Ace of the Black Cross: The Memoirs of Ernst Udet
Book
Above the mud and misery of the trenches and the endless slugging matches of the First World War...
Sausage: A Global History
Book
Our ancestors have enjoyed sausages for thousands of years, even though they've been the butt of...
World Bottled Beers: 50 Classic Brews to Sip and Savour
Book
World Bottled Beers is compiled by multi-award-winning beer writer Adrian Tierney-Jones, general...
The Diamond Courier
Book
At nineteen Lili Hamilton does not want to marry Iain Brodie, her father’s right hand at...
Marine Chart Symbols
Navigation and Sports
App
Complete reference for symbols, abbreviations and terms used in marine charts. Useful as an aid for...
Ross (3284 KP) rated Doors: Twilight in Books
Mar 24, 2021
The first quarter of these books is identical, with the damsel in distress being introduced and the team coming together and being given their tasks. At this stage, there is next to no organisation around their approach, it really is simply a bunch of people heading into the unknown and being drastically under-prepared. When the team quickly find the missing and take her back to the surface, the reader is left somewhat taken aback at the speed with which it was resolved. This is nothing compared to how the reader feels when the team go back looking for the real missing woman, simply based on their employer's assistant's momentary mistake that the woman's eyes were the wrong colour. This is not challenged by anyone in the team, who head back downstairs. It's a bigger WTF moment than the Batman vs Superman 'Martha' fiasco.
As with some of Heitz's Dwarves books, I think this suffered from fairly poor translation, as a number of phrases and words just are not clear. At no point did i really know where the team were heading, forwards or backwards, which door they went through etc.
And the promise of heading into the future was very much an empty one. Some members of the team briefly find themselves in near-future Frankfurt and there is a short section of the book which adds no value and has no connection to the rest of the book whatsoever. Thereafter, there is just some cliched mysterious dark maze adventures, with some unexplained conspiracy around the use and beginnings of the doors and their purpose. (I am currently around 80% of the way through the 'Colony' book, having mercifully skipped the first, repeated, quarter, and am starting to realise that there is likely to be an overall story arch that only becomes clear once the reader has read all three books).
This book, and the series as a whole, offered so much potential and teased so much, but this one at least completely failed to deliver for me.
Advance copy received from NetGalley and the publishers in exchange for an honest review.
The Flying Classroom
Book
A Spectator, Guardian, <Times, Independent on Sunday, Lovereading4kids and Mumsnet Book of the Year ...
Austerlitz
James Wood, Anthea Bell and W.G. Sebald
Book
Austerlitz is W. G. Sebald's haunting novel of post-war Europe. In 1939, five-year-old Jacques...
Rudolf Uhlenhaut: Engineer and Gentleman
Wolfgang Scheller, Thomas Pollak and Carmen Pollak
Book
This first comprehensive biography of Rudolf Uhlenhaut, illustrated with many previously unpublished...