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Samuel Johnson is out trick or treating with his dog, Boswell, trying to show initiative by starting early – several days early. He becomes aware of strange goings on at the aptly named 666 Crowley Avenue and things go from bad to worse. But the only person who seems to believe him is the monster under the bed, Nurd, the Scourge of Five Deities, who's really quite polite for a demon. Naturally it's all the fault of the Large Hadron Collider and emails to CERN start to make people sit up and take notice, which is fortunate, as the gates of Hell are about to open and Samuel has come to the attention of some very nasty things indeed. I do like humorous books, I really do. I particularly like books that manage to combine humour with a reasonable plot, and if the characters are good then it's a bonus. But this book doesn't manage to tick any of these boxes. The characters are so thin as to be transparent; the humour is forced, faintly condescending and almost non-existent, and so is the plot. So, do I have anything good to say about it at all? I liked the dog, but then I generally like dogs and as long as nothing nasty happens to them I'm happy. There was a nice moment of pathos with a rose bush that I appreciated, and by about page 218 the plot has collected a couple of policemen who managed to sustain my interest for a brief interlude, although someone needs to tell the author that female police offices haven't been called WPCs for quite some while. The final scenes, with a beleaguered vicar and verger in a church under attack from animated skeletons and Bishop Bernard the Bad, could have been straight out of Dad's Army although I did feel that in this section Connolly had eventually started to hit his stride. It was just too little, too late. Connolly follows Jonathan Stroud's lead in the use of footnotes, but they don't work as well as they did in the Bartimaeus Trilogy. The book is intended for young adult readership, but it certainly doesn't stand comparison with Pratchett's books for the same audience, and falls a very long way short of GOOD OMENS. Unfortunately, despite good reviews elsewhere, THE GATES failed to convince me on just about every level possible. § Linda Wilson is a writer, and retired solicitor, with an interest in archaeology and cave art, who now divides her time between England and France.
Reviewed by Linda Wilson, June 2010
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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
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