There is a box. Inside that box is a door. Beyond that door is a house. In some rooms forests grow. In some, prisoners wait. At the top of the house, a prisoner sits behind a locked door waiting for a key to turn. The day that happens, the world will end! File under: Modern Fantasy [Worlds within Worlds | Prison Break | Exploring the Unknown | Dark Powers]
The World House (Angry Robot)
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
Review
Praise for "The World House" "Playful, intriguing and a barrel of laughs, The World House is a quirky, tumbling box of delights full of adorable eccentrics on a wild, wild ride. It really knocked me in the lobes! Great fun!" - Stephen Volk "a fearless grand adventure of escalating escapades and escapes so hair-raising that his deranged imagination is barely able to contain them all! it's a fearless, hurtling hell of a debut." - Christopher Fowler Praise for Guy Adams: "a superb stand-alone novel, that uses the tried and tested premise of the haunted house to scare the fertiliser out of us." - Bookstove, reviewing Torchwood: The House that Jack Built "highly acclaimed companion" - Total Scifi Online, reviewing Life On Mars: The Official Companion
About the Author
In a varied career, Guy trained and worked as an actor for twelve years before becoming a full-time writer. He mugged someone on Emmerdale, performed a dance routine as Hitler and spent eighteen months touring his own comedy material around clubs and theatres. He is the author of the best-selling Rules of Modern Policing: 1973 Edition, a spoof police manual "written by" DCI Gene Hunt of Life On Mars. He's has also written a two-volume series companion to that; a Torchwood novel, The House That Jack Built; and The Case Notes of Sherlock Holmes, a fictional facsimile of a scrapbook kept by Doctor John Watson. He's also the current chairman of the British Fantasy Society.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
A long and winding road to a satisfying conclusion,
By
This review is from: The World House (Angry Robot) (Mass Market Paperback)
A struggling British antiquarian with gambling debts... an American socialite during the Prohibition... a young boy from Spain during Franco's reign... a barfly and a stripper in the late seventies... an autistic teenager... In different places and during different eras, seemingly unconnected strangers all come into contact with a mysterious box, and all of them at some point suddenly find themselves transported to a different place: a huge house that seems to have endless corridors and stairs, not to mention a room filled with a huge jungle, one that contains an ocean, and so on...
The World House by Guy Adams starts off well, describing the unsuccessful antiquarian Miles as he hopelessly tries to get an extension on his gambling debts. When the perspective switches to a different time and era with the Prohibition-era debutante Penelope, I was still with the author. I even stayed interested when the story switched yet again to Kesara, a Spanish girl trying to stay alive on the streets, but it's at this point that the frequent perspective shifts and seemingly unconnected narratives began to grate a bit. Fortunately, around that time, there's a mysterious and fascinating interlude that doesn't seem to have much to do with the rest of the story (yet), and then Guy Adams introduces Tom, a bar singer who looks to have been modelled on Tom Waits (notice the bar is situated on "Ninth and Hennepin"...), which was enough to keep me reading a while longer again. However, after this, two more seemingly unrelated characters enter the novel: an autistic girl, and a professor who is obsessed with finding a certain mysterious box... Once every character has finally been introduced to the story, The World House continues as a series of mostly unconnected narratives, with everyone trying to survive the surreal environment of the house. These adventures are entertaining enough to read, but unfortunately The World House takes too long to get to the point and bring everything together. There are some clues and links here and there, and a few characters meet up, but mostly you still appear to be reading a series of seemingly unconnected stories about people who are all trying to survive separate parts of the same bizarre environment. If you've read the OTHERLAND novels by Tad Williams, you may remember the big chunk of River of Blue Fire where it seemed like a new, weird virtual reality was introduced every other chapter. These were all well-described, original, trippy and fun to read, but they didn't advance the overall plot much, making that book the weakest installment of the series. Most of The World House by Guy Adams has that same feeling: while it's surreal and action-packed, it feels like there's just no point to much of it. When everything finally starts to come together towards the end of the novel, The World House suddenly gets quite interesting. The final revelation of what's really going on is actually nothing short of great. Unfortunately, before you get to that point, Guy Adams spends about a quarter of The World House setting up the various characters, and most of the rest of the book putting them through their paces in the house, leaving too little time to wrap things up. Even though the separate story-lines are well-written and never boring, and it eventually turns out that, yes, everything did have a point and a connection, what comes before that point may be so frustrating for some readers that they don't even make it to the eventual pay-off. Still, if the plot summary of this novel strikes your interest and you don't mind taking not one but several long and winding roads to reach a satisfying conclusion, you may want to check out The World House.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Something different,
By Les Hernandez (Colorado Springs, CO, US) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The World House (Angry Robot) (Mass Market Paperback)
I found this book in the "Fantasy" section in the book area of a "Target"-style store. I admittedly decided to buy it on a whim because its description reminded me of some of Neil Gaiman's work. The World House does get its hooks in you after a bit of initial struggling. The story centers around an unusual house and its unfortunate occupants whose presence in the house is tied to a strange box and a moment of peril. The house offers animated taxidermy, nearly endless libraries containing the biographies of every person in the world, and miniature, homicidal chefs. There are several central characters and it takes a bit of patience to allow the story lines to develop. I read the last 150 pages at one sitting and groaned at the final page. I now MUST buy the sequel. Guy Adams is quite the storyteller and The World House is an entertaining read.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Jumanji meets The Cell,
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Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: The World House (Angry Robot) (Mass Market Paperback)
This book is so original, new & different it belongs in a genre all of it's own.
Guy Adams will take you on the ride of your life. The story follows several central characters, with very different backgrounds, if not all are sympathetic they are fully formed & realistic. Each turn up in the "house" via contact with a chinese box and have to navigate through the barking mad "personalities" of each room within. To say anymore would be to spoil the surprises instore for the reader. The storyline is complex, characters intrigueing & all of it well written. Read it twice & have pre-ordered the sequel "Restoration". Thought it the best fantasy book I've read since Clive Barkers "Weaveworld".
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