Twilight

Over the next three days, three reviews will stand before you. Read them in any order, some elements will be the same, others quite different. If you would like to go straight to the segment unique to this review, please start with paragraph 4.

Drafting a book must be like standing in front of a series of doors, which one do you step thorough? Each option will make the novel a vastly different read, characters could be good or bad, the world may implode or explode. Like parallel universes, these differences are infinite, each option creates more options. An infinite library of books never quite written. Markus Heitz decided to experiment with this idea with his three Doors novels. Each starts the same, but then diverges.

Walter van Dam’s daughter has gone missing within a series of underground tunnels and he will do anything to see her return. He is rich enough to hire some of the best to find her; a Professor of Geology and a couple of cave explorers make sense, but why also have a bodyguard, paranormal expert, and clairvoyant? It seems that these tunnels are not as they first seem. Gravity seems to fail, and monsters stalk the dark. Strangest of all are the doors found deep below the surface. Which door will our rescuers open?

In Twilight the team decide to open the door with the X Inscribed on the front. This time, rather than taking them on an adventure into a specific time, they instead visit various locations including the future, a mysterious wood and the cave system itself. Unlike with the other two outings Twilight can write its own destiny – the future is unwritten, and the cave system is pure fiction. In this novel we learn the most about what these mysterious Doors are all about.

The initial part of the book promised any number of adventures, but in most cases the Doors books concentrate on one scenario. Twilight explores the idea of what happens if you leap from door to door, dimension to dimension. Imagine the finale to Monsters, Inc, but in this case the monsters want to eat your face off, rather than just scare you.

The movement from one place to another allows for a series of entertaining little novelettes. Heitz can create an interesting and believable future and also manages to create some stalking horror elsewhere, within the same story. The element of the book I found the most alluring was the sections set in our own reality. Time is spent in the tunnel system itself and the horrors on our Earth. For anyone who reads all three books, it is this outing that reveals the most about what is going on. It is also the book that reveals many of the character’s secrets. It is funny to think that I did not know the rescuers at all until the third time I followed them.

As a series I feel that the books can be read in any order as they are all different in style. Twilight is more mystery and horror; the others are alt history. I am glad that I read this last as it revealed to me a lot of the hidden elements teased in the other books; a mysterious voice that is hinted at in different outings plays a more pivotal role here. Twilight is more forgiving towards its characters as well and you get to know them even better. If you are planning to dive into the series, the best thing to do is read them all one after the other. They are different enough to feel like their own book, but if you have the previous books fresh in your mind you will see so many more of the tendrils that link one to the other.