Showing posts with label Dark Shadows. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Dark Shadows. Show all posts

Thursday, September 22, 2022

[Review]—In "Barnabas Collins and Quentin's Demon," Things Get a Little Hairy


It's another Thursday, so it's time for another Dark Shadows review. Don't I sound ecstatic? I lost track of how many of these Dark Shadows I've read, and, after a time, they started to blur together. Today we're looking at Barnabas Collins and Quentin's Demon, the fourteenth installment authored by Daniel "Dan" Ross under the pen name Marilyn Ross (his wife's name). What a split second, what happened to Barnabas Collins and the Mysterious Ghost, book thirteen? It's not accessible as an eBook on Kindle for reasons unbeknownst to me, so I had no alternative but to skip it and move on to the next.

Thursday, September 15, 2022

[Review]—"The Peril of Barnabas Collins" by Marilyn Ross


The cursed vampire played by Jonathan Frid in the original Dark Shadows soap opera and the theatrical spinoff "retelling," House of Dark Shadows, captivated young and old audiences in the late 1960s and early 1970s. If my memory serves me properly (it's been a while since I've seen the series), Barnabas Collins was continuously looking for a cure to restore his humanity. The Dark Shadows novel series, written by William Edward Daniel Ross under the pen name Marilyn Ross (borrowing his second wife's first name), strayed away from soap opera plotlines, but with the 12th book, The Peril of Barnabas Collins, he resurrects the "cure" narrative, but with a few intriguing twists.

Thursday, September 1, 2022

[Review]—'Barnabas Collins Versus the Warlock' by Marilyn Ross


I haven't seen an episode of the Dark Shadows soap opera in many (many) years. According to what I recall, the creator, Dan Curtis, and his writing staff ran out of supernatural concepts, or, to put it another way, they basically used and reused every horror trope imaginable. As a result, the series came to an end. While his plots swayed away from the television storylines, William Edward Daniel Ross (a.k.a. Marilyn Ross) took the same approach with his Dark Shadows novels by incorporating every horror trope into his stories. This gave him the freedom to place the cursed vampire Barnabas Collins in unusual situations. 

Thursday, August 25, 2022

[Review] - 'The Phantom and Barnabas Collins' by Marilyn Ross


Victoria Winters, the orphan governess, had vanished by the time "The Phantom and Barnabas Collins" was released in September 1969. It's the tenth book in Marilyn Ross's original Dark Shadows novel series (otherwise known as William Edward Daniel Ross). Victoria Winters abruptly left Collinwood, and Maggie Evans took over as David's governess. As a result, Victoria's parents' mystery remained a mystery.

Thursday, August 4, 2022

[Review] - 'The Demon of Barnabas Collins' by Marilyn Ross


If you perchance to buy a Dark Shadows novel at a thrift store or used book store with only the bare minimum knowledge of the series, you'll be confused or disappointed after reading the book. Whether you have seen a few episodes of the original ABC daytime soap, the short-lived NBC series, or Tim Burton's spoofy remake, you know the vampire Barnabas Collins is imprisoned in a coffin and is released 100+ years later. Barnabas didn't make his way into the book series by Marilyn Ross (the pen name of William Edward Daniel Ross) until the sixth novel, and his backstory was different. Instead of being chained in a coffin, Barnabas lived among the living. Every once in a while, he would change his identity to a made-up son, grandson, great-grandson, etc., so nobody would find out about his vampire secret.