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Title: The Presence
ISBN: 0449002411
Author:
John Saul
Publicate Date: 1998-04-29
Publish: 1998-04-29
List Price: $7.99
Average Customer Rating: 3.5
Format: Mass Market Paperback
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Amazon Lowest New Price: $1.18
Amazon Lowest Used Price: $0.01
Amazon Merchant Price: $7.99
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1: Interesting premise - 2.5 Stars
Out of all Saul's bks. I've read this is one of my least favorite. This bk. is more Sci-fi-ish & Saul just isn't my favorite. when it comes to science fiction or "speculative fiction." Plus, it had the usual troubled teenager theme & I've grown a bit tired of that theme.
On a positive note - this is good for young adults & is fairly "clean" (has "bad" words). My 12yr old loved this bk. & gives it 4 stars.
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2: Nice setting, good plot
This 1998 offering from Saul is not his best, but I was attracted to it primarily for the Hawaiian setting. John Saul has a home in Maui and he's also the founder/host of the annual Maui Writer's Conference, so I guess he wanted to pay homage to one of his favorite places.
Since her husband's death a few years before, Dr. Katherine Sundquist has dedicated herself to raising their son and concentrating on her career. The now-teenaged son, Michael, is having problems with bullies in school and a recurring battle with severe asthma, so when an old college friend invites Katherine to spend three months in Maui for an archaeology project, she decides this is a good time to get away. Once in Maui, however, she and her son both realize that there's something strange going on with this so-called `archaeology' project, which isn't at all what it was presented to be. Working in a super high-tech laboratory hidden away on an enormous estate, Katherine can't help but be curious about the restricted wing and the secret midnight deliveries. Michael gets into his own mess after a late-night scuba dive that goes awry, and immediately afterwards, his new Hawaiian friends start dying or disappearing. Katherine soon realizes that it's all connected directly with the project she's working on, and when time starts running out for Michael she has to act quickly to save both him and herself.
The conclusion is pretty out there, and I liked it. Think DNA codes, mysterious underwater geodes, and strange prehistoric bones that maybe aren't so pre-historic, and Saul has come up with a pretty good `speculative fiction' scenario. I enjoyed it.
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3: Decent Thriller, but Unfortunately Juvenile and Disjointed
The Presence is a enjoyable book, but it has a serious problem: its author seems not to have been able to make up his mind about what genre he wanted his book to fit into. During the course of the novel, the style and tone change dramatically several times. The reader is left wondering whether he is reading a horror book, a teen relationship book, a science-fiction book, a crime novel, or some weird combination of genres. If the latter was intended, it was a less-than-successful effort. Genres can be blended, but for the mix to be plausible, it must be smooth and seamless. The Presence, however, comes off as anything but smooth and seamless. It reads more like a collection of short stories that all have a vaguely connected central theme. The novel's disjointedness is all the more unfortunate because of the book's otherwise enjoyable premise and reasonably good writing.
The book opens with an eerie underwater scene that immediately sets the stage for a high-energy, tension-loaded thriller. The book is set in Hawaii, where a sudden and unexpected volcanic eruption wreaks havoc on a suboceanic research team. Meanwhile Katharine Sundquist, a noted anthropologist, and her son, Michael, have relocated to the Aloha State so that Katharine can study some unusual findings on another of the island's volcanoes. While Katharine tries to overcome her disbelief of the apparent implications of what she finds on the mountain, Michael and a group of his new friends blunder into a secret experiment that leaves them ill and some of them dead. With the community reeling from the deaths of some of its young citizens, Katharine scrambles to figure out what is wrong with son. Meanwhile one of Katharine's colleagues investigates a strange signal that seems to be coming from the outer reaches of the solar system, and Katharine stumbles across an unbelievable video on the Internet that seems to implicate her employer in a bizarre conspiracy. Throw in a romance and an evil doctor, and you have the ingredients for what could have been an intriguing blend of possible twists and outcomes but instead comes out bland and soured by unreality by the last page. When all these seemingly disjointed plot lines converge in the last few pages of the book, the reader is left feeling almost baffled. Even after all the questions are answered, it's not entirely clear why the author tried to go in so many different directions at once.
After the intriguing preface highlighting the strange events happening on islands of Hawaii and some character introductions, the book seems off to a good start. But from there the flow of the narrative takes a turn for the bizarre. The trouble Michael and his friends get into is cloaked in mystery, and the deaths of Michael's friends is a jarring shock toward the beginning of the book. But instead of using these events to draw readers deeper into the plot, Saul instead focuses on the morality of their decisions, lingering on Michael's inner turmoil to an extent that I would typically expect to find in a Christian teen novel, not an adult secular thriller. Similarly, the relationship between Michael and his mother is explored to a confusing depth. It's interesting, but it seems like something written with a teenage audience in mind, out of place in this book.
The story is a good one, and it's disappointing that it is so marred by the author's apparent flightiness. If John Saul could have stuck with one or two genres instead of what seems to be no less than five, the book would have been much easier to read. Instead, readers are distracted by gruesome death sequences that come immediately following a lengthy (and frankly dubious) heart-to-heart conversation between Michael Sundquist and his mom. Keeping readers confused is not a hallmark of skillfully concocted fiction. Trying to keep track of too many inane plot lines at once is not a very fun way to read a book. I found myself really wanting to like the story, because the basic premise intrigued me. But ultimately the distractions of author error proved enough to outweigh my desire to appreciate the author's ingenuity.
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4: A Gripping and Exciting Read
The Presence, by John Saul, is a truly gripping and exciting read that totally throws the reader into the content of the story and truly makes the reader feel as though the far-fetched nature of the novel could actually be feasible. The novel's focus on main character Michael Sundquist and his unwilling involvement in one of the most influential and terrifying scientific discoveries of all time. This book not only discusses the possibility of life outside of the confines of earth, but it also delves into the mystery of creation and simultaneously puts to rest all past speculation on either of the two topics. Saul has created a novel that can stand the test time because of universal nature. While the book has a slow beginning it ultimately develops into a tale that the reader cannot wait to finish and discover. John Saul sets up the book so that even readers that do not have a strong scientific background are able to understand the vast scientific concepts that are contained in the novel. I would highly recommend this book to anyone looking for and exciting read that will bring them into a world full of mystery and suspense.
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5: One of Saul's more impressive novels
I had my doubts about The Presence early on. Although the Hawaiian setting was a new one, the subject of human experimentation on children by a mysterious group of seemingly unfeeling men is rather standard fare for Saul. The book started off slowly, moving from an unexplained discovery of a mysterious geode off the shores of the big island of Hawaii to a rather bland account of the move by anthropologist Katharine Sundquist and her son Michael from New York to Maui. Brought there to study the remains of a peculiar skeleton found near the volcanic slopes of Haleakala, Katharine soon finds herself in a living nightmare, one which threatens to take the life of her son. She has only the help of new boss and former flame Rob Silver in learning the truth about her new employer Takeo Yoshihara. Young Michael suffered asthma as a youth and had worked hard to overcome the condition, setting his sights on joining the track team in defiance of the ailment that had made his life a solitary one. On the island, he wins a spot on the team and makes several friends very quickly, but after the group sneaks off for an ill-advised night-time scuba dive, Michael's world spins out of control. As tragedy begins to strike his friends, Michael himself begins to struggle once again for each breath he takes. The problem is not asthma this time, however, but something much more dangerous-and unnatural. The story of Michael's unhappiness over the move to Hawaii, his introduction to and contact with his friends on the track team, and Katharine's own work with Rob Silver on the unidentified skeleton are rather rough going. The plot doesn't seem to move very well, and the characters are not very compelling. Once things start moving, though, and the secrets at the heart of the plot begin to emerge, the novel becomes quite gripping and fascinating. There are some rather farfetched and seemingly unnecessary elements attached to the storyline, but they do not harm one's enjoyment of the book. All in all, the whole package is wrapped more tightly than many of Saul's other novels, leaving me with few unexplained answers at the conclusion. It's a well-told story, although one aspect of the denouement seems just a little too convenient. The setting, based on Saul's own familiarity with the island of Maui, is rich and vibrant, adding further energy to the tale. The basic idea of The Presence, secret experimentation on unsuspecting children, is nothing new, but this novel has legs to stand on its own two feet. The main characters eventually seem convincingly real, the science Saul evokes does not come across as utterly implausible, and the conclusion succeeds in tying together most of the loose ends scattered throughout the text. For my money, this is one of Saul's more impressive novels.
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