The World House - Guy Adams

"There is a box. Inside that box is a door and beyond that door is a whole world."
with thanks to Angry Robot.

The book moves around between various people being snatched from the world by a strange box with chinese symbols etched onto and the same various people, aswell as others, within the house. This is no ordinary house of course, with bathrooms that contain oceans and stuffed animals that come alive in the dark. The house is full of terrors and seems fairly determined to kill everyone within it and there is the prisoner. He looks like a man and he dwells in a simple room in the house, listening.

I was drawn in almost instantly, following from character to character wondering why them, what role they all had to play. Mostly wondering what the hell was going on. Near the end when the lightbulb moment happened it caught me completely off guard and Adams wasn't finished with me yet. By the end of the book I was pretty much stunned and had to spend a few minutes just quietly processing.

At the same time grim and enchanting Adams manages to make most of his characters memorable and individual in spite of a fairly large cast for such a controlled environment.
There is a blend of genres in this novel but the main thread, the thing that will pull you through the fantastic creatures and the slightly twilight zone premise is a psychological thriller. What we all want to know reading this is why? What is the point, what purpose does the house fulfill and why these people in particular? I am really looking forward to the next one.

As a quick note Angry Robot are running a very short story contest for The World House closing on Feb 14th so there are still a couple of days left if you are interested.