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Epicurus.com - The Keep (Adversary Cycle)
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List Price: $4.99
Our Price: $49.93
Availability: N/A
Manufacturer: Tor Books
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Binding: Mass Market Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9780765357052
ISBN: 0765357054
Label: Tor Books
Manufacturer: Tor Books
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 416
Publication Date: 2006-08-01
Publisher: Tor Books
Studio: Tor Books
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Editorial Reviews:
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"Something is murdering my men." Â Thus reads the message received from a Nazi commander stationed in a small castle high in the remote Transylvanian Alps. And when an elite SS extermination squad is dispatched to solve the problem, the men find a something that's both powerful and terrifying. Invisible and silent, the enemy selects one victim per night, leaving the bloodless and mutilated corpses behind to terrify its future victims. Panicked, the Nazis bring in a local expert on folklore--who just happens to be Jewish--to shed some light on the mysterious happenings. And unbeknownst to anyone, there is another visitor on his way--a man who awoke from a nightmare and immediately set out to meet his destiny.
The battle has begun: On one side, the ultimate evil created by man, and on the other...the unthinkable, unstoppable, unknowing terror that man has inevitably awakened.
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: "Something is murdering my men."
Comment: F. Paul Wilson's THE KEEP is one of the best atmospheric horror novels ever published. Cleverly plotted, ably written and featuring characters of remarkable depth and complexity, it does a great deal to single-handedly destroy the sterotype that "scary" books can't rise to the level of art.
THE KEEP begins in early-mid WW2, with a small unit of German soldiers occupying a deserted castle in the Translyvanian Alps. When one of the soldiers foolishly disturbs a secret chamber in the cellar, however, he discovers that the castle isn't deserted after all. Something was sleeping inside...and it woke up hungry. A week later, Wehrmacht HQ receives a chilling telegram from the German commandant: "Request immediate relocation. Something is murdering my men."
THE KEEP is actually many carefully interwoven stories. Captain Klaus Woermann is a tough, principled officer of the Prussian school, appalled by the effortless ease with which an unseen, possibly supernatural killer is butchering his elite soldiers. SS-Major Erich Kaempfer, dispatched with a "special action commando"to crush what he initially is sure is a guerilla insurrection, is a pitiless killer who views his assignment as a way to wangle a concentration camp command and settle an old score with Woermann. Magda Cuzar is a lovely Romanian Jewess forced to accompany her wheelchair-bound father, a folklore expert, Theodor to the keep, in the hopes that his expert knowledge of its history may prove the weapon the Germans need to save themselves. And mysterious traveller Glenn may or may not be the missing piece of the puzzle everyone needs to survive the night.
Wilson's novel distinguishes itself from the pack by virtue of its very strong and well-drawn characters and by the individual trials each much endure in the bloodthirsty corridors of the keep. He plays heavily on classic themes of Gothic horror but adds some surprising and unexpected twists which prevent the story from falling into predictable conventions. Just as importantly, it establishes from the very first chapter a feeling of dread which intensifies to an almost unbearable degree as the story goes on. The gore-spattered climax comes almost as a relief.
Many reviewers mention THE KEEP as being part of Wilson's "Adversary Cycle", but it should be clearly understood this book was written as a stand-alone work and doesn't obligate the reader to buy anything else. Nor is there any need. THE KEEP does for itself, and it does just fine.
Pleasant dreams.
Customer Rating:
Summary: SOMETHING WICKED THIS WAY COMES...
Comment: I first read this book over twenty years ago, when it was first released and loved it. I decided that it was time to give it another go around to see if my original opinion of it still held. Well, time has certainly not diminished the power of this book to hold the reader in its thrall. I still love this book, and it remains my favorite book by this author.
As far as horror stories go, this one is definitely up with the best of them. The author has written a riveting page turner with this tautly written, inventive tale. The author has taken some vampire folklore and given it a new twist. In the hands of this master of the horror genre, the quintessential battle between good and evil takes on a new dimension.
In Romania, deep in the heart of the Transylvanian Alps, lies the Dinu Pass. In April of 1941, a small squadron of German soldiers has been ordered to occupy a small, deserted, five hundred year old castle keep at the Dinu pass. From the beginning, Captain Klaus Woermann senses that there is something unusual about the keep. Looking as if it had just been built and inlaid with brass and nickel crosses in every corridor, crosses that the caretaker for the keep exhorts the Germans not to touch, the keep is an architectural oddity.
Soon the games begin, as an unseen force begins murdering his men. Captain Woermann sends a message to the high command. To his dismay, they respond by sending a Nazi squadron of einsatzkommandos under the leadership of SS Major Kaempffer to quell whatever local guerilla activity is, undoubtedly, responsible for the murders. Soon, these death's head troopers begin succumbing to the same fate as their German Army counterparts, and all hell breaks loose.
Enter the ailing Dr. Theodor Cuza, a Romanian Jew and former professor at the University of Bucharest. Although suffering from the ravages of scleroderma, he is ordered by the Nazis to the keep, as he is an expert in the history of the region. It is hoped that he will be able to shed some light on the mysterious keep and enable his hosts to defeat their unknown adversary.
Accompanied by Magda, his daughter, they find themselves confronted with the cruelty of the Nazis, the unexpected kindness of Captain Woermann, and something from their worst nightmares that has them call into question their deepest beliefs. Then, a mysterious red-headed stranger with piercing blue eyes also appears, and nothing is ever the same again.
This is one of the premier horror stories of all time. Bravo!
Customer Rating: 
Summary: ALIASES
Comment: Having seen the film of The Keep first, I came to the book with assurances ringing in my ears that it would be better. At a pinch, I'll agree. The film starts brilliantly and deteriorates about half way through; the book starts very well if not quite so brilliantly and stays good for nearly three quarters of its length, but when the rot sets in it's pretty disastrous rot in my own opinion.
Two aspects of the book stay good consistently. One is the quality of the writing, which is literate, fluent, clear and pitched at the right tone for a narrative of this kind. The other is the characterisation, and I would extend that category even to the fiend inhabiting the keep. This being was not handled well in the film, but here in the book I rather took to him, monstrous foe of mankind though he is. He has real individuality and with a couple of exceptions real consistency, and he conducts some rather intelligent dialogues with the professor who had been summoned to identify him to the nazis. Where he is not quite convincing here is in the strange, and so far as I can see completely unnecessary, little fibs that he tells the professor. Wilson does offer an explanation of why the monster pretends to be afraid of the crucifix when he is really not afraid. I find this explanation somewhat unconvincing, but it's still some kind of an explanation. However why he should bother to lie to the professor about his relationship to Vlad the Impaler, or about who built the keep, escapes me. Above all, what does he stand to gain by telling the professor that his name is Molasar when it is actually Rasalom? If the aim was deception it would not take much of a professor to see through it, and he might have tried a bit harder. This, it seems to me, points up one of the aspects in which both book and film are unsatisfactory, although in opposite ways. The film left too many things unexplained, not really creating a suitable air of mystery but just leaving threads dangling. The book is overly concerned with explanations, letting the tension out of the story because they are rather patchy and prosaic.
I mean - if Molasar/Rasalom is unimaginably old how can he have had a grandfather from Hungary? This might be another of his pointless taradiddles, but I can't help feeling that the author and his proofreaders failed to spot this inconsistency. Again, if his adversary (of whom more in a moment) is equally prehistoric how does he manage to retrieve his magic sword-blade and his stash of antique coinage so readily? They seem to be in concealment shallow enough for random picknickers or even a dog burying a bone to have turned them up accidentally. It all focused my attention on the adversary in question, and the story started to disintegrate from there on. First of all he is a being of untold antiquity from some First Age of Man and his name is Glaeken. However for modern purposes he chooses to call himself Glenn, and Wilson ought to know that if you want some such transcendental being with preternatural powers and a mission aeons-old to be taken seriously you should not call him Glenn, Derek, Terry, Darren or Wayne. What was wrong with, say, Nekealg?
It all starts to go to pot from here on. A 'love-interest' is introduced between Glenn and the professor's daughter. The latter had had a convincing role, integrated with the plot generally, up until now, but we are suddenly introduced to her specially alluring physical attributes as being parthenos admes, virgo intacta, at age 31. My own experience of women in this category is small and mainly unfavourable, but even leaving that aside the sense of this depiction is just titillation, if you will forgive the expression. The rest of the plot, which in the earlier chapters had been distinguished by a real atmosphere of morbid tension, descends into reach-me-down situations. Deathless survivors and some supposed First Age are commonplaces, such as McLeod. Goodies and baddies with transcendental Powers battling for the future of humankind were the stuff of my son's reading-matter at age 7 and probably dominate many computer games a quarter of a century on.
The setting in nazi-occupied Romania is brilliantly effective, but I should not bother looking for anything so literary and upmarket as allegories in this story. The nazis and WWII are simply a backdrop, although an inspired one. The setting in the keep has Lovecraftian overtones (e.g. The Shunned House), and there are references to his old favourites the Book of Eibon and De Vermis Mysteriis, but Molasar/Rasalom reminds me mainly of Tolkien's Sauron with his mission to 'in the darkness bind them'. This is where the story has gone wrong. The start was superb - atmospheric, tense, grim and magnetic, and the narration was kept going very skilfully through situations that in the hands of a lesser storyteller might have become repetitious, until Glenn drops in with his tools of different varieties. It then becomes fairly standard beings-with-powers fare with bodice-ripper sequences thrown in to attract a wider readership, all with a second-hand feel to it after that fine and original start, and with a final epilogue that is quite the most horrific thing in the book, albeit not intentionally so.
It's enjoyable, I don't deny. I wonder what the talented Dr Wilson could really produce if he felt like raising his game although doubtless lowering his royalties in the process.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Great Book
Comment: The Keep (Adversary Cycle)
I love this book. Thank you so much. Repairman Jack is a great character.
Customer Rating:
Summary: ....there is no god!
Comment: In my top 5. Spend a weekend reading this but just make sure all the doors are locked.
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