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Changing Of Faces by Tim Lebbon
01/05/2004 . Source: Pauline Morgan 
pub: PS Publishing. 98 page book. Hardback: Price: £25.00 (UK), $40.00 (US). ISBN: 1-902-880-68-4. Enlarged paperback: Price: £10.00 (UK), $16.00 (US). ISBN: 1-902-880-68-6). Buy from Amazon US - Buy from Amazon UK
nb: US titles may only be available from Amazon US, and UK titles from Amazon UK. check out website: www.pspublishing.co.uk
Finding a market for novella-length stories is always difficult. They are too long for most magazines and too short to interest the major publishing houses.
Thus it is nice to see a publisher prepared to cultivate them as a niche market. 'Changing Of Faces' is one of a series of collectable books being produced by PS Publishing. They are numbered limited edition volumes, nicely presented and with an insert signed by the author.
Tim Lebbon is a highly respected author in the horror field. Here he is examining the way in which people react in the face of disaster. Some authors will start right at the beginning, establishing their characters before gradually having the disaster creep up upon them such as in Stephen King's 'The Stand', a thousand page epic of before, during and after a plague wipes out most of the human population of the USA. Lebbon drops us into the latter stages.
In a minimum of words, scattered throughout the text we discover that some kind of plague has swept across Britain, killing most living organisms, including plants and resurrecting them to infect others. The word 'zombie' is not used but the implication is there.
A small group of survivors has found a kind of sanctuary on a beached ferry. They are just beginning to hope that it is all over. Then a giant crow punches its way through a steel door, intent on eating those on the other side. It is not alone. With death or dawn, the were-animals revert to their human form and the group is smaller.
The viewpoint character is the youngest of the survivors. At twelve, Jack is on the edge of puberty and still, despite the traumas he has been through, has a sense of curiosity and adventure. It is this that leads him to follow Lucy when she leaves the ferry, heading back to her hometown and the place that, she says, the were-animals come from.
This is a very fine closely observed piece. The sense of terror is heightened because it is unexpected and tightly focused. The desperation of the characters comes across in the writing. For those that like the frisson that good horror gives, this is a gem.
Pauline Morgan
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