The Gates

August 31, 2009
In this frothy fantasy thriller from bestseller Connolly (The Book of Lost Things
), 11-year-old Samuel Johnson witnesses an inadvertent intersection of science and the supernatural while trick-or-treating at the Abernathy household in Biddlecombe, England. Something nasty reaches through an atomically engineered portal to Hades and possesses four suburban sorcerers. From that point on, Samuel finds himself battling hordes of invading demons and desperately trying to convince disbelieving adults that the impending end of the world is not a fancy of his overactive imagination. Connolly plays this potentially spooky scenario strictly for laughs, larding the narrative with droll jokes, humorous asides and the slapstick pratfalls of Nurd, an amusingly incompetent subdemon whom Samuel ultimately befriends. Though billed as “an adult book for children,” this light fantasy will strike even adult readers as divertingly whimsical.

November 30, 2009
With nothing on the package cover to indicate otherwise, Connolly fans might expect a gritty horror thriller; what they'll find instead is a comic yarn about a British boy, Samuel Johnson, and his dog, Boswell, who are attempting to stop the opening of the gates of hell. The footnote-laden opening unfolds in a jaunty, conversational style reminiscent of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
, only not as amusing. Once the footnotes fade, the plot grows more compelling, allowing Jonathan Cake to show off his vocal versatility by portraying dotty scientists, snarling denizens of the dark domain, an undead and unpleasant bishop, a surprisingly likable subdemon named Nurd, and the dark lord himself, herein called the Great Malevolence. The author includes numerous satiric swipes at science, religion, British lifestyle, and horror fiction. But much of the material is arch and condescending, and the reading is tediously tongue-in-cheek. An Atria hardcover (Reviews, Aug. 31).