Shee

The shopworn plot of this horror novel has a team of archeologists unleashing the Celtic goddess of destruction, the Shee, on a quiet village in western Ireland. As excavators begin to unearth a passageway into an ancient barrow near the tiny village of Kilgallen, its citizens find themselves driven to kill by a mysterious, evil force. Eventually, the Shee escapes bodily from the chamber in which the ancient Irish imprisoned her and goes on a gory rampage, systematically wiping out the town. Perhaps in an effort to achieve epic scope, Scottish journalist Donnelly ( Bane ) taxes the simplistic story with a plethora of characters who pack the novel with half-baked subplots until the obligatory final bloodbath. Although their numbers do allow the author to devise a devilishly clever variety of horrid deaths at the hands of the Shee, they mainly get in the way of suspense. The terrible nightmares of photojournalist Sean McCullain, for example, are built up as a significant theme throughout the novel, then suddenly cease to matter when Sean turns out to be a reincarnation of the Celtic hero Cuchullain, the only entity capable of conquering the Shee. The relatively few episodes of gruesomely entertaining horror fail to hold together a novel that seems to have spread itself too thin. (May)