Horrorscope by Nicholas Adams

May 19, 2024 7:12 PM

A 1992 young adult horror novel about a serial killer targeting high school students. He chooses his targets based on their zodiac sign and that day's horoscope.

This was mentioned as the source material for the movie Tarot, and the name made it impossible for me to pass up. It is available to read for free (with login) from archive.org.

posted by Literaryhero (4 comments total)

So if you check out the archive.org link (in the post), you can see the cover of the novel and understand why I had to read it immediately. Interestingly, neither skulls nor arrows are mentioned in the text of the novel itself, but that's ok. The book itself is short enough that I read it in one day, and while the story isn't exactly good, it is at least fast paced. Do note that there is some seriously bizarre (creepy?) sexualization of the main character (a high school student) by basically every adult that she runs into, which is a bit off-putting.

However, the book itself seems to try to be progressive by pointing out that at the SCA meeting that the main character is a 'serving wench' at, it was only appropriate to sexually harass her in-character, because that's the way it would have been done back in the middle ages or whatever (?!). Also, there is a brief moment of racial tension when one character says something racist and then takes it back by saying something like "I don't care what color your skin is, I just don't like you." (?!) It was 1992, so I guess this was the fashion at the time.

One early moment in the book is pretty funny, though. There is a high school couple in a car and the guy keeps pressuring the girl "come on, just once, just do it once, it means a lot to me", and the girl keeps saying "no, you creep, stop asking", and it ends when she finally says "I don't care what your mom wants, I refuse to go to church with you!" Hahaha.

Also, there is the weird horror cliche where high school kids are just getting murdered left and right and their parents don't seem all that worried about it? Like four kids are dead, and two of the main characters just tell their parents they are going out to get tacos alone in the dark. I'm pretty sure that no parents would just be like ok, try not to get killed out there! But that's how it goes.
posted by Literaryhero at 7:19 PM on May 19 [1 favorite]

Also, there is the weird horror cliche where high school kids are just getting murdered left and right and their parents don't seem all that worried about it? Like four kids are dead, and two of the main characters just tell their parents they are going out to get tacos alone in the dark. I'm pretty sure that no parents would just be like ok, try not to get killed out there! But that's how it goes.

Hmmm.. as a late child in a large family AND an 80s adolescent, that part strikes me as completely plausible..
posted by Nerd of the North at 1:47 AM on May 20 [3 favorites]

I was going to say as a member of Gen X who became a teenager in the 80s, I can buy that.
posted by miss-lapin at 2:32 PM on May 20

I never read this. However, I 100% recognize that cover from working in a library as a teen in the mid-90s. It probably had the opposite of its intended effect—I thought it looked like a cheesy Christopher Pike knock-off, and I wasn't into his brand of teen thrillers to begin with.
posted by synecdoche at 9:18 AM on May 21