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Son of Rosemary: The Sequel to Rosemary's Baby (Thorndike Large Print Basic Series)

Son of Rosemary: The Sequel to Rosemary's Baby (Thorndike Large Print Basic Series)

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Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Satisfying Atmosphere
Review: I know this book received a lot of negative criticism for not being as strong as the original, but for me, it truly kept much of the atmosphere of the first. I felt at times as if Rosemary's Baby and Son of Rosemary were written at the same time -- as one novel -- and that Ira Levin split into two books. I loved the setup and social commentary that Levin weaves throughout. His mood and paranoia had me turning pages like a wildfire. Yes, I worship the movie like most people, but this sequel is very entertaining as well. So relax, folks, it's just a book.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Ira's resting in his favourite chair laughing at us I'm sure
Review: No this isn't as good as the original. I think we've established that. I am shocked at the response to this truly clever novel. Levin, like Robert Bloch laid the foundations for the horror genre. Do you think, that someone with that much tallent, that much recognition, who has influenced all suspense novilist since his first publication- would give you a cop out?! Come on people! In giving this book the thumbs down on account of its ending merley proves the need for a book such as this! It is not a typical horror story. It is a social comentary gift wrapped as a mystery. He gives us truly human characters- who are interesting because of their flaws; eg: Rosemary's true naivete`.
At first the ending caught me seriously off-guard, but I had trust in this master; I finished the book and read the final chapter again. Then it hit me and what a devilishly fiendish treat it was! If you didn't get it and dismissed it as a cop-out, you've only proved Levin's point; and you have inadvertantly become the final link in his scathing satire. If you think the book ended with the awakening from a dream, you are as naive as Rosemary- and look where that left her: in a corrupt, hellious, sense of security. Rosemary didn't wake up, she gave up her soul. That's the 90's for you.
Many criticise this book for its grand scale. True it is a larger spectrum that "Baby", however- I personally found the book claustriphobic. All large scale depictions are described from within Rosemary's tower, looking out. This (for me) reminded me much of the original in tone and atmosphere. The pace is almost Kubrickian in nature, it is a welcomed change. I have personally tired of reading cliched constructed novels. I think only Stephen King can effectively tell a fast paced novel which still manages to be scary. Levin's plotting is top notch. I personally liked the way I constantly expected someone to die- only because I have become so used to deaths at regular intervals in modern books and films. In holding back on the gratuituous, Levin creates both authenticity and suspense. Overall, I liked this book quite alot. The more I think about it the more I enjoy it. Try this book again, I beg you. You really don't know what your missing. Try hard to work out the word puzzle- its a big clue. This is a mystery if ever there was one.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Shannon Turlington
Review: is a jerk for giving away the ending in his review. You may not have liked the book but to give away the ending can only be done by a jerk.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: TV Movie - Keep off!!!
Review: I read this book back to back with Rosemary's Baby. Maybe that was my mistake. But anyway, after the fanastic original Rosemary's Baby, this is a absolute letdown.
The book has TV movie written all over it. Roman polanski even in his wildset dreams will not touch this one. The plot is a continuation from the first book and after the first chapter where the tension is built up, the characters just go on talking , talking, talking ... The original had tension building up with every page wheras this one makes the reader hope that the novel comes to an end soon. The character of Andy is confusing and the loyalties/sensibilities of Rosemary are unexplained and bizzare.
Also the references and similarties to Jesus and Andy is contrived and seem a bit dated after all those OMEN movies. If this is made into a movie (It can only be made in a TV movie) it will be as bad as Children of the corn XII or any other sequel made after a good original.
Even Stephen King as Richard Bachmann is better. Stick to any Stephen King for the shivers, if you need them. Ira Levin has let us down this time.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Rosemary's Baby fans, stay away!
Review: This is the sequel to Rosemary's Baby, but what a slipshod book! Sentence fragments, overuse of the word "et cetera" and it all ends as a dream. It reads like the notes for a first draft. Levin must have dashed it off in a few days. Do yourself a favor, and don't spend even a minute reading it.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Compare and Contrast : Baby and Son
Review: Just had to add in my own condemnation for this awful excuse for a book. I can't blame Ira Levin for one clunker after all the great works that he has created, but how did this one get past any publisher or editor?

The beauty of Baby was the banality of it all. Who would have thought that the leading Satan worshippers of 1965 argued about spilling root beer on the carpet or kept "Jokes for the John" in the bathroom? What is so unusual about a woman who is pregnant stepping out of the social whirl she is accustomed to and attaching her self to a motherly woman? Hutch had served as a surrogate father and he had served her well. I certainly know several people who have been told by doctors to not read books or look on the web or talk to friends about medical issues (all with a variant of 'did they go to medical school'). The crux of this book was that even paranoids do have enemies. Each individual part of the work was so believable that the ending was all the more shocking.

Son of Rosemary lacks all these common touches. Here everything is on a big stage. Ro has been in the longest coma ever. Her son is the most popular person on the planet. When they first meet as adults the phone company records the highest usage ever. He is organizing the biggest event in the history of mankind. Do you see where this is going? The whole 'you are there' nature of Levin's writing is ill suited to making the spectacular mundane. Rosemary is just a little too quick to adapt to the whole situation and fall into becoming one of the elite. The world seems a little too ready to fall into the trap of believing in the latest hero.

The events in Rosemary's Baby are commonplace and fall under the radar but even then one man is able to figure much of it out. In the sequel, the events are just too large to NOT be subjected to the most stringent scrutiny. Where is the press finding out what happened to Guy? Where are the legions of reporters who never noticed that Minnie was far too old to have a child? How about the enterprising reporter who breaks the story that Roman Castavet was the son of a leading devil-worshipper? Since the 1970's nobody gets that big without someone taking a good hard long look at the money trail.

This novel is a fast read. I think that some people have been reading it a little faster than they should have. The ending seems to many readers to be a complete Dallas style copout. However If you recall in the first book Rosemary has dream in that one as well. She dreams she meets President Kennedy and the Pope and in the end that she is having sex with an un-human monster.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: I had to skip to the ending
Review: I was so disappointed in this sequel. I was intruiged when Rosemary awakened from her coma after almost three decades. It was there that it went downhill. I wanted to see her reunited with her old friends like Elise Dunstan. What about her family? Even the brother who treated her nicely didn't postpone a trip to be by the side of his sister who was supposedly dead. You would think that they would try to contact her after seeing her on live television after a thirty year absence. Also, since the entire coven died off, therefore releasing Rosemary from her coma, wouldn't actor Donald Baumgart regain his site? I wanted to see her return to the Bramford and relive the haunting memories. In the original everyone was told that Rosemary's baby died, so how does she explain to everyone she knew that she just revealed on live television that he is still alive? Was Guy actually a part of the coven? If not, I wanted to see him reduced to doing toilet bowl cleaner commercials. I'm also tired of that corny plot of the antichrist being the head of a big corporation. (spoiler)

The dialogue was a major snoozer. Levin should have forgone the social satire in favor of telling a straight story. I couldn't finish it and skipped to the ending. Maybe I will try again now that I know the ending. Maybe it will get better over time. I hope so.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: It's a page-turner...so you'll finish it up quicker
Review: Levin's ability to write a surprise ending is dwindling, but the basics are still there. He can get you interested enough in a given situation to stick it out long enough to find out what's really going on (like he did with Deathtrap, and in his masterpiece A Kiss Before Dying). The trouble is, once you find out, you groan out loud.

It's cliched. It's claptrap. It's an ultimate failure. We fast-forward twenty-something years after the events of Rosemary's Baby to find Rosemary awakened from a coma, Andy as a messianic savior, and the world approaching the countdown to the new millenium. From here, there are several possible avenues to take that would lead to a gripping horror mystery, but Levin takes none of them, burying much of his attempts at suspense in Rosemary's placid, left-handed introduction to the nineties.

The last ten or twenty pages are hard to skim through, however, though I may be saying this because of my morbid interest in devil- and Satan-topics (and no, I'm not a Satanist, but I do acknowledge that the devil is an interesting figure to study and read about). Still, without that fascination, most objective readers will probably find the ending as predictable and cliched as "Take me to your leader," so it's probably best to not even bother. I would say "Go and rent the video instead," only, surprisingly enough, there is no video. Just the book, which I'd be hard-pressed to believe wasn't intended for a movie (it's dedicated to Mia Farrow, after all, and wouldn't she have been about the right age?).

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Ira Should've Quit While He Was Ahead...
Review: When Mr. Levin sold his soul, he should have made more than just one good book part of the bargain. Rosemary's Baby is brilliant. Son of Rosemary is garbage...

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Roast Mules
Review: For all of you still wondering Roast Mules = somersault.


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