Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Seen better horror B movies, October 7, 2003
[EDIT] I now quite belatedly found out that are indeed two books with the exact same title and remotely related themes. Apparently the one I wanted is "The Apocalypse Door" by James D. MacDonald, as opposed to this inferior mess.
I got this book based on a review in the SciFi Weekly website, some time ago. Those recommendation have certainly been hit-and-miss. From fantastic newcomers, such as Ken MacLeod and "Cosmonaut Keep" to ... well, this stinker.
Horror isn't normally my favorite genre anyway, but with above review I expected/hoped for a nice dash of fantasy or even scifi influence. Alas, what I got was a book that read as predictable as a horror B movie.
Not yet even halfway through the book I uttered The Eight Deadly Words of storytelling: "I don't care what happens to these characters!"
They are cardboard stereotypes, one from column A (the Catholic priest with a taint in his past but Faith Deep Down); one from column B, the good-hearted and decent university prof, a wonderful father to his even more wonderful children, with the career-driven, sleep-her-way-to-the-top, evil TV journalist wife; and column C, the poor abused love-interest-to-be-once-the-divorce-is-through-and-that-pesky-demon-sent-back-to-hell former classmate of column B.
Add a variety of characters whose only purpose is to be gruesomly possessed and murdered by a Demon From Hell. Most of these appeared and died too quickly to be fleshed out to any extent.
There are plotholes big enough to fly all the infernal hosts through. How did the priest make it from Scotland to America, but then end up broke near Boston? If he flew and also thought that his destination was near NY, why didn't he arrive days before the demon, which had to rely on a lumbering freighter crossing the Atlantic? Where the hell was the police? People were being horribly killed, houses blown up in raging infernos and in the 12 or so hours covered by the story, we don't see one cop inquiring whether there might be a slight problem (except One Evil Because Atheist Pig, on one paragraph, rearly on).
Oh yeah, God Himself actually interferes a few times, but it could have just been the author's God From The Machine.
The end was predictable from about halfway through the book. I'd brought the book along on a vacation and hadn't exactly expected Mary Shelley, so my expectations were low, but I struggled to finish this dog.
Just to round it off, the author or his editor need: a spellchecker, an intro to proper grammar (getting your and you're mixed up is an abomination), a Thesaurus (author's 2 favorite words: "macabre" and "golem", over and over), and a Webster's (the author always uses golem as an adjective, which it isn't in my issue of the dictionary).
Yet another "I wish I could give zero stars on Amazon" case.
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0 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
THE APOCALYPSE DOOR, December 10, 2002
By A Customer
THE BOOK WAS GREAT. ALTHOUGH THERE WERE SOME EDITING ERRORS, IT DIDN'T DETRACT FROM THE STORY OR THE PACE IT SET. IT HAD MORE THAN THE TYPICAL HORROR ELEMENTS IN IT; IT HAD SOME HUMOR, SOME SADNESS, AND SOME LOVE ASPECTS. IT'S THE FIRST BOOK I'VE READ IN A LONG TIME THAT COULD MAKE ME LAUGH AND SCARE THE WITS OUT OF ME WITHIN A TWO PAGE SPAN. I THINK IT'S A MUST READ.
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