Customer Reviews

Unidentified

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

 

 

Having recently finished the "Da Vinci Code", I decided thrillers with an international setting were for me. So I tried "Unidentified." Not only did fit the bill, but it was an even better read! The setup was both breathtaking, and intriguing, and as the book moved deftly between London, Scotland and the U.S., I felt as if I myself were the international traveller. I don't want to give away any of the plot, so suffice it to say that Costello has created a unique and unforgettably scary twist on the haunted house genre, resulting in a page-turner you won't want to put down. And as an added bonus, it really made me think. What a great summer read! (Just don't read it before going to bed).

Be warned that this 'horror' novel treads into the realm of quantum physics, quantum biology and --gasp -- science fiction.
Lovecraft, at least, would have been intrigued. A Literary Guild selection (rare for an original pb).

Matthew Costello's new novel, "Unidentified," opens ominously enough, with a scientist heading to the ocean floor in a minisub to see what he can see. Most horror fans know that what's on the ocean floor will probably not allow the scientist to see the light of day again.

But before the reader can get comfortable, the story shifts to another scientist, working for a genetic research company (Gentech) in New York, who stumbles across a secret file that contains DNA readouts unlike any the scientist has ever seen. Unease starts to grow, and she gets up to leave with her discovery secreted away, when...the story shifts, to a young student heading home from her London school, not knowing the danger her father is in. And so on and so on.

This pattern of scene shifts maintains itself throughout the novel. On one hand, it could be argued that such a device heightens tension, keeps the reader turning pages, etc., but in "Unidentified," this tool instead makes for a frustrating, choppy read. Costello has a potentially good story on his hands, with its hints at a Lovecraftian horror, a mysterious metal house in the Scottish highlands, a strange town that Lewis Carroll would love, and killers who can crop up anywhere, anytime. Reality is a slippery concept. And Costello can quickly create believable characters (not an easy thing to do), but after he creates them, he rushes to another scene, another character, another place on the globe. For example, the author goes through the trouble of creating a crusty Jacques Cousteau-like figure (Father Farrand) on a marine research vessel who also happens to be a priest. The reader is intrigued about the possibilities of science and theology and, well, horror. All Costello ends up doing is having the character become monster meat. Which is fine, but more could of been done with the character before turning him into chum. Remember the brief, but very effective, appearance of the old Jesuit in the old 1930s movie "Werewolf of London." The old fellow, up in the movie's Tibetan snows, actually had something to say. It would of been nice if Father Farrand would of been given a similar opportunity to say something, foolish or wise, to contribute to the story.

Basically, the main problem is that the author simply never allows his story to settle down into a pace, other than the frenetic introductory one established in the first few pages. And that's too bad, because Costello can write. I'm not a huge fan of padded horror epics, but this is one case where another hundred pages or more would of added the kind of texture this novel needed. As it stands now, "Unidentified" reads more like an outline for a potentially good book, with a number of very fine character sketches and scenes to build upon (which is why I'm giving it two stars). But as a finished work, there's not enough here for even a bad novel.

the book is very good is you liek to try to figure these things out but if you want to be spoon feed then you are not going to like it as much.

I was very dissapointed in this book. I started out very interested since the premise pulled me right in. A house in Scotland that "just appeared" in 1939? Whomever approaches it dissapears? Who wouldn't be hooked in. When I read it though, the house was not mentioned until halfway through the book, there were so many loose ends (What happens with the young girl? Did they all die? To top that off, it read like a first draft. I half-expected to see scribbled notes in the margins and I didn't feel anything but nearly pushed through the book. It felt hurried, forced and lacked any life. No spark, no nothing. It was supposed to be terror filled, a *horror* novel, and I felt zilch, nothin'. Save your money and skip this novel. It is not worth it in my opinion.

Previous reviewers have already outlined the plot of this novel, so I won't go over it again. Suffice to say that the story is distractingly difficult to follow because of a choppy plot development style and the truly annoying overuse of ellipses and em-dashes. Eliminating superfluous punctuation would have vastly improved this effort.

You know when you've read through 338 pages of a book, reached its end, and don't have the answer to a single question raised in its pages or even much of an idea what happened, that the book has serious problems.

Costello is capable of good work - I read his Beneath Still Waters over a decade ago, and thought it was pretty good - but you'd never guess it on the basis of his latest novel.

The thimbleful of plot isn't revealed until two thirds of the way through the story, which consists up to that point of nothing more than a lot of inexplicable (and unexplained) chase-and-murder activity by a party or parties unknown, all having something to do with a house that isn't a house - which may or may not have been initially built by some designer (no one seems quite sure) - that grows of its own accord, is not subject to the laws of physics, possibly spawns indescribable monsters (or else it's just some kind of doorway to them from who-knows-where-or-why, no one seems quite sure of that either), and has been cordoned and watched by a terrified British military since 1937.

Does any of that make sense to you? It gets worse.

The indescribable monsters that may or may not be spawned by the house that may or may not have been built by human hands are irrevocably hostile to humanity for no reason even pondered, and send hit-men (er, -monsters?) to attack whoever finds out about them (even though they seem pretty well indestructible). Or are the hit-men (-monsters) being sent by the government? Or some private corporation? Who are they? What happened to them when the story was over? The story was over, wasn't it - I mean, the book ended, it must have been, right? What happened? What were the monsters? Where did they come from? If they could pop-up just about anywhere in time and space, and are so hostile to us (and just why is that, anyway?), what reason was there for the military to waste its time watching the non-house whatever-it-was? And if they can pop-around like that, what good would it do for the military to watch their non-house? And if they're that powerful, why do they have human allies? Or were there human allies? (The author said there were, but I didn't see any evidence of it - or any need, either.)

And why - ? Oh, forget it. My brain hurts.

Literally the only answer given for all the bizarre, utterly inexplicable goings-on throughout this plotless novel is the fantasist's new catch-phrase, "quantum physics." Gravity works when the author wants it to, and doesn't when he wishes it not to? "Quantum physics." One person's wishes become reality, but another's don't? "Quantum physics." All rules are subject to change at a whim, and without any explanation whatsoever? "Quantum physics."

One way or another, the good guys somehow wish the bad monsters away. Your guess is as good as mine, as to how. You might as well imagine your own ending, to this book. And your own beginning. Your own entire story. Then, at least, you'd know what happened - and save yourself the cost of the book.

Matthew Costello is credited with seventeen novels. Some may even live up to their glowing press. Unidentified does not. Back cover reviewers promise "truly twisted," "gripping, compelling," "deep-down terror," but this purported horror story is mostly just boring.

The back cover plot blurb promises a "peculiar house in the hills," shrouded in legends "nowhere near as terrifying as the truth." "[A]n imprisoned force...now...unleashed." A desperate foray into "the very heart of the house to uncover its secrets," all in the face of global terror.

The first part of Unidentified is a pastiche of assorted characters and their activities over the course of a few days. The focus never stays on anyone very long, so it's difficult to establish any bond between reader and character or to feel particularly vested in anyone's fate. There are some bloody but underplayed deaths, an anticlimactic car wreck, and a few possibly supernatural but downplayed experiences. Linkages between events are poor to nonexistent, providing little sense of growing menace, let alone impending doom. The "global terror" aspect never really materializes.

The "peculiar house" of the plot blurb isn't even mentioned in passing until page 121. The book is more than half-over before any substantial attention is paid to the house. Individual character stories finally start to coalesce, though not well. A bit of ongoing tension at last begins to build, too late for some readers to care any more.

Two-thirds of the way through, the book finally ratchets into a higher gear. If this were the first third, it would be a promising beginning. Then it's over, and several plot threads were never even adequately explored, much less resolved. Oh, horrors; a sequel?

Any competent high school English teacher will explain that, except to indicate omission of material from a direct quote, writers should use the ellipsis very sparingly or it loses its intended impact. A handful of occurrences in a book like this would be ample. Anything more would be...decidedly annoying and...strictly...amateur hour. With Costello, the ellipsis is ubiquitous. There are enough pregnant pauses in Unidentified to signal a major population explosion. Now there's a horror story: overrun by...rampant ellipses. Instead of increasing the sense of menace, this device becomes almost a joke. While more acceptable, the em-dash is also vastly overused here. What was Costello's editor thinking?

Costello shows a firm grasp of most basic writing skills. His house and his unidentified creatures are excellent concepts; too bad he gives them such short shrift. There's a great story somewhere in Unidentified, but bringing it out would require tighter plotting, with a tighter focus on key concepts and characters, and a much tighter rein on all those...tiresome...ellipses.

The concept of the book was a fantastic idea- a sort of Wonderland trek through the power of the imagination. But as others have mentioned in reviews here, the blurb on the back cover is completely misleading, the house isn't mentioned until half wey through the book, and there are countless loose ends left untied.

While it is acceptable to have one or two mysteries left at the end of a book, generally the main mystery should be solved before declaring "the end". Also, one character could have been completely eliminated from the novel without affecting the outcome. Her pages could have been dedicated to developing the other characters more completely. I wont tell you which character so as not to give anything away.

The back of the book promised me "deep down terror", but Costello spent so much time jumping from useless character to useless character that it seems he forgot to add these elements of terror. One edgy scene every hundred pages is not enough to make me afraid to go to sleep.

However, as I said, the concept was fantastic and in the end it did give me something intense to think about. My opinion is that if something makes you think, it wasn't a total waste of time. I also enjoyed Costello's writing style, he spins words together very nicely and the book was an easy read. So it wasn't all bad.

'Unidentified' starts out in a promising sort of way. Right off the bat we're introduced to several characters, all of them in suspenseful situations, half of them on the run from something mysterious/dangerous, though most of the time the reader is given few clues at best as to what's going on.

It's one thing to withhold certain vital clues for the building of suspense and all that. Several authors manage to do a good job with it, but in this book at least, Matthew Costello fails miserably. So much of the information is withheld that it's ridiculous--there's no way the reader can even come up with a vague guess of what's going on. For example: Elaina Dali is running from "someone"--the government? (which? the US, the UK?) a private corporation (GenTech? the people behind GenTech?), aliens, monsters, demons, or any/all of the above from any of several other dimensions? The most annoying part is, it's never revealed!

Basically most of the action takes place in the UK, with a few quick cuts to Elaina and her comrades in the States, which are so disjointed anyway that there's no flow to the story at all. Besides the fact that this feels like a story half completed (yet also one for which no sequel is intended), my biggest gripe would have to be the characters themselves: first off, given the minimal amount they're developed, there's too many of them. Characters need more than just a lot of backstory, as a reader I want to *feel* for them, to cheer for them, to feel a strong connection to them and their lives, and with few exceptions that just doesn't happen here. A few of them have potential--I would have liked to see much more of Elaina, and while Maddy and Sophie were both just a few steps shy of being totally clichés, I found myself liking them too. But Nick was just the stupid token male protagonist who didn't really contribute to the story at all, and his "checkered past" was more of an annoyance than anything else. The Sierra Leone flashback didn't endear him at all in my mind, he was just in the wrong place at the wrong time and most importantly it did not progress the story; instead, it took away space that could have been used to better flesh out what was currently happening to the other characters, so why include it at all? Same with Nick's little adultery thing--as a reader, am I supposed to admire a guy who cheats on his wife "just because" and then apparently doesn't learn from his mistakes, as we get hints of his exploits with other women?? (again: who cares? It doesn't contribute at all to this story)

In a nutshell, I knew I was in trouble with this book when I got to about page 100 or so. The main reason: I kept checking to see how many pages there were total, and just knowing I would be disappointed at the end, for Mr. Costello sets up a really complex (and intriguing, I give him that) story, but one which definitely needed at the very least a hundred pages more to play out! Instead, we have a great beginning, and then after the characters are established and their personal stories are vaguely hinted at, we have to witness them scrambling around aimlessly for a couple hundred pages, with neither them nor us really knowing what the heck they're supposed to be doing, (except, apparently, for Sophie, who keeps a "big secret" throughout the entire book that's only first mentioned about 30 pages from the ending, and it turns out to just be more silliness like most of the other "secrets" and "mysteries"). And after ALL that, the climax is crammed into 20-30 pages and we're left with a part-warm-fuzzy-miracles-happily-ever-after, part-mwahahaha-you-thought-it-was-over-but-it's-really-just-beginning type ending which was a complete cop-out. It's something like trying to watch a 3 hour long movie in 2 hours, and just watching the final third of the movie in fast forward because you're running out of time.

[...] I've never read anything else of Matthew Costello's, so I can't speak for his other works, but if you're looking for a suspenseful book with a good plot, there are plenty of better ones out there, so don't waste your time on this one.