Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Floating Dragon
    Floating Dragon
    Floating Dragon
    Audiobook (abridged)2 hours

    Floating Dragon

    Written by Peter Straub

    Narrated by Fritz Weaver

    3.5/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    Two monstrous evils. The quiet suburban town of Hampstead is threatened by two horrors. One is natural. The hideous, unstoppable creation of man's power gone mad. The other is not natural at all. And it makes the first look like child's play.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherAudio Holdings
    Release dateJan 1, 2009
    ISBN9781601361264
    Floating Dragon
    Author

    Peter Straub

    Peter Straub (1943–2022) was the #1 New York Times bestselling author of more than a dozen novels, including A Dark Matter, The Talisman, and Black House, which he cowrote with Stephen King. He has won the Bram Stoker Award for his novels Lost Boy Lost Girl and In the Night Room, as well as for his collection 5 Stories. Straub was the editor of the two-volume Library of American anthology The American Fantastic Tale.

    Related to Floating Dragon

    Related audiobooks

    Children's Horror For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      The Horror Within

      Aug 29, 2020

      Stephen King’s supreme craftsmanship lies in his ability to allow the reader to build up the horror in her/ his mind instead of explicitly describing it. Most often, this horror lurks in the most mundane situations and in the most ordinary lives, unt

      1 min read

    • Article

      Review: Stephen King Modeled 'The Stand' On 'Lord Of The Rings.' TV Has Done It No Favors

      Dec 17, 2020

      As a story of a world-gutting flu pandemic, Stephen King's "The Stand," whose second, superior miniseries adaptation began Thursday on CBS All Access, could not be more timely. And as a story of good and evil facing off for the usual high stakes — a

      4 min read

    • Article

      Speaking Of Horror

      Sep 12, 2020

      Speaking Of Horror
      14 min read

    • Article

      Terrify Yourself with These Ten Horror Novels

      Jun 19, 2019

      A list of books so scary you definitely won't keep them on your nightstand. The post Terrify Yourself with These Ten Horror Novels appeared first on The Millions.

      4 min read

    • Article

      8 Best Stephen King Books That Will Have You Gripped

      Mar 14, 2021

      To say that readers love Stephen King is a huge understatement. The most recent count of his total sales came to a whopping 350 million and his affable online presence, no-nonsense attitude to transphobia and right-wing politics, and extremely genero

      5 min read

    • Article

      The Legendary LiPuma

      Apr 27, 2020

      The Legendary LiPuma
      5 min read

    • Article

      Dubious Achievements 2018

      Dec 27, 2018

      Dubious Achievements 2018
      12 min read

    • Article

      Sullivan’s Travels

      Jul 24, 2018

      Sullivan’s Travels
      4 min read

    • Article

      Hot Chip

      Dec 15, 2018

      Hot Chip
      2 min read

    • Article

      Forever 19

      Jun 16, 2022

      Packing the car to the brim, I held my breath as the boot finally closed. ‘Let’s go on holiday!’ I shouted, as my hubby Dexter, now 53, and daughter Michelle, now 40, buckled themselves in. With my son James and grandson Liam gurgling in their baby s

      5 min read

    • Article

      It Happened to Me…

      Jul 15, 2021

      Further to Jenny Randles detailing the Oz-factor [FT398:30-31], I outline a strange experience with multiple witnesses. I had a chance to revisit the site of the event with my children and this sparked off a need to record what happened. In 1977 I wa

      7 min read

    • Article

      Book Club

      Mar 1, 2023

      Book Club
      5 min read

    • Article

      Books

      Apr 3, 2024

      Books
      16 min read

    • Article

      Steve Martin

      Mar 1, 2024

      Steve Martin
      5 min read

    • Article

      The Seven Ages Of Simm

      May 9, 2022

      The Seven Ages Of Simm
      3 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Floating Dragon

    3.5/5

    322 ratings5 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 3/5
      This book took forever to get through.
      Nearly 600 pages in large sized paperback and the narrative goes on forever. The author can definitely write well but there are pages and pages of the story where nothing really happens. The last third of the book does move quicker but it is very predictable how it will be resolved.
      I have read 2 other books by this author and they were also wordy and overly long.
    • 3/5
      *Spoilers ahead*In 1979 Peter Straub wrote Ghost Story, arguably the greatest modern horror novel; a few years later he reimagined it as an over-the-top spoof, Floating Dragon. The author has described this book as an "exuberant valentine" to the horror genre and to fans who had devoured his supernatural-themed novels up to that point, but also acknowledges that he was distancing himself from straight horror by then and had set out to write something excessive and even "goofy". So, from the beginning, the reader who is about to undertake the 600-page journey which Floating Dragon represents should bear in mind that it is essentially a parody of horror novels rather than the genuine article. Straub was having fun with the conventions of the genre and freely admits it. In virtually every major feature of its construction, this book replicates the formula of Ghost Story: 1.) A group of friends so close that they are like family must confront a supernatural menace that is destroying an entire town. 2.) In both novels, said supernatural menace has suffered temporary defeats in the past but always returns. 3.) A pivotal moment in each book occurs during the 1920s, when--as a young man--the senior member of the group of friends is terrorized by the supernatural menace in one of its various human guises. And the similarities don't end there: scary mirrors and even scarier movie theaters figure prominently in both Ghost Story and Floating Dragon.Unfortunately, it doesn't work nearly as well the second time around. Floating Dragon is solidly written (you can take that for granted with Straub) and sufficiently entertaining, but the characters don't quite manage to endear themselves to the reader. In Ghost Story, Ricky and Sears are so vividly rendered that you can almost see them sitting beside you; here, you struggle to picture the faces of Graham and Tabby and Patsy, which makes it impossible to believe that they're real. Straub tells you how charming and special they are, and you just have to take his word for it. There are frightening, compelling scenes and situations in this novel (even if the manifestations of the supernatural do strike me as a little overbaked), but for some reason--and I don't think it's necessarily because of the exaggerated satirical tone--I never felt wholly involved. Floating Dragon works best when the reader doesn't examine it too closely and is content to just roll with the flow.
    • 2/5
      A government experiment goes awry and a deadly gas is released over the affluent suburb of Hampstead, Connecticut. Meanwhile, the decendants of the town's original founders return to Hampstead for the firts time in over 100 years, igniting a firestorm of events that are the continuation of an ongoing curse. After I read (and was completely scared shitless) by Ghost Story in high school, I was afraid to read anything else by Straub. I remember passing up Shadowland and this book; by then I was involved with reading too many other writers to be concerned with him. But rereading Ghost Story last year got me thinking about investigating more of Straub's work and the 30th Anniversry edition of FD seemed like a good place to start. I was mistaken about that as this book was a huge disappointment. I think the biggest problem with Floating Dragon was that it couldn't decide if it wanted to be a supernatural or science-gone-awry tale. It begins with a pretty good setup of a DOD expereimental project getting released into the atmosphere and then becoems the tale of a curse over Hampstead that recurs every 30 years or so. Even as the two threads continue, they never mesh in any significant way--in fact, the narrator of the story decides that the chemical accident was merely a coincidence. So the reader is left wondering why it was needed to bloat an already over-wrought story. Then there is the narrator of the story, a black-listed author of novels/screenplays who ex-patriated himself to England and alcoloholism until the McCarthy-era ended. He begins his story in the third person, but then breaks in with a chapter of first-person narration to explain his role in the affair. He says he got most of his information from the diaries of the three other protagonmists, but he may have made some stuff up himself--he's a writer after all, and he may not have remembered stuff very well. Then it's back to the first-person (though he does break in two more times for pointless POV narration.) So now we have a unrealiable narrator to deal with. Finally, the overall tone of the book is one of Straub being in love with his own writing. His unrealiable narrator speaks as if he is smarter than everybody else in the room and he knows it. Add to this a setting of affluent people who are feel they are better than everybody else and there's very little to care about in this confused and off-putting tale of death and destruction. In the epilogue to the story he talks about the narrator finally publishing "the excellent book Floating Dragon"--that actually made me laugh. But it just went to the overall arrogant and confused prose relating this tale. There was about 100 pages (divided by one of the narrator's interludes) that were pretty good--they dealt with the main storyline of the curse, not the chemical accident. And I liked the climactic scene in the Gorge at Kendall Point. But overall, this was not a memorable reading expereince. If you are a newcomer to Straub, start with another title--I recommend Ghost Story; if you're already a fan, you'll probably like it. But Cemetery Dance's edition of the book is beautiful (I gave it and extra 1/2 star for that!)
    • 3/5
      This book to me ages to read. Did not think it was that good as some of the amazon reviewers say it is. From the beginning I thought it was confusing, too many people, to many time jumps, and later in the book I noticed another fault, too many plots.

      It is not bad but I would not want to re-read this this in comparison with The Stand which i read so many times.
    • 2/5
      The concept of a whole town subjected to evil promises so much, yet this Straub effort delivers so little. A chemical weapon leak creates confusion in a small coastal town at the same time a recurrent malevolent presence turns up to subvert the town to it's own despicable end. Ultimately, it is not the plot of the novel nor the plethora of characters that make this such a tough read; it is the time shifting as Straub tries to paint the real-time events that actually stop you becoming engaged. Also much of the content is redundant, this book is just too voluminous. In summary, Floating Dragon offers nothing new to the horror genre, it's unoriginal and at times is poorly executed.