Brief synopsis: Samuel Johnson thought it would be a good idea to go trick-or-treating a few days early. Just to get a head start, ya know? Unfortunately, when Samuel and his dachshund Boswell stop by a neighbor's house and get the door shut in their faces, they see something terrible instead. The neighbors have opened a portal to Hell - yes, that Hell- and now it's up to Samuel to stop it.



I had The Gates sitting on my bookshelf for literally years and finally picked it up to read it. Honestly, it's not at all what I expected - I expected it to be very dark, but honestly it was a fun, friendly, goofy book that just happened to be about Hell.

The story itself was enjoyable and pretty easy-to-follow. The characters weren't overly complex, but honestly could have used much further development. My biggest complaint were the footnotes - while I think they were meant to add humor and context to the story, footnotes really just make me think of textbooks or academic papers and I felt the kind of took away from the story itself.

The novel very much reminded me of a much more child-friendly, toned down Doomed (by Chuck Palahniuk). Though I did enjoy the story and it was a pretty quick read, I probably wouldn't continue with the other books in the Samuel Johnson series. I wasn't pulled in enough to really crave more.

That cover sure is pretty though.