at http://drewrowsome.blogspot.ca/2015/01/funland-under-boardwalk-lurks-heavily.html