This has been my favourite book for the last...25+ years. I have read it about a half-dozen times. I spent a good chunk of change on this limited edition because of all that.

It isn't the most perfect, elegant prose; it doesn't have the deepest, best characters ever; it doesn't shed bright new light on meaningful themes...

But it has a good heart, used to tell a dark, gory story that's most visibly a 1980s pulp horror tale par excellence, wrapped up in strains and threads of class, race, humanity, and greed—and the ways of small, dying towns. It has characters that are deeply flawed and learn and grow, that are quite satisfying and have effective arcs.

Doing all of those things in a sci-fi horror setting is essentially my platonic ideal, so it's little wonder that this book captivates me like it does.

Hell, it even has a pervasive image of brightly coloured light. It's got everything!