Lebbon, Tim. Desolation. New York: Leisure, 2005. 309pp.

Tim Lebbon is definately one of the great up-and-coming horror writers around today. I've read and loved a number of his stories in Year's Best anthologies and Face was a really terrific novel. Desolation, however, left me a bit cold. It's the story of a very odd man who was held prisoner by his father for many years, held in an institution for still longer after his father died and finally released to a kind of purgatorial half-way house. The odd collection of characters at the half-way house help him discover the truth about his past, which is much stranger than we first imagined. So far, so good. However, there just didn't seem to be enough plot to justify a full length novel -- it could have been very effective at 100 - 150 pages -- but really ended up a bit dull stetched to this length. I'm still looking forward to catching up on some of Lebbon's work I haven't read yet, but this one is not up to the standard of the other work I've encountered.