Sorry - my opinion differs
Sorry my opinion differs greatly.

I cannot believe I see all those 5 stars! 5 stars to me is for Austen's Pride and Prejudice or Tolstoy's Anna Karenina. 4 Stars would be for Stephen King's Carrie or Anne Bishop's Black Jewels Trilogy. I cannot see how this book is deserving of anything more than a two tops!

I did completely fall for the character and his love for all different people he encountered, not just Lara. Even with that being said I think he really needed to pull open that hidden compartment of the desk and find a spine! Not Tina!!! How wishy-washy can one man be when it comes to matters of the heart yet be so fearless when saving another man's life?

Although I felt completely robbed at the ending and wished for the couple weekends back that it took me to read this book, I would not buy a sequel if there were one.

I wouldn't classify this book as Science Fiction Fantasy at all - I would call it delusional at best.

The style, if not the content, is definitely influenced by Kafka - there are deliberate references thrown in and even a character unmistakably based on Kafka himself. This is far from a retread of "The Trial", however.

The protagonist is led on a surreal chase through another dimension in search of "the Goddess", who he has fallen in love with after a short tryst in his own dimension. This other world is strange, yet familiar: it runs a bit slower in time (the clock, one might say, has gone by now about 40 years slow), but the major difference is that here, for unexplained reasons, human males inevitably die after mating. This creates a (significantly) bee-like social structure with childbearing women (queens, if you will) in the positions of power; the men are for the most part skittishly subservient, but with a dangerous revolutionary undercurrent.

Most of the struggle in this book, however, is internal, as neither the reader nor the protagonist himself has a firm grasp on his own identity. What is his real name? Is he really an "alcoholic"? Is he mad? Is he, perhaps, a god?

A bit of knowledge about ancient myth will greatly expand the scope of your experience with this book - it is a good story regardless, but looking up some myths (if you don't know it already) will open up a whole new dimension to things. A knowledge of mythology and the world of myths itself will take you even further. Reading Campbell - or better yet, Robert Graves - is a great help in appreciating the artistic depth in much of Wolfe's work, and especially this book. Hopefully "There Are Doors" will encourage you to check these out, if you haven't already. But all this aside, this was a tremendous novel and I recommend it highly.

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