is what I'm talking about! Just finished two mediocre books and was wanting so badly to pick up a can'tputdown story along the lines of Natural Selection and The Relic, and I chose this one on my Kindle.
Great pick, if I do say so myself, Love books about ancient history and religion throw a demon into the mix and I'm a happy camper.
This book is all kinds of fun and it's taking my mind off my current troubles,
Andy, a young linguist who speakslanguages is whisked away to an underground facility to act as an interpreter to a demon who has awakenedyears after being dug up.
He was found in a metal tube covered in ancient hieroglyphs,
The facility has a crew of misfits working on the project: doctors, scientists, and a rabbi and priestall people who were in trouble with the law and whose records were cleared in return for giving up their lives above to study Bub below.
Bub, short for Beelzebub the demon,
Andy is assigned to teach him English, and little by little he tells them where he came from, how old he is, and whether there's a heaven and hell and if Jesus existed.
But is he telling the truth, and is he really a demon He tells some of the more troubled and conflicted what they want to hear, and works a few miracles, like healing a sick wife for a general and making a baby out of a dead sheep for a childless woman.
All he wants in return are the two codes that will release him from his habitat,
The descriptions of the demon/monsters in this book are fantastic, and the characters are fully fleshed and interesting.
This is a wonderful page turner of a book, I was disappointed. This book could have been better, Full video review here: sitelink tv/originbyj
Im a sucker for anything remotely spiritual or related to gods or demons, With a beginning quote from revelation I was hooked!
Plot Overview no spoilers: When the Panama canal was being excavated afoot long casket was found, marked with strange symbols.
Inside was a creature of indescribable horror, alive but lying dormant which was transported back to the US and kept in a secret location in New Mexico, Project Samhain.
Now, the Devil has woken up, a massively muscled, winged, hooved demon of nightmare and the government wants to talk to him.
Great plot escalation from initial friendly encounters with the residents of the facility, to Bubs feeding time with the unfortunate sheep and his miraculous resurrection powers, through his speaking English, to his access to the internet where he learns all he needs to know about modern humans.
He manipulates each of the characters expertly finding their weaknesses and then exploiting them,
Theres a Rabbi and a priest who debate theology, the origins of the devil myths and whether the creature is a demon or Satan himself.
They ask him questions about what he has seen down the ages and the way he manipulates their faith is brilliant.
I love theological discussion its one of my favorite addictions!
Whats cool about the book: Brilliant premise, the government conspiracy, characters trapped within the facility, the devil on the loose.
I enjoyed the discussions around what Bub is with the different characters representing different perspectives from theological to biological.
The book also switches scenes and point of view characters so we get to see Bub from the different perspectives and how he impacts their lives.
. . and their deaths.
Its a thriller on the edge of horror with a high body count, some parts are incredibly gory, but Im dont like really graphic violence and I found this very enjoyable to read.
Loved it. A strange, gory story with lots of action and a really nasty demon,
The ending was a cliff hanger, Can't wait to read the sequel,
Origin is one hell of an express ride, Brilliantly fast paced and scary, A completely satisfactory techno thriller, what it promised and intended to be, I read away lastpages in
a single go, it was that hard to put down,
Decent characters, with no unnecessary manuscripts about their pasts works good here, The plot has good elements of suspense and discovery, Brilliantly described ambiance and setting against story background along with fast paced adrenaline rush driven second half.
Plot just accelerates till the very last page,
However, book is not without its flaws, Could have used more character development, though this must be Konrath's writing style I guess and you may still end up rooting for some of the guys its some of the minor characters that suffer worst.
Some of the plot thread elements may have been better wound around the core too, And epilogue was bit uncalled for,
Overall, this still is a good book, Workers digging The Panama Canal indiscover a buried capsule that seems to include a sleeping demon inside.
President Theodore Roosevelt insists on it being moved to a secure facility for study and there it has stayed under guard.
Now the demon has woken up and a linguist is summoned to join the team to try and communicate with it.
But 'Bub' has his own agenda and is determined to escape not just his cell but the facility itself and unleash a new kind of Hell on Earth.
I did really like the character of General Race Murdoch, the man who is currently running the facility.
He is there with his wife Helen who took ill and is being treated there, He was recruited because he accidently killed his friend in a fight, He is a man that gets on well with the others, runs the facility well and I liked his personality.
When trouble comes to the facility he proves that he is also brave and willing to put his own life on the line to save his people.
He is also devoted to his wife, which I liked, I wasn't greatly keen on the others, Obnoxious Dr Julie was recruited to the facility after kidnapping a child and she continues to nurse that obsession.
Frank the biologist was a drug addict who blew up a lab with his stupidity and killed people.
I found Andrew, the tax cheat linguist, to be quite an annoying character, that idiot guy who tries to chat you up in a bar with dumb jokes and stupid cringeworthy lines.
This is how he behaves from the minute he meets Sun, who killed a human patient once, cracking jokes about her name.
When he discovers that she is from Vietnam and is an animal doctor, he thinks he is being clever by joking that she is a Vietnam Vet.
To say I wanted to smack him was putting it mildly, He also thinks she will be impressed if he keeps showing off all the languages that he can speak.
What the hell she sees in him is a mystery and I found the focus on their sporting competitions and dates to be a distraction that adds nothing to the story.
There is also the religious debate throughout with the ongoing conflict between Rabbi Shotzen and Father Thrist.
They spend most of the book arguing about religion and both believing they are right and the other is wrong.
It got really annoying for me, It went on about fallen angels, demons, prophets, fighting over who Jesus was, . . it was repetitive, irritating and I grew sick of all the bickering, Bub of course sees the opportunity to sow even more seeds of distrust when he starts talking to members of the team.
But if I'm being honest, I was bored by the religious conflicts that dominated parts of this book and I switched off every time these guys starting fighting with each other.
I loved the idea of digging up a demon and studying it, and then trying to stop it from escaping.
I was very excited by the ideas in the book, However I found this book to be incredibly boring and it took forever to actually get to where the action started.
I went into the book looking for a scary horror tale and it takes a long time to actually get to that happening.
It gets better when Bub starts manipulating the characters in exchange for favours from each person which gets him closer to escape.
The problem is that most of the book is about studying and then communicating with Bub, religious arguments and a dumb romance with no chemistry.
It is pageout ofbefore Bub gets his first chance to really harm someone, That was just way too long to wait to keep me fully interested in the plot,
When it gets to the actual meat of the plot when Bub puts his escape plan into operation, things do improve.
The battles with the demon and his minions have the tension and horror that I was looking for, and I did like the final section of the book.
My issue is that with it taking so long to get to the good bits, I certainly wouldn't want to read it again.
I'm also in two minds about going on to read the sequel because if it is really slow again it would be a certain DNF from me.
I haven't decided what I'm going to do yet, Overall, I am a bit disappointed by this book,
.stars. This was a wonderful horror story, I was greatly surprised by this book since I read it without knowing anything about it, This author did his homework researching this book and I loved the combination of science and religion being the backbone of the story.
No misunderstanding! This was true horror at it's best, At one point it made me very nervous and maybe even a little frightened, and that hardly ever happens any more and I love the feeling of fear when reading a horror book.
I highly, highly recommend this book if you want a great treat, The book is so well written and flows nicely throughout it's entirety and is edited very well.
This book is not for any sensitive readers since there is a nice amount of violence, some bad language not too much, sexual situations not much, but if you are sensitive about religion, then this book may not be for you.
As you can probably tell by now, I loved this book! I rate this great horror storyShining
!
audio
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story. Things I loved: the gore, the suspense, the action and fast pace, Things I hated: the unnecessary scientific details and explanations and stupid stupid stupid eye rolling insta attraction romance development between the two main characters.
I wanted pure horror I didn't get that in this book, I finished reading this book yesterday, I was a bit let down because I felt that the story had the potential to be a lot better.
I'm not trashing it however, The premise was great. But the first half of the story dragged on a bit too long, At one point I nearly lost interest, Then a major incident don't want to give away the spoiler got me hooked and it became a rollercoaster ride right until the very last page.
Then something else happened on the last page no spoiler that upset me,
The initial problems with the pacing in the first half could've been solved had there been a secondary antagonist.
Furthermore the other characters could've been downgraded to minor characters, But that's just my opinion,
It should be noted that this is one of Konrath's earlier unpublished novels before he made his breakthrough with his amazing Jack Daniel's series.
Russell Brooks
Author of sitelinkUnsavory Delicacies,STARS
Well, that was unexpected, . .
This is a book that has been on my Kindle for months, but from the blurb I was getting this Jurassic Park meets The Thing vibe, and I was a bit reluctant to tackle this one.
Now that I've read it, I can say this:
What do you get when you mix Jurassic Park and The Thing
A bigass budget for a bigass movie with a different story line than this book.
I am a big Konrath/Kilborn fan, but it is inevitable that I will eventually come across something that I don't like.
So, on Friday theth, I started thisth Konrath novel I've read and expected to abandon it after aboutpages.
But, damn it, man, it got real interesting before I got to that point,
Here's what to expect:
In, something was discovered, buried deep, President Roosevelt decided the world was not ready for this secret, I know, I know it sounds like a stupid conspiracy theory, but if you look at the state of politics and the politicians who get voted into government all over the world these days, there might just be some logic to this argument.
. .
Operation Samhain gets born and buried in other words, a secret location under the desert.
One hundred and three years later, this "thing" wakes up,
A linguist gets sent to help get communications going, Along with a general and his wife, a biologist, a veterinarian, a priest and a rabbi don't you DARE think of ".
. . walks into a bar" right now and a doctor, they will discover much more than they could have hoped for.
All of them has a past, all of them has secrets, and none of them are prepared for what's about to happen.
Okay, the writing was good and the story much better than I could have hoped for.
There was one small thing that irked me a little bit, but it's a personal preference and it shouldn't bother everybody.
I just can't get myself to give it five, though,
Recommended for horror, historian and, to some small extent, scifi fans, .
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J.A. Konrath