Connolly, John: The Gates
The Gates (2009)
Author: John Connolly
Genre: Horror, Humour
Pages: 296 (hardcover)
Series: Samuel Johnson #1
Young Samuel Johnson and his dachshund, Boswell, are trying to show initiative by trick-or-treating a full three days before Halloween which is how they come to witness strange goings-on at 666 Crowley Road. The Abernathys don't mean any harm by their flirtation with the underworld, but when they unknowingly call forth Satan himself, they create a gap in the universe. A gap in which a pair of enormous gates is visible. The gates to Hell. And there are some pretty terrifying beings just itching to get out...
Can one small boy defeat evil? Can he harness the power of science, faith, and love to save the world as we know it?
Bursting with imagination, The Gates is about the pull between good and evil, physics and fantasy. It is about a quirky and eccentric boy who is impossible not to love, and the unlikely cast of characters who give him the strength to stand up to a demonic power.
John Connolly manages to re-create the magical and scary world of childhood that we've all left behind but so love to visit. And for those of you who thought you knew everything you could about particle physics and the universe, think again. This novel makes anything seem possible.
Why I Read It: Back in 2009 I read and really enjoyed another Connolly novel: The Book of Lost Things. So when this title showed up in the Bargain section at work I was all over it. It languished on the TBR forever, but I've been trying to work through and finally decided to pick it up.
This review is going to be short because I'm going to be brutally honest here: I did not like this book. AT ALL. I wish I had put it down at the 100 page mark and moved on to something better. But I loved The Book of Lost Things so much... I wanted to love THIS book so much!! But it let me down.
Why did this book not work for me? Well, it was clearly trying to be a humour book. It reads a lot like (and is often compared to) Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett's collaboration Good Omens (but not nearly as good). But the problem is that I didn't think it was funny. I can't put my finger on WHY it wasn't funny though. It tried to go for this kind of.. I dunno, absurd sort of humour, but it all came off as trying too hard and never even coaxed a chuckle out of me.
SO, because I didn't think it was funny (at all) everything was very, very dull. Samuel was your typical precocious child but had nothing else going for him; his parents were hardly present, as were his friends, and then the rest of the cast is comprised of snippets we get of different neighbours and loosely related characters who are dealing with the leakage of demons. Their little asides were also obviously supposed to be humorous, but just felt distracting to me; it seemed like they were cushioning to fatten the book a bit.
The book is peppered with footnotes (also like Good Omens) and while those also fell flat on the humour front, I *did* learn a lot of fun little bits about physics and stuff. So there is that.
But honestly? There isn't much else.
Final Verdict: I am so sad to say that I did not like this book at all and honestly wished I had just DNFed it. I really enjoyed The Book of Lost Things by Donnolly so I really *wanted* to like this book, but it just didn't work out, mostly because the humour fell flat for me. Humour is a slippery and subjective thing though, so if the premise intrigues you, give it a go -- hopefully you'll have a better experience than me. Needless to say I won't be checking out the sequel The Infernals.
Cover Commentary: I really like it. I love the style and it's very colourful and eye-catching.