I am fairly impressed by the quality of writing for this thriller, as many genre novels are usually just focusing on building up the mystery/thriller while the literary aspect is overlooked completely. I believe John Saul is in the same league as Stephen King, at least taking into account this novel. He is a keen observer of various human types and manages to create at least some believable characters and situations.As with the most novels in the genre, the book does not inherently have a message. It just proposes to entertain the reader via mystery/thriller and if it succeeds, we can consider it is a good novel. But in the spirit of my own rating criteria, I need to give it a separate rating for the premise. And since it is lacking one, I'll give it a 1 for premise.Regarding the form, as I already said, I was pretty impressed by the quality of writing. This is something not too common in this literary genre. It is a crisp style, without too many metaphors, centered on the story. I'll give it a 4 for form.In terms of originality, the one thing that differentiate this from other similar novels is that it deals with children. I heard that John Saul is specialized on children thriller, which is an interesting thing. Unfortunately, this is too little for my standard, so I will give it a 2 for the level of originality.On the characters, I liked the fact that John Saul managed to create some credible characters, at least in the first part of the story. Even though they are stereotypes, he really managed to do them closer to real persons with their own contradictions and thoughts. In the second part he focused more on building up the intensity of the thriller, plus it is very hard to do a believable monster character. So I will give it a 3 for characters.Regarding the complexity and difficulty, the novel is fairly simple: it delivers the story while making sure there is enough thriller emotion building up. It is also not difficult to read as it contains few references and those are from pop culture. Thus I will rate it with a 2 for complexity and difficulty.In terms of credibility, I would prefer not to spoil the lecture of people that have not read it, so I will just say that the kind of monster that provokes havoc in this novel is plain fantasy. Apart from that, which I ignored in order to enjoy the rest of the novel, the story is consistent with itself. So my rating for credibility is 2.The last criteria is edition. My ebook had a good pagination but there were quite some misspelled words, spaces where it should not be or none where they should have been. Despite that, I could read it easily, so I'll give it a 2.To summarize, I liked this thriller especially because the author is writing better than the majority of writers that tried this genre. All in all, my final rating for it is 2.29, which I will round it to 2 on Goodreads system.+--------------------------+-----------------+| Criteria | Rating |+--------------------------+-----------------+|Premise | 1 |+--------------------------+-----------------+|Form | 4 |+--------------------------+-----------------+|Originality | 2 |+--------------------------+-----------------+|Characters | 3 |+--------------------------+-----------------+|Difficulty/Complexity | 2 |+--------------------------+-----------------+|Credibility | 2 |+--------------------------+-----------------+|Edition | 2 |+--------------------------+-----------------+|Total | 2.29 |+--------------------------+-----------------+For more details on how I rated and reviewed this novel, please read these guidelines.
MaryAnne Carpenter wordt midden in de nacht opgebeld. Haar petekind Joey is in een keer wees geworden nadat zijn ouders zijn omgekomen bij een ongeluk. MaryAnne neemt haar twee kinderen mee naar de boerderij van haar overleden vrienden om Joey op te vangen. Maar Joey reageert raar. Hij is niet de verdrietige jongen die MaryAnne verwachtte, maar een jongen met hele diepe geheimen. En dan worden in de buurt een voor een mensen vermoord en MaryAnne heeft het gevoel dat het te maken heeft met Joey en dat haar gezin in gevaar is. ---Het Ding is een verhaal dat je vol ongeloof leest. Ik heb het boek al twee keer gelezen en ik sta elke keer weer verbaast over hoe John Saul zo goed het verhaal heeft beschreven.Samen met De Kronieken van Blackstone was Het Ding mijn kennismaking met John Saul en ik ben er verslaafd aangeraakt. John Saul staat met zijn boeken in mijn top 10 van beste Thriller/Horror auteur aller tijden. Het verbaast me nog dat ik nooit een verfilming van zijn boeken heb gezien. Misschien maar goed ook, want anders wordt het weer zo afgezaagd.---John Saul is geboren in 1942 in Pasadena, Californië. Hij groeide op in Whittier en haalde zijn diploma in 1959 van de Whittier High School.Na verschillende opleidingen aan net zoveel beroepsopleidingen te hebben gevolgd zonder het behalen van een diploma of graad, besloot hij van school te gaan en auteur te worden. In de daarop 15 jaar schreef Saul verschillende manuscripten en had hij verschillende baantjes. geen enkele uitgever zag iets in zijn verhalen, totdat zijn agent bij Dell terecht kwam. Daar wilden ze niets kopen, maar vroegen ze hem of hij een psychologische thriller kon schrijven. Saul maakte een verhaallijn, schreef het uit en hoopte dat het goed genoeg was. Zowel zijn agent als Dell waren laaiend enthusiast en zagen in dit verhaal een bestseller. Dell pakte groots uit. Advertenties en TV spots voor deze onbekende auteur werden gemaakt. En het slaagde. Saul werd in een klap wereldberoemd. Suffer the Children was geboren. Alle boeken die erna kwamen kwamen wel in de Bestsellerlijsten en zijn boeken werden wereldwijd uitgebracht en in verschillende talen vertaalt. De boeken werden uitgegeven door uitgeverijen die zijn verbonden aan Random House. Naast auteur is Saul ook acteur, scriptschrijver en is 1 van zijn boeken in 1984 uitgebracht als film. Meer informatie over John Saul is te vinden op een van de onderstaande sites.http://www.johnsaul.com/index.htmlhttps://www.goodreads.com/author/show...http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0766657/---BoekinformatieUitgeverij Van ReemstISBN: 90.410.0196.4
What do You think about Guardian (1994)?
This is a good fast paced and engrossing story that follows MaryAnne Carpenter and her family as they move to a secluded ranch following the death of her friend and her husband in two separate accidents. However all is not as it seems with their surviving son Joey or the circumstances around their deaths, and those of their friends and neighbours. Granted there is nothing amazingly unique in this story but it is well written, engrossing and entertaining with plenty of interplay between the various characters with the added bonus of MaryAnne's husband who adds an excellent hate figure for good measure. Overall not a bad read at all.
—Sam
Let me just say wow. This book was chilling to say the least. The gov. altering DNA, Brutal murders, I could swear I heard the theme from psycho playing in my head during parts of this book and of course I felt a mother's pain at losing one of her children. I swear this book caused me to have chill bumps. I fully reconmend it 100%.
—Andrea
For me this book is one of the authors better books. A few thinks could have been in more detail, but the story flowed nicely.The story line is of a broken family, parents on the verge of divorce do to affairs on the husbands part. Children choosing sides when the unthinkable happened. Maryann's best friend and her husband dies. she relocates the whole family west due to the fact she is the Godmother of Joey Wilkinson. Joey had an OK upbringing, but with some dark secrets. His relationship with the man who he thought was his father is rocky at best, and distant with his mom.As Maryann dives into the past of her best friend and Joey's true father her marriage disintegrates as Joey rebels for reasons that are unknown to him..........For me it was a great read.
—Saundra
