The World House by Guy Adams
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
There is a box, inside which is an impossible house. Inside the house there is a locked room. If the door is ever opened, its occupant will get out and that would mean the end of our world. The World House is like Jumanji crossed with Lost and Identity. Everything in the house is strange, insane even, but for the house, insane is normal. I can’t reveal too much about the plot because that would ruin the mystery of the story. Suffice to say it has something to do with who the house’s prisoner is and why the box seems to randomly steal people away from their lives.
The book is well-written and is what captured my attention in the first place and made me buy it. The descriptions and the narrative are put together masterfully. All the characters are interesting and make you wonder how their disparate adventures in the house-in-the-box are related. What the book suffers from is the lack of a clearly identified main protagonist. There is one there, except you don’t realise this until the book is almost done. Perhaps this is what the author intended, but it does make it difficult for a reader to follow. Perhaps even this reflects the strangeness of the house too. However, the quality of the writing and the mystery was enough to keep me interested until the end.
This is a worthwhile read, partly because of its strangeness, but also because when the puzzle is finally put together, it all makes wonderful sense. The other reason is that the writing itself is top-notch.
NOOR A JAHANGIR 