3 out of 4 stars
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Imagine being trapped inside an endless cave with no defined escape. If you think the situation is not horrifying enough, imagine being trapped inside an endless cave, continuously crawling on your knees and elbows with just a glimmer of light, drinking pungent water for survival, fighting off pneumonia and diarrhea. To top it off, you are surrounded by people whom you don’t know well and don’t particularly like. I don’t know about you, but that sounds like sheer torture to me.
Hal Lindsey can’t forget about that horrible incident happening so many years ago. Terror and guilt plague his sleep every night. He used to be a thirtysomething who decided to go back to college after his share of relationship and career failures. He had a decent academic life and a beautiful girlfriend. Unfortunately, life had more in store for him. His girlfriend was an enthusiastic member of a caving club. At her insistence, he joined a caving trip in West Virginia despite being a novice and having no interest in the hobby. The expedition, comprised of nine students with different personalities and temperaments, aimed to explore a relatively newfound cave with the hope to make history. After overcoming the initial ups and downs to set foot inside the cave, they encountered a deadly obstacle. They managed to run deep into the cave to find a way to escape, but what awaited them in the dark space was no better. Stuck, terrified, and exhausted, these people soon clashed and conflicts arose. Would all of them come out of this hellhole, and how many of them would end up as corpses buried in this cave for eternity?
Death Has a Thousand Doors is definitely not for the faint-hearted since the book explores one of the most claustrophobic places on earth. Many suspension novels often juxtapose between tension and relief, but this book is only made up of tension and dread. Peter Worland’s writing style even reflects this sense of desperation, doom, and uncertainty. When reading this novel, you feel as if each word was sucking the life from you. And yet, you want to arrive at the destination in order to earn relief and closure. Despite the tightness in my chest, I could not put the novel down.
This is a novel with no hero. At first glance, the main characters may resemble stereotypes in common horror tropes: the jock, the black guy, the joker, the hot girls, the girl with common sense, and the everyman. This remains true until the cave brings out the complexity in them. Nonetheless, none of them are likable or admirable. I recall screaming at the pages many times, yelling “why?” frantically when one of them does something incredibly idiotic or selfish. But as irritated as I was, I couldn't blame them. They are, honestly, painfully ordinary and human. That is the novel’s special ingredient. While we delight in psychopaths’ wickedness, the most terrifying stories are when normal people are reduced to their worst in abysmal circumstances. I can’t help wondering how I myself would react when put in their situation.
On the downside, the novel still has room for improvement. The aftermath of the incident can be explored a little further as it seems to be glossed over. There are some instances when I have doubt that the characters’ physical abilities are unrealistic and exaggerated. Besides, the book is not professionally edited; there are many punctuation mistakes dragging the overall quality down. Therefore, I rate this book 3 out of 4 stars.
As aforementioned, Death Has a Thousand Doors is unsuitable for readers who are in search of a light read. Besides, the novel has explicit details of rape, murder, manslaughter, and kidnapping. However, if you are a fan of suspension and horror genres and willing to endure a gripping survival story, I highly recommend this work.
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Death Has a Thousand Doors
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