The Way of the Worm

Description

Book 3 in the Three Births of Daoloth trilogy. The present day, or something very like it. Dominic Sheldrake has retired from lecturing and lives on his own. His son Toby is married with a small daughter. The occultist Noble family are more active than ever. Their cult now openly operates as the Church of the Eternal Three, and has spread worldwide. The local branch occupies the top floors of Starview Tower, a Liverpool waterfront skyscraper. To Dominic's dismay, Toby and his wife Claudine are deeply involved in it, and he suspects they are involving their small daughter Macy too. Dominic lets his son persuade him to attend a meeting of the church, where he encounters all three generations of the Nobles. Although Christian Noble is almost a century old, he's more vigorous than ever inhumanly so. The family takes turns to preach an apocalyptic sermon that hints at dark secrets masked by the Bible and at the future that lies in wait. In a bid to investigate further Dominic undergoes the rite the church offers its members, which confers the ability to travel psychically through time. Before he's able to flee back to the present he has a vision of the monstrous fate that's in store for the world. Dominic discovers a secret he's sure the Nobles won't want to be made public. Although he has retired from the police, Jim helps him establish the truth, and Roberta publishes it on her online blog. It's the subject of a court case, the results of which seem to defeat the Nobles, only for them to return in a dreadfully transformed shape. Now Dominic and his friends are at their mercy, and is there anywhere in the world to hide? Even if they manage somehow to deal with the Nobles, there may be no escaping or preventing the alien apocalypse that all the events of the trilogy have been bringing ever closer... AUTHOR: Ramsey Campbell was born in Liverpool in 1946 and now lives in Wallasey. He has received the Grand Master Award of the World Horror Convention, the Lifetime Achievement Award of the Horror Writers Association, the Living Legend Award of the International Horror Guild and the World Fantasy Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2015 he was made an Honorary Fellow of Liverpool John Moores University for outstanding services to literature.

Ramsey Campbell was born in Liverpool in 1946 and now lives in Wallasey. He has received the Grand Master Award of the World Horror Convention, the Lifetime Achievement Award of the Horror Writers Association, the Living Legend Award of the International Horror Guild and the World Fantasy Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2015 he was made an Honorary Fellow of Liverpool John Moores University for outstanding services to literature. His first book was published by the legendary Arkham House when he was eighteen years old. His later work draws on the British and American traditions of horror fiction. It ranges from the psychological to the ghostly, the subtly uncanny to the cosmic, the quietly disquieting to the terrifying, the poignant to the darkly comic. His Flame Tree books include Thirteen Days by Sunset Beach, in which a family on holiday encounters an ancient horror on a Greek island, and Think Yourself Lucky, where the internet lets loose the monsters lurking within people just like us. In Somebody's Voice a writer finds his memory and personality threatened by trying to write the memoir of a victim of abuse. The Three Births of Daoloth trilogy - The Searching Dead, Born to the Dark and The Way of the Worm - pits three childhood friends against a terror as vast as time and space. Three of Campbell's novels have been filmed - The Influence (available from FLAME TREE PRESS), Pact of the Fathers and The Nameless (in development as a Netflix series). He reviewed films for the local BBC for nearly forty years, and is presently working on an appreciation of the Three Stooges, Six Stooges and Counting. A new supernatural novel, Fellstones, is in progress too.

"I can't sufficiently reiterate what an outstanding author is Ramsey Campbell. Four Lifetime achievement awards also indicate in what high esteem Mr. Campbell is viewed by fellow Horror authors, publishers, and literary critics and fans. In his newest novel, THE WAY OF THE WORM, he brings to stunning conclusion of THE THREE BIRTHS OF DAOLOTH." -- Mallory Anne-Marie Haws, Librarian * NetGalley * "I have found this such an absorbing series and the conclusion to this book was fabulous and crammed with cosmic horror." -- SharonBeyondTheBooks "The author writes with a skill that can easily make you feel fear, tension, hopelessness, and a sense of impending doom, and he does all of that in this book. Once I started reading, I was transfixed. There was no way I would be putting this book down before finishing unless I saw Will Smith striding towards me..." -- John's Bookshelf "Horror readers who are fans of cosmic horror and cults will enjoy this novel, and those who haven't read the previous two volumes will still be able to follow along. Fans of the recent Netflix show Midnight Mass will devour this work." -- Booklist "With The Way of the Worm, Campbell's cosmic trilogy comes to a triumphant conclusion." -- S.T. Joshi "A return to and a revisioning of some of his earliest imaginings, the trilogy is a kind of autobiography of its protagonist, in which his lifelong struggle with a supernatural agency occurs against the backdrop of post-war British history. The result is a magisterial work, though such a description scants the novels' propulsive readability. It's another remarkable achievement in a career full of them." -- Locus Magazine "There is little doubt that Ramsey Campbell's trilogy-for the three novels must be regarded as a tightly knit unity-will take its place among the stellar accomplishments in the realm of weird fiction. I struggle to find any trio of novels in our field that could match its achievement-an achievement that extends not merely to its deft portrayal of numerous characters over six decades and the impeccable elegance and mellifluousness of its prose, but above all to the grimly terrifying nature of its weird manifestations." -- S.T. Joshi Praise for Books 1 and 2 in the trilogy: "This is Campbell at the height of his powers, proving once again that he is a master of the genre." - Publishers Weekly Starred Review of The Searching Dead, book 1 "A return to and a revisioning of some of his earliest imaginings, the trilogy is a kind of autobiography of its protagonist, in which his lifelong struggle with a supernatural agency occurs against the backdrop of post-war British history. The result is a magisterial work, though such a description scants the novels' propulsive readability. It's another remarkable achievement in a career full of them." - Locus Magazine Review of The Searching Dead, book 1 "This novel is not only the start of an awesome horror epic by a master, but also a compelling coming-of-age story about a budding writer finding his way in a terrifying world." - Library Journal Review of The Searching Dead, book 1 "I'm very much looking forward to the third and final installment of this excellent trilogy." - Horror Delve "I highly recommend this trilogy for new Ramsey Campbell fans like myself. This seems like the best possible introduction to his body of work." - Sadie Hartmann for Cemetery Dance on Book 1 Praise for Ramsey Campbell: "An absolute master of modern horror. And a damn fine writer at that." - Guillermo del Toro "Good horror writers are quite rare, and Campbell is better than just good." -Stephen King "He is unsurpassed in the subtle manipulation of mood... You forget you're just reading a story." - Publishers Weekly "Britain's most respected living horror writer." - Oxford Companion to English Literature "One of the century's great literary exponents of the gothic and horrific." - The Guardian "Easily the best horror writer working in Britain today." - Time Out "The John Le Carre of horror fiction." - Bookshelf, Radio 4 "Britain's greatest living horror writer." - Alan Moore "Britain's leading horror novelist." - New Statesman "I would say that only five writers have written serious novels which incorporate themes of fantasy or the inexplicable and still qualify as literature: T. E. D. Klein, Peter Straub, Richard Adams, Jonathan Carroll and Ramsey Campbell." - Stephen King "The most sophisticated and highly regarded of British horror writers." - Financial Times "He writes of our deepest fears in a precise, clear prose that somehow manages to be beautiful and terrifying at the same time. He is a powerful, original writer, and you owe it to yourself to make his acquaintance." - Washington Post "One of the few who can scare and disturb as well as make me laugh out loud. His humour is very black but very funny, and that's a rare gift to have." - Mark Morris, The Observer "For sheer ability to compose disturbing, evocative prose, he is unmatched in the horror/fantasy field... He turns the traditional horror novel inside out, and makes it work brilliantly." - Fangoria "Ramsey Campbell is not only the most important horror writer we have, he is also one of the most important writers we have - period." - Stephen Jones "He is a living legend whose name is mentioned in the same breadth as M.R. James, Arthur Machen and H.P. Lovecraft." - John Gilbert (Winner of British Fantasy Award, editor of FEAR magazine.) "I can lose myself in a Ramsey Campbell story. I mean this literally. My world will not make sense. That the Ramsey Campbell I have known for almost forty years now is cheerful, affable, sensible, and profoundly sane, and in all ways a delight to know, does not lessen the effect of the fiction on me as a reader." - Neil Gaiman "A horror writer in the classic mould... Britain's premier contemporary exponent of the art of scaring you out of your skin." - Q Magazine "In Campbell's hands words take on a life of their own, creating images that stay with you, feelings that prey on you, and people you hope never ever to meet." - Starburst "Ramsey Campbell is the nearest thing we have to an heir to M. R. James." - Times