Customer Reviews

Event Horizon: A Novel

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

I got this book looking for an SF thriller, I didn't expect something like this. I have read all five Omen books, and had put down the novelization for "Virus" just before starting on EH. I have read plenty of gory stuff and usually have no problem. However, this book was too frightening. Mr. McDonald did his job much too well and he can be rightfully proud of the result. I didn't sleep last night at all! I couldn't close my eyes without seeing the horror, the mayhem (the output of the ship's log kept playing on my frontal lobe), the perversions, and the face of the creature! Body parts flying around OK, but leave the eyes alone! I'm will NOT be watching this movie... The writing is excellent: tight, appropriately gloomy, with good physics, and I cared for the characters; but the developments are not for the faint of heart, the religiously superstitious, or for a midnight reading. How much of it was real, and how much tricks to force you onto suicide? The unholy one also behaves in mysterious ways. Where did the ship go in the end? I don't care, as long as it is far away from Earth. The sad thing is, no character gets away unscathed.

I E-mailed Mr. McDonald personally and gave him a message, which summed-up is the title of this review. I think the novelization is well-written. It departs from the movie in several places but where it does so it makes the story more credible, tightening it up and offering explanations for much of the confusion on the screen, and makes Capt. Miller seem more logical, as well as explaining the Weir/Beast's motives. Moreover, it plays down the gore in the film, particularly the "in hell" scenes. Unfortunately, there are still plot holes, but I blame these on the original screenplay.

It isn't great literature, but if you want a fairly gripping read, it's a pretty good way to spend a day.

I just finished "Event Horizon" - it only took a couple of hours to read. From page 1 it is exciting and will probably be a good movie. I do have a big criticism - without giving anything away in the plot, what happened to the ship? Where did it go? What did it bring back? All action, no answers. With 10 pages to go the action is escalating towards a climax that leaves too many questions unanswered. Upon completion I looked around for the last half of the book! I guess the answers will be in the sequel.

I liked the book very much. In fact, I'm now reading it for the 3rd time! It clears-up a LOT of plot-points and provides details the movie didn't give you (and which, lacking them, rendered the film barely coherent.)

This is it. I read some of the "bad reviews" that are already on this website concerning this book. After reading the reviews, I decided that the "bad reviews" were unfounded, and were left by people who just didn't "get" the book.

Black Holes are still a mystery to us, as is death, space exploration, and Heaven/Hell. This book ties all of these things together for an excellent thrill ride.

Good job McDonald, this book goes down as one of my favorites of all time. I have read 100s of Fantasy novels, but science fiction novels just don't interest me. But with this book/movie, I made an exception.

After watching the movie Event Horizon I realized that it is to most people more grose than scary. This was the only movie that scared me after watching it over and over again. The book is the same, its a little different than the movie, not totally, things are described better than in the movie and you get a sense of how the characters felt, like how scared they were. Anyways, I really enjoyed this book and the movie the same. If your looking for a good scare then read this book.

If you have seen the movie and really appreciated it, then the book filled all the holes. You have to read between the lines to see it though. I am not sure what you should do first though, read the book or watch the movie. I watched the movie first. To make a long review short the book is short(as is the movie,) but is gripping and as terrifying as the screenplay.

I read this book about a year ago, and till then I wasn't that much into books. I loved it, I read it all in about 1 and a half days. I mean I couldn't get my eyes off of it. I knew what was gonna happen, cause I saw the movie, but the book just had my mind going. I liked it so much that I read it about 3 times in one week. For all you horror and si-fi lovers out there this book is defintily for us. Hope you love the book as much as I do.

The Event Horizon is a ship that was built with a core capable of creating a black hole so travel at greater than the speed of light could be attained. On its maiden voyage it disappeared. It was assumed to be destroyed and the crew lost. Seven years later it suddenly reappears near Neptune sending out a distress beacon. A crew is dispatched to take the ship's creator Dr. Weir to the Event Horizon to discover where it's been for the last seven years and what happened to the crew.

When they arrive they find the crew all dead and the clues they left behind indicate the place the ship went was into the darkness of hell. The Event Horizon seems to be alive and the entire crew starts having both auditory and visual hallucinations.

I never saw the movie so I can't compare but the book is pretty tepid. It's only 200 pages and I had to push myself to finish it. The basic premise of the ship disappearing and reappearing seven years later and the inclusion of an artificial black hole is an interesting one but nothing was really done with it. The whole "the ship knows what we're afraid of" has been done many times before. The belief that chaos exists at the center of a black hole opens up endless possibilities but they chose the lowest common denominator to explore. McDonald's writing was solid enough and there were a few nice descriptive passages but in the end Event Horizon couldn't hold my interest.

This novelization of the summer movie with Sam Neill, is a lot better then the movie. It makes more sense then the movie does. It always seems when someone novelizes a movie it seems to me so far the book is better then the movie.