Those reader reviews—total bullshit.
The book is best described as if Stephen King went to Lindisfarne, where it’s wet, miserable and everyone has shit sex lives. It wants to be a Koontz or King epic, but everybody’s a bit British and incompetent. The source of supernatural evil is a bit crap. It sends a shark (whoops, can’t swim on land), a sick panther (that doesn’t eat anyone) and a giant vulture that manages at best a score draw with a light aircraft. Overall it’s more Fawlty Towers than The Overlook.
The Guardian's Sam Jordison gave the book a complete shellacking.
It’s not quite as bad as all that. Despite the large cast of characters and extensive back story, it never felt a drag to read and I raced through it in a couple of days. The book does have that important ‘page turner’ quality. I also enjoyed how Kirby slowly revealed fragments of a past tragedy involving a mysterious doomsday cult through the recollections of his diverse cast.
Sadly, after an interesting setup, the book doesn’t maintain the early promise. It doesn’t really come together. The characters are well-drawn but remain static. The supernatural threats turn out to be rather ineffectual and purposeless. Eventually the book peters out in one of those annoying some-weird-shit-happens-and-that’s-it endings that are always a letdown.
