The Totem

by David Morrell

Book Overview

Slowly, bizarre events grip the tiny mountain community of Potter's Field, Wyoming. Cattle are mutilated. Animals become savage. Children go insane. Townspeople are found without faces. And one man must confront the evil behind the hideous events, an evil that is all too human and deadly. From the bestselling author of Desperate Measures.

• Format: Mass Market Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0446364460
• ISBN13: 9780446364461
• Release Date: June 1995
• Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
• Length: 365 Pages
• Weight: 0.42 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 4.2" x 6.7"

Customer Reviews

Revenge of the Hippies

This here's a classic horror novel that has been revised since it first saw print. It's a selection in the handy Horror: The 100 Best Books by Stephen Jones. I don't recall which version was talked about in the 100 Best, but I believe its the unrevised one. Nonetheless, it's held up very well over time. It's something of a cultural parable (hippie vs. establishment) that excedes expectation, horror convention and cliche. Recommended.

Great read

This classic novel from David Morrell is defenitily one of the best and most scary books I have read in a long time. This edition is the "complete and unaltered" edition from finepress Donald Grant.David Morrell at his best with more action than pure terror, which keeps the storyline more plausible.

A good read

The version of the book that I read is the one originally published back in 1979. It came out of a box in my friend's garage, and I decided to read it because he remembered liking it so much. I liked it, too. Although it is rather conventional in its structure and some aspects of the plot were left underdeveloped, I thought that David Morrell had a good handle on the genre and wrote some interesting characters--all men who have endured personal and professional failures and retreated to a small town in Wyoming to live life on a smaller scale. Their self-esteem as well as their lives is put on the line with the appearance of a mysterious virus that changes whatever it infects into a savage, murderous animal. I wonder if the makers of the film "28 Days" were familiar with this book.

Makes time pass much quicker!

I bought this book for the same reason you tend to buy a book at a train station or an airport: to pass time. I actually found myself unable to put it back down. Although the story line is pretty thin, the meat on the bone comes from the density of all characters, largely an effect of good human descriptions by the author. Also, Morrell is capable of diffusing a sense of fear in the reader's mind by cleverly opposing the beauty of pristine nature to this insanity that human beings are typically capable of displaying. Suspense and mystery have the reader "eat" one page after the other to get quicker to the conclusion of the story.On the negative side, the writing itself is littered with missing rational elements and sometimes contradictions that act pretty much as gaps and holes in the overall framework. Like this: how come that a sizeable group of human beings reverts back to such a wild, animal-like condition whereas still capable of speaking (the guy found wandering on the road) and living in a semi-orderly social organization? I saw this as a real contradiction. Where did the virus -or whatever rage-bringing factor- come from? Why wasn't Slaughter infected when cut across his cheek? Also, the conclusion of the book comes way too fast. The final "battle" runs through a mere couple of pages.But overall, this is a real, good, fast-paced horror book.

A gripping, savage, intelligent action/horror book.

Anyone who has read any of David Morrell's novels will certainly appreciate this one. The tale evolves as an intelligent, thriller and action story with a little pinch of horror thrown in. His imagery is some of the best in this genre. The only author, in my opinion, who even comes close is Trevanian. Picture an isolated valley that comes alive at night with bizarre happenings, that culminate in an amazing hunt for creatures with human like intelligence--you will not want to put it down! I read the book a long time ago, and to this day still have vivid recollections. Enjoy