Scan barcode
A review by dc7
Anubis by Wolfgang Hohlbein
3.0
Wolfgang Hohlbein is one of my all time favourite fantasy authors, but I hadn’t read his books in years and especially not since I’ve become a power reader so I was curious to see how this holds up.
In ANUBIS we follow Belgian-American Mogens VanAndt, who is an archaeology professor at a small town university in Massachusetts in 1906. He lives in a hotel owned by the overbearing Miss Preussler. One day, Mogens’ old nemesis Jonathan Graves shows up and offers him a job in San Francisco. Something is definitely off and Jonathan is strangely eerie but to escape country-life - and Miss Preussler - Mogens reluctantly agrees. Only when he arrives in San Francisco, Mogens learns about Jonathan’s stunning discovery: a 5000-year-old, underground Egyptian temple. In California.
I would describe the story as H.P. LOVECRAFT meets PET SEMATARY. You definitely feel the cosmic horror, the fear of the unknown here. Hohlbein does an excellent job describing the ordeal Mogens goes through and I couldn’t help but root for him.
While the premise is intriguing, Anubis has several weaknesses. One of them is that it reads a bit dated. There is (likely unintentional on part of the author) sexism and fatphobia that didn’t even fly back in 2004 when ANUBIS was first published, let alone today. It almost feels like a 80s or 90s book, also because the plot is constructed in an old-fashioned way. If you enjoy reading classic sci-fi and fantasy, you probably won’t mind too much.
ANUBIS never gets boring though. While the book is long and could have been shorter, I never felt like the story dragged. I was thoroughly entertained throughout and burned through all 700+ pages in just 2 days. Really don’t understand why some of the other reviewers say they found the book boring - I was hooked by the story. That being said, the story FELT like it lacked focus at times and there were too many fantastical elements that were mixed together. It did all come together in the end and made sense, but for a while it felt like a big sci-fi/fantasy-mix-and-(don’t)-match.
There is good humor and especially Miss Preussler provides great comic relief. She is easily my favourite character and more likeable than our protagonist Mogens who is quite bland (but therefore makes for a great reader-insert character).
Some of the scene transitions are a bit too “jumpy” and come without transition sentences, which I found a bit jarring. A lot of the locations were not described in enough detail for me to properly visualise.
The ending wasn’t as satisfying as I had hoped. While the main mystery is sufficiently resolved, the last quarter of the story wasn’t as climactic as one would hope. The grand finale is missing. I also still have questions about two of the main characters that were just not addresses, i.e. certain things were foreshadowed but nothing ever came of it. I just expected more from the ending.
There are also a number of factual errors in the book that might not bother the casual reader, but that definitely pulled me out of the story: the train ride from Boston to San Francisco takes a single day here. TODAY, when we have high speed trains, such a journey would have taken several days and I don’t know how long in 1906. It is also indicated that scientists back then knew of a planet in the Sirius system - again, even in 2020 we have no indication that such a planet exists. But I’m being nit-picky here.
In ANUBIS we follow Belgian-American Mogens VanAndt, who is an archaeology professor at a small town university in Massachusetts in 1906. He lives in a hotel owned by the overbearing Miss Preussler. One day, Mogens’ old nemesis Jonathan Graves shows up and offers him a job in San Francisco. Something is definitely off and Jonathan is strangely eerie but to escape country-life - and Miss Preussler - Mogens reluctantly agrees. Only when he arrives in San Francisco, Mogens learns about Jonathan’s stunning discovery: a 5000-year-old, underground Egyptian temple. In California.
I would describe the story as H.P. LOVECRAFT meets PET SEMATARY. You definitely feel the cosmic horror, the fear of the unknown here. Hohlbein does an excellent job describing the ordeal Mogens goes through and I couldn’t help but root for him.
While the premise is intriguing, Anubis has several weaknesses. One of them is that it reads a bit dated. There is (likely unintentional on part of the author) sexism and fatphobia that didn’t even fly back in 2004 when ANUBIS was first published, let alone today. It almost feels like a 80s or 90s book, also because the plot is constructed in an old-fashioned way. If you enjoy reading classic sci-fi and fantasy, you probably won’t mind too much.
ANUBIS never gets boring though. While the book is long and could have been shorter, I never felt like the story dragged. I was thoroughly entertained throughout and burned through all 700+ pages in just 2 days. Really don’t understand why some of the other reviewers say they found the book boring - I was hooked by the story. That being said, the story FELT like it lacked focus at times and there were too many fantastical elements that were mixed together. It did all come together in the end and made sense, but for a while it felt like a big sci-fi/fantasy-mix-and-(don’t)-match.
There is good humor and especially Miss Preussler provides great comic relief. She is easily my favourite character and more likeable than our protagonist Mogens who is quite bland (but therefore makes for a great reader-insert character).
Some of the scene transitions are a bit too “jumpy” and come without transition sentences, which I found a bit jarring. A lot of the locations were not described in enough detail for me to properly visualise.
The ending wasn’t as satisfying as I had hoped. While the main mystery is sufficiently resolved, the last quarter of the story wasn’t as climactic as one would hope. The grand finale is missing. I also still have questions about two of the main characters that were just not addresses, i.e. certain things were foreshadowed but nothing ever came of it. I just expected more from the ending.
There are also a number of factual errors in the book that might not bother the casual reader, but that definitely pulled me out of the story: the train ride from Boston to San Francisco takes a single day here. TODAY, when we have high speed trains, such a journey would have taken several days and I don’t know how long in 1906. It is also indicated that scientists back then knew of a planet in the Sirius system - again, even in 2020 we have no indication that such a planet exists. But I’m being nit-picky here.