Sex, death, drugs, Satanism, voodoo – when things start to go wrong at hospital, who knows where it will end? This is a journey to hell and back.
I am not entirely sure where to start with reviewing this book, one reviewer on Good Reads opened their review stating “This book is bat sh*t mental. In the best way bat sh*t mental can be.” and yes, I have to totally agree with this as it has to be the oddest thing I can ever remember reading.
The opening of the book does not really give you an indication of just how odd the story is going to get as it starts out with a seemingly normal patient coming in via helicopter after an undisclosed accident, along with a young boy.
The book plods along slowly mainly focusing on the boy’s attempts to leave the hospital as he needs to get back to his mum, that is until Midnight arrives and things start to get very weird from that point until the book reaches its conclusion.
A quick check-list of just a few of the random things to happen over the next 2-300 pages or so are as follows:-
- Apple seeds and Pine Cones resurrecting themselves back into real trees
- Body part samples in the hospital basement reforming back into their original forms
- People’s dinner reforming into whatever animal they ate earlier in the day
- A mysterious fog which cuts off peoples limbs whenever touched
- Satanic rituals in the chapel & the failed attempt to sacrifice a virgin
The oddest thing, which (As far as I can remember) which is not explained is that everyone in the hospital is healing from whatever illness they came in suffering from, aside from one patient who then seems to become the focus of a lot of the other patients to become some form of god.
There is a vast list of characters in the book (apparently around 130 according to the author), for some reason they all have names which are not easy to remember or keep track of (such as Honey Hopeful, Dexter Von Sinistre or Sir Reginald Saint-Hellier), apparently, again according to the author was intended to cause confusion and bewilderment to the reader. I have never been good at keeping track of characters and this affected my enjoyment of the book as I started to not care who was who or what they had been up to so far.
The book for me also felt too long by about 150 or so pages, somethings that happened seem to have been added because the author thought “I already have this crazy cast going on, who else can we add in and give something very random to?”
The book seemed to run out of steam in the end and I felt very let down with the ending, it seemed very anti-climatic after all that had already gone on.
Ohh, I have just remembered that I have not even mentioned of of the most crazy (and possibly pointless) characters…the Rubber Nurse….I will have to leave you to discover who this person is.
Did I enjoy the book, honestly I really do not know, it’s certainly not a book you need to read more than once, but I can say it’s one I will not forget for quite some time, maybe ever.
Overall Rating – 3.0 / 5.0
