The Devil's Labyrinth

Good book, although the ending annoyed me.

Like a plethora of the other readers, I found the ending of this book completely unsatisfying, and was additionally dissatisfied by Saul's attempt to ride the tide of generalizations about Muslims. I currently live in a predominately Muslim nation where it's the Christians who hate us; playing up the fundamentalist actions of a few individuals doesn't help anyone.

Saul's works have always been sort of a guilty pleasure for me, along with the works of the (now deceased and incorporated) VC Andrews, and I don't expect great literature when I buy one of his paperbacks. That said, this was just a completely unsatisfying book, especially the ending.

În Labirintul diavolului, John Saul reuşeşte să combine maiestuos misterul cu investigaţia, creionând un thriller ce îţi va trimite fiori pe şira spinării, abandonându-te într-o mare de curiozitate și lăsându-te să-ți făurești singur mai departe propria continuare.

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This book started out so strong and intriguing to say the least. Pulled me right in as per usual a John Saul book. I have never had any disappointment in any of his books that i have read until now. The excitment just kept building right up until the last couple of chapters. I felt like it was filler to a bad ending and the reasoning for the 4 star rating.

I made it 200 pages through this book before I admitted being awash in the dirty water of disappointment. This is essentially your standard "Catholic priests dallying with demons" book. The twist in this one seems to be that the priest (who is stuffing demons into schoolkids) is, I think, actually a Muslim in disguise. A Muslim in disguise as a Catholic priest, performing reverse-exorcisms on high-school kids to make them possessed by the devil. So he can make some kind of Army of Hades out of them. Seriously. Is he kidding me with this plot? I'm out like a trout on this one.

Growing up without a father is tough enough but when sixteen year old Ryan McIntyre decides to do the right thing by acting like a man and standing up for himself he gets punished for it. Refusing to let a bully cheat of his test gets him beaten up so badly that his bleeding body feels terror at the thought of going back. His loving mother Teri reluctantly listens to her boyfriend Tom's advice about transferring Ryan to St. Isaac's Preparatory Academy,a Catholic school located in a grand structure with its own catacombs and dark labyrinths and with Tom's help secures a spot for her son. Ryan is a little distraught at the thought that the main reason why there was an opening is the mysterious and questionable death of the student whose bed he will sleep in, but he cannot go back to his old life and the bullies. Structure and rules should be his guiding light, uniforms and nuns, confessions and prayer his daily grind, but what Ryan doesn't know is that nothing is as it seems. Something rotten is trapped in the labyrinths and it's salivating at the thought of getting out. When the most popular young priest, Father Sebastian takes him under his wing, his life turns to worse, his friends start changing or disappearing and scrams and noises can be heard late at night. Ryan knows that something isn't right, the late night confessions and getting locked up in a secret chapel with a scary and angry looking Christ on the cross seem to affect those who come near it and pretty soon Ryan gets engulfed in it all.

Priests at the school are keen on practicing the long-lost rite to invoke the primitive evil from a possessed person, picking students who are haunted by evil and trying to get it out of them. It's important to the priests there to cleanse those who are bad since the school is known for taking in troubled youths. As their exorcism continue it seems that things are turning for the worse and not better, the students aren't really cleansed but instead they seem to become possessed even if they were fine before. Something or someone is taking advantage of the priests and their gullible enthusiasm for riding the world of evil, as they start to meddle with things that are bad and worst of all, real. Add to the mix their worried parents, Ryan's suspiciousness of his mother's suddenly overfriendly boyfriend who simply couldn't wait to get him out of the house and an Islamic group trying to target the visiting pope who decides to come and see these exorcisms take place.

The book is a very fast read; it sucks you in and is very hard to put down. Half way through things start to turn ugly and the evil comes to the light a little more in a very well and descriptively written manner - my stomach was doing the flips at few parts as it dawned on me that one of the priests had the best intensions in his mind but failed greatly to see what he was dealing with. His perception of evil was way of the base here, if he really knew what was going on he would have changed careers.

Overall the book was exciting but some things were not explained; why certain people acted in specific manner and what drove them to it and why, what the silver cross from Ryan's father really was, and I wish there was more written about the catacombs and the labyrinth under the school, I felt like it contributed to the title more than to the story. As I was nearing the end, about 380 pages in I knew I had about 24 pages left and the whole book was still wide open, awaiting conclusion which took up about two pages. All this high pressure stuff happens, the trickery of the evil, changes in innocent children, false pretenses under which people acted, the deaths and the blood and gore and it took about 20 seconds of reading to get to the conclusion. I think it's a great way to kill a good book, people these days don't want to spend time reading a rich story to get a watered down ending. I liked how it ended but it was so lifeless that I was stunned, almost as if the author simply had enough of the book and wrapped a tiny bow at the end, finishing it all up. It felt as if all the action and cunning planning went out the window and everyone wanted to go home and forget about the pope and the exorcisms and the finale. I would have preferred a drawn out ending or a shorter story overall, so that's why the book rating had to suffer, otherwise it would have been a really good read from start to finish. Saul is a good author, I really love his books and will always read his stuff and I will recommend this book to people I know and like, but they will be warmed about the ultra quick ending to avoid overall disappointment.

- Kasia S.

Not one of his best but not his worst. Still worth reading.

I got hooked with the development of each characters, intricacies of their individual circumstances, and how they became intertwined to build the bigger story. However, I'm just as frustrated finding that I only have 20 pages left to include the climax and the explanation (or the lack of it) behind the plot. John Saul built the momentum, only to lose it's edge in the end due to lack of depth in bringing his story to conclusion. Unforgiveable. He's outta my list.