John Connolly's latest young adult thriller, The Gates, showcases a wit and an appreciation for both Halloween and horror that will keep the adults reading with the children. Just like with some of the more popular YA series like Harry Potter and (...) Twilight, there are enough facets of the novel that will appeal to adults with an appetite for clean, child-like easy reads.
The Gates centers around a small town during Halloween, and our protagonist is a quirky boy named Samuel with a dog that has just as much personality. Samuel's neighbors accidentally open a portal to Hell via an escaped particle from a scientific experiment, and demons start streaming through in the form of humans. Samuel knows what's up, but only his friends believe him. Most of the demons that come through are evil, and want Samuel dead before he can stop their plan to bring the Devil himself into the world to cause mass destruction and Hell on Earth. But one nice demon, Nurd, has also been transported to Earth, and he befriends Samuel in the hopes of protecting him from annihilation.
Connolly's writing is spot-on with humor, giving a great sense of zany commentary. He's able to add new style and texture to the young adult genre with his wacky descriptions and footnotes, which don't add a lot in terms of plot but give a good look at Connolly's different writing technique.
Samuel is well-liked, mostly because he is not the stock child that one reads about in multitudes of children's books. Samuel is thought of as weird by the adults, but the reader of the novel will find a different side of Samuel that they like a lot; this is because Connolly characterizes him as a unique individual with a lot of brains and a lot of heart. Samuel is a character one can't help but be attracted to immediately.
The same goes for Nurd, because though all of the characters have their own odd personalities, Nurd is similar to Samuel in that he is very underappreciated and misunderstood. A lot of Connolly's story seems to revolve around a subplot with themes about being different, or not having to succumb to the majority, which is a great message for kids and even those adults who forget who they are, or were.
The main attraction for me in The Gates is not the premise; it's pretty basic, but it comes together very well toward the end of the story. My love of Connolly's writing gets the best of me, and keeps me reading. It's his subtly comical wordings that grab me, and the footnotes were at first a little weird, but then became second nature. The only problem with this was that the footnotes make up a good deal of the beginning of the book, but they seem to drop out for the last half. The inconsistency here left me disappointed; the footnotes were both helpful and fun, and added to Connolly's stylistic leanings that make him stand out from other writers.
The Gates transcends the lackluster writing of most young adult books about teen romances or (gasp!) vampires with a lean and fast-paced novel containing likable characters and important themes for children. It may be a bit too mature for the tween crowd, but teens looking for a good, fun horror read would do well to pick this book up. Halloween is almost over, but it lives on in Connolly's work.
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