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Title: An enormous disappointment
Review: I'd been saving this title for twenty years, and finally decided to read it based on how many good reviews I'd read of it. I was utterly disappointed: although the smalltown in wintertime atmosphere was beautifully evocative, the fight with the ghost didn't seem scary at all, but rather dully cinematic (there's a huge fight at the end, and then another even more enormous fight after that, and the great teaser of a beginning is resolved after that in a somewhat pedestrian fashion). I think what was most disheartening for me was how derivative the book was: the first story of the Chowder Society is clearly a reworking of "The Turn of the Screw," and much of the rest of the story relies heavily on Steven King's SALEM'S LOT in both its plot and its method.
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