Customer Reviews

Vigil

5 star:		(19)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(16)
2 star:		(8)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

So this is totally my kind of book and I couldn't wait to start reading...especially after seeing Jeff Long's comments on the cover and being a huge fan of The Descent. I really enjoyed the idea of this fallen angel and the Enoch scroll and the supernatural, BUT...for starters it wasn't scary at all. Not one bit. And then the ending left a thousand questions unanswered. Also, I agree with some of the past reviewers who said there was no character development. None. I give the book 3 stars because I love the "idea" it presents, and this could have easily been a classic epic type story, but it felt like the author couldn't follow through on some of his ideas, and/or forgot to explain some things that needed further explanation. All in all...an easy read that won't take long if you want to make the purchase.

Carter Cox is a paleontologist studying a fossil found in a cave in Italy. Nothing about the fossil makes sense as the dating tests indicate it is older than the earth itself. Ezra Metzger smuggles an ancient scroll, the lost book of Enoch, out of Israel to translate it and discovers it is not parchment, but living tissue and the ink is actually blood. The story it tells is of a fallen angel, possibly the same as the fossil that inexplicably escapes from the rock it is embedded in.

The premise of Vigil is an attractive one, but the author fails to pull it off. The book is well written from a technical standpoint, but it's also dull and monotonous. There is never any real tension, nor anything frightening. There's too much time spent on things that have nothing to do with the story and I would think that an angel, even a fallen one, would have better things to do than what this one does in Vigil. The ending is also a huge letdown. The author appears to have bitten off more than he could chew.

I found myself very disappointed with this book and its promising premise. I have enjoyed much of this sort of ancient rediscovery/speculative fiction, a la Preston/Childs, Jeff Long, James Rollins, and the like.

The main problem with this book is that it didn't tie together enough myth and science to convince me that it could be happening. Big fossil, a scroll, a reference to Enoch, a reference to the Aeneid... just not enough. There were some inexplicable things in there, like Mitchell getting into the "secure" lab. Like the whole protective clay thing; I mean, there's no basis given, and suddenly they're slapping clay on their foreheads. Like, what really happens to Kimberly, where did the bruises come from? There's no consistency. So many more details could have been culled from ancient literary sources to give this story depth. Instead it was just hodge-podged together to get us to the, YES, cheesy ending.

And who said something about character development? Tell me they're kidding? There is absolutely zero character development. Every character that survives is the exact same person they were at the beginning. The absolute worst of this is Carter Cox's reaction to the situation at the very end, knowing what he knows, having gone through what he did, and having felt what he felt leading up to it, and to have him react, or NOT react, as the case may be, was utterly ridiculous. For there to be character development, they have to, well, develop. The characters were shallow, distinguished only by a couple of simple physical and personality characteristics, and they never grew.

Anyway, it was a very disappointing read. I gave it two stars because the premise was enough to get me to the end of it, for what that's worth.

Robert Masello has long written excellent yet understated novels of suspense and horror, such as "The Spirit Wood," "Black Horizon," and "Private Demons," in which the world of the supernatural slowly invades the world of the everyday. I'm glad to say that Masello has outdone himself this time with "Vigil." He begins with a discovery of a mysterious fossil that is years older than it should be, and a fragmented ancient parchment that warns of an evil creature. As the plot unfolds, it becomes clearer that something dangerous is lurking in the world, and the reader races forward anxiously to find out what will happen next.

But what makes "Vigil" work isn't just the lurking evil; it's also that his characters all have real lives that don't just get put on hold when the ancient evil is released. A sense of realism pervades the novel; if such an evil did come back to threaten the world, one feels that the story would unfold exactly as it does here.

Masello carries his novel all the way to the end. The best stories end with what I like to call an inevitable surprise, an ending that surprises the reader but in retrospect makes logical sense from what has happened before. "Vigil" ends in just this way, a perfectly satisfactory resolution that also calls for a sequel -- and, I hope, soon.

If you are a fan of good horror or just excellent characterization, read this book.

First for the "good": While I was somewhat distracted by the inconsistent writing (especially dialogue/human interaction), I found the story to be interesting and adequately developed, (at least up until the "resolution", which, when it comes, seems to come too quickly and holds few surprises). A prior reviewer characterizes the novel as boring, and I agree it is slow in parts, but the underlying story may be worth the slog through the muddy bits.

Now for the "bad": If you have any knowledge (even middling) about dating techniques in archeology and (more appropriately) paleontology, as well as the concepts and terminology of those fields, this book is likely not for you. For example, even though the author correctly identifies the half-life of carbon-14 at approximately 5,730 years, he then has his characters use the radiocarbon method to date a piece of ancient fossil (in which organic material containing carbon should have long before been replaced with minerals) at several millions years old, which the characters speak of as off the chart. Such results, were they obtainable, would be "off the chart" because radiocarbon dating can only be used effectively to date organic material (not fossil material) that is less than 50,000 years old (at least in the more conservative, older method - some researchers claim newer methods can date organic material up to 200,000 years old); it cannot be used to date fossilized material that is several million years old. This is just one example of the bad, or at least misused, science in the book. While this may not be distracting to the casual reader, it caused me to lose my "suspension of disbelief" in several key sections of the book.

I'd like to give this book a 4.5 rather than a 5. The author obviously is a talented writer. With this book, though, he may not be reaching high enough - he needs to understand that readers of this genre are a cut above the average best-seller potboiler readers. To be able to follow theology, archaeology, and paleontology you have to have some brains. A few gaps should have been filled in, but I really enjoyed this book. Thank goodness it didn't live up to the jacket's promise of being as scary as The Excorcist and The Omen (those books scare the living daylights out of me and I'm not looking for that). Instead it was a fun read and kept me happily entertained from beginning to end for several hours on a few summer evenings.

Vigil is a book that weaves a spell all its own, and I was thoroughly enthralled. It did remind me of books by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child, but, frankly, I thought the writing was much better. As for the story, it was -- at last! -- an engaging supernatural tale that traded in ideas and character, not special effects and over-the-top gore. It's for grown-up readers, who still enjoy some thrills and chills!

To reiterate what many reader/reviewers have already stated, Vigil did a wonderful job with character and story development. However, it appeared that the author not only rushed the ending and left the story hanging but sacraficed the whole story development for what some mey call a "cheesy ending."

The premise of the book was certainly intriguing (two separate discoveries: an ancient biblical text and a strange fossil), but the story was never able to take it where it needed to go. Despite having a paleonotologist as a main character, the scientific aspects are never satisfactorily explained or integrated into the storyline.

The antagonist is also poorly developed, being treated as purely evil without any ramifications of the evil (so what if he breeds?).

Finally, the ending seems pretty rushed and fails to bring the story together in any way.

Not worth the $7 - 8 cover price.

Ok I'll admit it, the cover and the premise made me but this book,after all "greatest secret in the history of mankind" ?Come on, you just gotta know!
Anyway, aside from some of the tech problems, as mentioned by some other reviewers, the book did build nicely. Masello does breathe life into most of his characters, however the story requires more narrative on the part of the Arius character.
I felt the ending was rushed, and quite honestly, I don't put the blame on Masello. It has the feel of hasty editing, I think that somewhere in Masello's study is a longer version of Vigil, perhaps 70 more pages. At any rate I believe we are being baited here for Vigil II, and hopefully Penguin Publishing will allow the writer more time and more pages to develop a good idea and story. Readers aren't like tv viewers, we don't need to finish it all up in a half hour.

If the writer is reading this and wants a third party view on future works, I'm never short on opinions. On the other hand, I'm sure he gets more advice than he wants.