[Review] DEVIL GLASS by C. Robert Cales

Devil Glass
Genre: Horror
C. Robert Cales (PublishAmerica, 2000, $34.95)
ISBN #1-59286-202-0


I've read the other reviews here, and they do the story some credit. First, forget that it's PublishAmerica. Yes, there are the occasional spelling gaffes in the text. DEVIL GLASS draws you right in, with sharpened talons, and it won't let go. Trust me on this one--I just finished reading it. If I had to reduce it to a simple equation (and if you have ever read THE OTHER), it's Stephen King meets Tom Tryon.

Antitheus Vitrum.

When someone contracts to have a swamp drained in their back yard, so they can install a pool, this strange totem ploe-like structure is uncovered. Nightmarish faces are carved into the crystal surface. The rought surface separates this from other crystals. Its black heart, contained by the nightmarish carvings etched on the fossilized wood that surrounds and contains it, unnerves anyone who comes close enough to peer into its darkened recesses. Its discovery coincides with a chain of mysterious deaths and disappearances that only seems to grow as the mystery shrouding the artifact deepens.

Joyce Robbins seems to have it all. She's starting work as a college professor, Native American Studies. She also works at the museum. She is highly respected by the people she works with--well, with the exception of Rudy. She's also, as of late, overwhelmed with memories, and feelings that she had ignored for some twenty-odd years. When Joyve and Kim Lee received word that Randy Lippencott had died in Vietnam, she and Kim lost contact as they tried to come to terms with Randy's passing. What will happen when she comes into contact with the artifact? What dark secret xould lie behind its enigmatic architecture?

Kim Lee is an enigma on to himself. He's got this knack for things--it's a bit difficult to pin down, until you read the book. Let's just say he's a bit of a clairvoyant. Well, maybe more than a bit. After they had heard that Randy died, and Joyce lit out on her own, he engaged in a journey which brought him to a Master, who would help him cope with his own grief, and to learn many things, in order to prepare...

Randy Lippencott is remarkably alive and relatively well, for someone who died in Vietnam. For three weeks, he was in a coma, misidentified as a fellow soldier, the only survivor of his platoon. He could find neither Joyce not Kim on his return to the U. S. He's now a geologist.

Together, the three of them must face the nightmare, dug up from beneath the ground, when someone wanted to install a pool. A nightmare called Antitheus Vitrum.

Devil Glass.