A Winter Haunting is a sequel to Summer of Night. I never read that one by A Winter Haunting seemed perfect for this time of year and I was loving Dan Simmons after reading Drood.

Dale Stewart returns to his childhood town in Illinois as his life in Montana has gone to hell. His job as a professor was in jeopardy, his young lover has left him, he has lost his wife and children due to the affair, then fails at a suicide attempt. He decides to take a sabbatical, and when he returns to Illinois, he rents the home of his childhood friend that died a violent death (the plot of the first novel).

Dale begins to see black dogs that no one else sees, plus he gets messages on his computer, but he's not hooked up to the internet. Dale begins to wonder about his sanity. Also, he is being harassed by some Neo-Nazi punks based on some articles that he wrote.

my review: This was a pretty good read, lots of paranormal and plot twists. Some I saw coming, some I didn't. I might have suspected more if I'd read the first book, but I don't think it matters.

It was a bit like watching a horror movie, when you are yelling at the person to not walk into the basement. I would have hightailed it out of that town the minute anything happened, but I guess that would not have made for a good story.

Sometimes the story dragged a bit, but I was still intrigued. Luckily this was not one of Simmon's doorstop books, or I may have felt differently. All in all, not too bad.

my rating 3.5/5 ( )

Fine suspense book
With Jamesian twist: A ghost?
Or insanity?

This book is something of a sequel to Simmon's Summer of Night. Dale Stewart, one of the intrepid heroes of Summer of Night, returns to Elm Haven after an affair gone wrong, divorce and suicide attempt. He moves into his friend Duane McBride's farm and begins to have very strange experiences including run-ins with skinheads, former classmates and an old nemesis.

It's an okay read but several points don't make sense. Why is the WWI soldier/doughboy from Summer of Night still roaming around? He should have been destroyed at the end of the first book. That Dale doesn't recognize him can be explained by his blocking of the memories of that summer but I would have thought some things would have come out during his stay at the farm where his friend was killed. I also got frustrated by a time line inconsistency. At the very end of the book an event is described as having taken place in 1961. It is explained as having been quashed by a character that died in the summer of 1960 in Summer of Night. Little thing like that bother me.

Overall this book is an okay read. Quite honestly it probably would have been better if it had not been tied to Summer of Night. Considering the lack of overlap between the stories there is almost no point even using Dale Stewart as the lead character. I probably would have enjoyed it more if there was no connection to the other book. Simmons is a good writer but this is not one of his better works. ( )

I read the first half of this alone in the house. I got to the part where a strange, small black dog follows him around the farm, and he notices that the dog' smile is off, like maybe the dog has human teeth, and I threw the book up in the air and watched Tomb Raider until Chris got home. I haven't freaked myself out like that for years. Excellent, subtly scary stuff! ( )

After reading this book, I had no idea it was a sequel. I would not rate this in my top 10 list of horror books to read, but that does not mean I did not enjoy it. Good thought out plot, well written, but not enough 'scary stuff' for me in it. ( )