The Gathering

Rating:
Summary: Chilling, disturbing and utterly compelling
Review: "Outside the wind was blowing the wrong way and the world was filled with the smell of death ..."

At face value, Cheshunt is a model neighbourhood. But almost as soon as he and his mother move there Nathanial knows there is something wrong--something hideously wrong. And it isn't just the stench from the old abattoir, which doesn't seem to bother most residents.

Nathanial soon learns he is not in Cheshunt by accident. As the dark calls its own, so does the light. Nathanial must confront phantoms from his own past if he and all the others called by the light have any hope of stopping the Gathering and its creator.

The word "dark" in The Gathering should really have a capital letter (as it does in Susan Cooper's The Dark Is Rising) for the forces of evil could not have been more vividly realised than in this book. A number of people who have read it see the Cheshunt school's headmaster, Mr Karle ("the Kraken") as a representation of Hitler. In a quote on the book's front flyleaf Terry Lane is reported to have called The Gathering "a dark, grim allegory of fascism". Many young readers might not realise just how accurate the analogy is because Hitler actually ran an organisation called The Occult Bureau. (If anything proves how insane Hitler was, this waste of time and resources surely does.)

The evil depicted in The Gathering is truly spine-chilling and I think the main reason for this is that Carmody doesn't rely solely on occultism to create the evil. While Nathanial's schoolmate Buddha (a very strange name for an evil character) is clearly driven by the Kraken's supernatural influence when he burns Nathanial's dog alive, there is nothing supernatural about how he does it. I found this incident so disturbing it kept me awake for hours. The scene in the fourth Harry Potter book that several people described as too frightening for many children pales by comparison. This is partly because monsters like Voldemort exist only in someone's imagination. Any well-adjusted child knows this, but also knows that it would be all too easy to murder a little dog as Buddha does.

I found a page of reviews by teenagers (http://owl.infosys.utas.edu.au/reading_room/books/4.html) where there were quite a few readers who didn't like The Gathering, and I suspect this is because they had to study it at school and write an essay on it, or answer a series of questions calculated to make them really think. (Some of them seem to have entered their views here.) Most young people would probably have enjoyed The Gathering if simply given it as being a "cool" book to read. Although the page of reviews mentioned above is peppered with the sort of review so often found on amazon.com (i.e., the "this is the best book in the world" type of review) several children have posted the material they were required to produce when studying the book at school.

Rating:
Summary: Great storyline, a little on the spooky side...
Review: ... but then again, not, because it is so obviously fantasy and too unbelieveable. A really excellent read, recommended to all.
A review titled "Don't buy it, don't read it, don't TOUCH IT!" should not be paid any attention whatsoever. That was written as a joke.

Rating:
Summary: Intolerable, slow, gripless, THE WORST BOOK I'VE EVER READ
Review: An extremely poor book that my entire class hates with a passion. Don't read it. This is a warning, it is a poorly written "fantasy" "action" "thriller" that has no impact, no lasting quality. It tries to be everything that it isn't.

Rating:
Summary: Great storyline, a little on the spooky side...
Review: I don't know what book these Australian reviewers have read but The Gathering by Isobelle Carmody has been one of my favorite books since 1994. I have read the book at least eight or nine times. I am 18 years old and i still love this book. It has a wonderfully gripping story line and the characters are multidimentional and intriguing. Ofcourse it's not the best book in the whole world but it deserves nothing less than four stars. I've read everything from Anne Rice to Francesca Lia Block to Virgil and Shakespeare. And this book goes on the shelf of reread again and again. It's just a sweet story that has many deep meanings that everyone should read no matter their age.

Rating:
Summary: What?
Review: I don't know what book these Australian reviewers have read but The Gathering by Isobelle Carmody has been one of my favorite books since 1994. I have read the book at least eight or nine times. I am 18 years old and i still love this book. It has a wonderfully gripping story line and the characters are multidimentional and intriguing. Ofcourse it's not the best book in the whole world but it deserves nothing less than four stars. I've read everything from Anne Rice to Francesca Lia Block to Virgil and Shakespeare. And this book goes on the shelf of reread again and again. It's just a sweet story that has many deep meanings that everyone should read no matter their age.

Rating:
Summary: this was a awsome book
Review: I thought that this book was great, I have read it seven times. I thought it was full of suspence and the ending was great. I was really impressed with how this book was written. I am 18 years old and I still love to read itl. I think any one of any age should read this book!