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Type of bind: Mass Market Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 823.914
EAN num: 9780843954302
ISBN number: 0843954302
Label: Leisure Books
Manufacturer: Leisure Books
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 337
Printing Date: 2006-01
Publishing house: Leisure Books
Sale Popularity Level: 430456
Studio: Leisure Books
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Rated by buyers 
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Not bad. Not good either. Other people have written extensivley about the plot of this book, so I'll forgoe that and simply tell you what I liked and disliked about it. What I liked is the interesting beginning of the book (the mystery of which kept me interested), and the descriptions of top secret military experimentation (it being set in the UK was a plus for me- something different. Most of these books involve Area 51, and I had never heard of Porton Down before). What I disliked were the characters. The ex-soldier who pursues them, for instance-- why exactly does he feel so strongly that he needs to kill the main character when all he needs to do is shoot the girl's corpse in the head to solve all his werewolf-vampire (or whatever they are) problems? It doesn't make sense. The girl's motives don't feel real to me. You could make the argument that she's just insane, but it still doesn't make her motives much more compelling. Also, the end sucks.
*SPOILER ALERT*
I hated how he destroyed the quite interesting myth about the monsters' origin that was set forth in the beginning of the book. Also, in the end there's no resolution whatsoever. The main character turns into a werepire... and then? Is Mr. Lebbon going to write a sequel? If so, this is excusable, but normally you should advertise the sequel at the same time you publish the very first one so that people know why the book ends without resolution.
Rated by buyers -
"Berserk" was my very first Tim Lebbon novel, picked at random from the shelf of the local library. The story starts off strong and with a welcome change of pace in the UK setting. I had high hopes when the action quickly centers on the creepy moors where Tom is digging up the rotting corpses. The whole sequence is well written and I could feel Tom's mixture of excitement and dread. Unfortunately, once this scene concludes and the central conflict of the novel, a chase, begins, things got a little tedious for me. Because Tom and Natasha were communicating mentally for most of the book, the author took license to expound on Tom's ongoing mental dialogue. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but Tom is sort of a Weenie. Not an Everyman, but a Weenie, as in one who does a lot of hand wringing and worrying. So Tom dwells a lot on how crazy his situation is, but it's already plainly crazy to the reader, who doesn't really need some of the expository monologue. Cole, the other main voice of the story, is more a man of action, and generally has more interesting passages, but he, too, gets swamped down as the author repeatedly describes in detail his deteriorating mental state. When reading the book over the course of 3 or 4 nights, there were times when I thought I was reading passages I had already read the night before. On the bright (dark?) side, there were some garish set pieces sprinkled throughout this novel, including some brutal violence and surreal situations that were wild to visualize. But in the end, it seems like the author just got tired of writing about the characters and tied up the loose ends in a sort of lazy fashion. Obviously I enjoyed some parts of this book and the author is talented, but there was just not enough here to satisfy over the course of all those pages. I see that Lebbon is a well regarded novella and short fiction author as well, and I might try some of those books next. "Berserk" was enjoyable but in my opinion not a critical necessity for horror fans.
Rated by buyers 
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This is the very first novel by this author that I have read, and I gotta tell ya, it's fantastic!! The premise of the story is this: Tom and his wife Joann lost their son 10 years ago in an apparent Army training exercise accident. Tom meets 2 guys in a pub who talk about Porton Down (where his son supposedly was) and the "monsters" that are kept there. Later, one of the men tells Tom that his son wasn't killed in an accident and his body is buried in a specific location, and even provides a map. Thus starts Tom and Joann's journey.
This was a most refreshing book. It's hard to find originality in the horror genre. Most everything man can think up has been written about. Tim Lebbon creates a new creature to loathe and fear, it's called a Berserker. What exactly is a Berserker? I can't tell you that or it would ruin the fun, and I don't want to do that. Just let me say that this book is different and a pleasure to read. There are no boring chapters or segments, there's no "love story" hidden within it's pages, and the characters are developed in such a way that you grow to love and hate them without really thinking about it. Lebbon doesn't waste the reader's time giving the history of the characters, nor does he waste paper or ink describing things that have little or no purpose to the overall reading experience. He simply gives the reader a little nudge and away we go!!
Will Tom and Joann survive their journey? Will they find their son alive after all this time? What will Tom find when he finds the spot on the map and starts digging? Will they encounter the Berserkers and live to tell the tale? All this and more can be found between the 337 pages of this chilling, exciting, fast-paced book. Give it a try, it's well worth the time, effort and money. While you do that, I'm gonna go find another of Lebbon's books!!!
Rated by buyers 
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The editorial reviews give a good picture of what the book is about. A son lost in an accident that wasn't an accident, a father mourning for ten years, and a night of drinking that allows him to overhear two soldiers stationed close to the site of his son's demise saying "they kept monsters there." Probing deeper he finds a letter on his windshield with an X marked in red, a mass gravesite where bodies have been so hastily dumped that the soldiers still have their dogtags on, and a mummified little girl that speaks to a father's mind and says that she will tell everything "if only."
I personally hoped when I began this book and, in places, I found myself happily cringing because of the horrible things that the book brought to bear. There were the parts that introducted the terrible little secret stuck in the ground for a decade, the creepy notion of a body that had been buried for ten years communicating with a person in dire need of closure, and other horror elements that Lebbon is known for when he brings a story to the table. There was also the human element, the drive to understand what had happened to a son that had been lost for no real reason, and the fact that a family had been left behind with questions that found no answers. The tragedy here was that the last portion especially this worked against the story instead of for it, slowing down the work and placing the pace in need of help. Combine that with an ending that was not really strong and you found a reader that really liked the author, that really enjoyed the works he has done in the past, but that was skipping pages to leave behind over-detailled treelines and only to discover that the premise was much more promising than the story really delivered.
Sometimes I wonder about short story writers when I see this, wondering if the pressure to deliver a story with length overtakes the thing they are best at. Tim Lebbon sometimes makes me wonder that; he is a talented writer, to be sure, but his strength seems to be in the idea of the short story and in the creation of a solid front. Berserk was good in some ways, I liked the way the whole idea made me feel and I even liked some of the pieces to the puzzle as they showed up and delivered. The process of fleshing out the book seemed mechanical, however, and the people I wanted to feel sorrow for made me flip pages and wonder when things would begin to move. There is an entire series where the father keeps thinking he has gone mad for thinking the dead can speak to him, for example, and he continually stops the linear motion of the story to fish around in himself and ask (and ask and ask. Even the more terrible things, the finding of bodies with their heads cut off attached to a chain that ended with a little girl that communicated to a person who wanted so much that she knew, took so much time as the sounds of mud were described painfully and as the picture was painted in too high a volume and I even skipped aorund in that. I could see where the sentences should have been cut, too, and I could see where the idea ran out of steam.
I really wanted to like the book, I liked "White and Other Tales" enough that I was willing and tried as I delved deeper into the story, but I kept thinking that it should have been a piece in a book and not a book itself. Not recommended unless you have an eye for potential and want to flesh out a glass filled far past the brim to fill a boring day.
Rated by buyers -
I enjoy Tim Lebbon's work very much, but this one disappointed me. It really was a good read, so please do not think that it isn't worth buying, because it is. It was drawn out in parts and I felt it needed more "scares". I do know that Tim Lebbon is capable of better because I have read his other books. Maybe if I hadn't read his other books first, then I wouldn't have been let down with this one.
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