Reviews - The Omen | The StoryGraph

295 reviews for:

I read this for November's Horror Aficionados read.

Please note that I gave this book 3.5 stars and rounded it up to 4 stars on Goodreads.

This was a good horror book, but my mind tended to wander the entire story-line. I think the problem is that the writing style was just okay, and a few times there would be a sentence or two that just read wrong in my head and I would get distracted.

This book is kind of a weird thing in itself. This was released two weeks prior to the movie being released. There were some minor changes between the book/movie, but ultimately this whole book read like a very jazzed up screenplay. I don't want to make comparisons between Dan Brown or David Seltzer, but a few times I would read something and could see the scene in my head from the movie. So Seltzer definitely wins when it comes to tying the book/movie together.

The Omen follows Robert Thorn and his wife Katherine after the birth of their son. Readers are quickly hip to the fact that Katherine and Robert's child is murdered by mysterious persons and is switched with another baby. Robert is led to believe that his baby was stillborn and is talked into switching out his baby with another baby whose mother died. The set-up to why Robert would do such a thing is that the book goes more into Katherine's mental state prior to this birth and how fragile she was due to the miscarriages she had prior to giving birth.

So this whole book is really just Katherine and Robert realizing that their son Damien does not seem to be like other boys and Robert realizing that something dark seems to be stalking his family.

The writing as I said was good but certain parts were a bit much here and there. This book included pictures from the 2006 film staring Julia Stiles and Liev Schrieber. It was actually odd that the book threw some photos in there randomly in the book. It broke up the flow of my reading. I wish that they had inserted the pictures at the end of the book, or if you are going to insert the pictures in the book, insert them in where the picture references what is going on in the story at that time. Since the book itself that I have is pretty old looking, it was weird to see the glossy colored pictures as well.

There are other books in this series, but I am going to pass on them. All in all some of the imagery in the book was gruesome here and there so that's fair warning to those out there looking for something like this to read.

kathrin828's review against another edition

5.0

dark emotional sad tense fast-paced

bookbelle5_17's review against another edition

5.0

dark emotional mysterious tense slow-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Plot

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

Review of The Omen

By: David Seltzer

Ambassador Jeremy Thorn and his wife Katherine want a child more than anything, but unfortunately, they have not been successful. While in Rome, Katherine loses another child, but while she is still unconscious the Priest Father Spiletto, who was there for Katherine’s delivery, offers Thorn a baby boy whose mother died. Thorn takes the child not telling Katherine he isn’t theirs and they name him Damien. For years everything goes well, though Katherine and Damien don’t bond, but on Damien’s fourth birthday the nanny commits suicide saying she’s doing it for Damien. Things start to get weird with the boy, starting with his strange new nanny Ms. Baylock, who seems to form dangerous bond with the boy. A terrifying dog appears to protect Damien, and the animals react strangely towards Damien at the zoo. A photographer trying to get on dirt on the Ambassador, starts to notice a shadow around people in contact with the boy and starts to piece together the strange things that happen around the Damien.

This classic horror isn’t for the faint of heart or for people who believe in the antichrist. Seltzer slowly builds the suspense and creates an unnatural atmosphere where you know something isn’t right, but you’re not sure. Damien is a child, and we don’t know if he is truly evil or maybe it is Ms. Baylock, his new nanny, who is a bad influence. She is more a mother to Damien while Katherine struggles to love the child, but she tries to be a mother to Damien but becomes more or more terrified of the boy. Seltzer creates doubt despite the evidence in front of the characters and the reader. After what happens with the animals at the zoo and Damien’s reaction to them, Katherine panics, but she is made to question herself when she decides to willingly visit a psychiatrist. She knows she should love her son and not be afraid of him and is persuaded by the doctor that it’s her that’s the problem not her son. Having a photojournalist, Haber Jennings, being the one to figure it is a perfect, because it is their job to discover and see things that we don’t. Photos tell the truth, and he is the one to know the shadow surrounding the person in the photograph. He is the one to piece together about the Satanists. Father Tassone is an interesting a character as he is someone who is part of the cult, but he starts to have second thoughts. His joining of the group is not surprising, because the way he was treated as a boy by the monks makes it understandable. They use doing things in the name of God as an excuse to be cruel to him and justify themselves. It is fear of what the other group is doing that brings him back to God and he tries to redeem to himself by warning Thorn. It is the monstrous behavior of humans that lets the devil in. The author doesn’t linger too longer on the deaths, but we do get the murder of a newborn baby described in the novel. The story is very dark and deals with the existence of the antichrist.

Content Warnings