Sunday, December 4, 2011

Harbor - John Ajvide Lindqvist


Publisher - Thomas Dunne Books
Pages: 512
Source:
Genre:  Adult, Horror,  Some Sexual content

From Goodreads:
From the author of the international and New York Times bestseller Let the Right One In (Let Me In) comes this stunning and terrifying book which begins when a man's six-year-old daughter vanishes. One ordinary winter afternoon on a snowy island, Anders and Cecilia take their six-year-old daughter Maja across the ice to visit the lighthouse in the middle of the frozen channel. While the couple, explore the lighthouse, Maja disappears -- either into thin air or under thin ice -- leaving not even a footprint in the snow. Two years later, alone and more or less permanently drunk, Anders returns to the island to regroup. He slowly realizes that people are not telling him all they know; even his own mother, it seems, is keeping secrets. What is happening in Domarö, and what power does the sea have over the town's inhabitants?

My Thoughts:
This was a strange book.  It starts with the disappearance of Maja.  Then the majority of the book is told not as a flashback but as back-story.  I mean we look back at the past with the present interspersed.  It is an effective way to tell a story.  They have listed this as a horror story but I thought of it more as a mystery or thriller.  The book is about a Swedish island that is full of mysterious secrets known by a few.    It includes a former magician that has bonded himself to a Spiritus, which is a centipede like creature.  When he allows his saliva to touch the body of the Spiritus they have formed a bond and he has obtained some of the powers from the Spiritus.  This is definitely one of those books that you can say nothing is as it seems.  The story is not written in the usual chronological way, which adds to the mystery.  It is told in a way that holds the reader. The people on the island  love the sea and at the same time, you can tell they fear it on some level.  The question is, why?  For the answer to this, I would suggest you read the book.  Maybe then you will find out why and how people, have for years just vanished.  Perhaps you will find out the true power of the sea.

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