Book Review: Doorways by Robert Enright

I loved the cover art, the description, the title – I love world-behind-the-world books. I’m fascinated by the concept of a secret connection between worlds/experiences of the world, and really enjoy reading different authors’ spins on explaining the inexplicable. I’m generally a fan of the anti-hero, who struggles to save both the world and himself. Yet despite all that, this one only gets a mediocre recommendation in the end…

I quite liked the start and set-up. The underlying concept – that some people have “The Knack”, an ability to see extra-world beings (aka monsters) that have made their way to our “regular” world – was an interesting take on how to explain the anomalies that occur in everyday life… For those of us without the Knack, the ability to actually see and hear the supernatural around us, The Uncanny events that occur in the everyday world are simply, Mysteries. For those like our protagonist, who are blessed or cursed with that ability, there’s only one response: action. This construct resonated and held a lot of promise for me… The main and supporting characters were well developed and most continued to grow and develop throughout the story – even if that growth occasionally felt a bit stereotypical. The villain also felt like a bit of a stereotype, but

that’s often the role of the villain, particularly in supernatural/paranormal type stories. There were some unexpected moments in the story. There wasn’t anything wrong or missing, but still somehow by the end I was rather tepidly interested and just trying to finish it so I could move on…

There were a handful of very nice linguistic tidbits wound into the story. Stumbling upon them was a delight… My favorite examples:

• Bermuda had tried to stay within the realms of a “normal” life, but it didn’t work. His ex-wife, Angela, tried her hardest to understand. But when you are the only one in the room who can see the demon hanging from the ceiling, you tend to become the only person in the room.
• …the stress of the day hung from her like wet clothes.
• Students woozily went by, dragging their feet as if they were attached to a hangover and clinging 0n for dear life.

The writing wasn’t, otherwise, what I’d call terribly original in style. That’s not a criticism, just a comment. The book is described as a “book 1” (there seems to be a disturbing trend to make every book a “book 1” lately – what happened to the single volume story??).  I’m not going to stand in line for the next book, but if it happens to be a daily deal, I’d probably check it out. There’s promise here, I’m just not sure this first volume delivered at quite the level I wanted it to…

My review copy was provided by the publisher through NetGalley.