Faerie Tale

Feist, author of the popular Magician fantasy trilogy, turns to the horror genre in this slick, only partially successful novel of a very modern family newly settled into a house on the edge of an enchanted woods. Each member of the familyretired actress Gloria Hastings, her novelist and screenwriter husband Phil, his teenage daughter by a previous marriage, their twin eight-year-old boys, and a dog and a catis touched in some way by ""the Bad Thing,'' as the boys call it, which turns out to be a forest spirit out of ancient folklore. Feist builds atmosphere with intimations of the supernatural that soon escalate into outright violence. It is the boys who most clearly perceive the Bad Thing, and who eventually confront and defeat it. While the plot has some intriguing features, the book is afflicted by a superficiality of characterization and a flat, uninteresting style. 150,000 first printing; $150,000 ad/promo; BOMC and QPBC selections. (March)