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by: John Saul
Amazon.com's Price: $7.99 Prices subject to change. Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Binding: Mass Market Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9780449002414
ISBN: 0449002411
Label: Ballantine Books
Manufacturer: Ballantine Books
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 432
Publication Date: April 29, 1998
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Release Date: April 29, 1998
Sales Rank: 222427
Studio: Ballantine Books
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Editorial Review:
Product Description:
Beyond the sparkling Hawaiian beaches, masked by the deceptive beauty of the rainforest, evil awaits sixteen-year-old Michael Sundquist and his mother, Katharine, an anthropologist who has come to the Islands to study the unusual skeletal remains unearthed on the volcanic flanks of Haleakala, Maui.
Yet far below the black depths of the Pacific a mysterious substance snakes through undiscovered fissures in the ocean floor, as nature itself seems to portend the terror to come.
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating:  - Nice setting, good plot
This 1998 offering from Saul is not his best, but I was attracted to it primarily for the Hawaiian setting. John Saul has a home in Maui and he's also the founder/host of the annual Maui Writer's Conference, so I guess he wanted to pay homage to one of his favorite places.
Since her husband's death a few years before, Dr. Katherine Sundquist has dedicated herself to raising their son and concentrating on her career. The now-teenaged son, Michael, is having problems with bullies in ... Read More
Rating:  - Decent Thriller, but Unfortunately Juvenile and Disjointed
The Presence is a enjoyable book, but it has a serious problem: its author seems not to have been able to make up his mind about what genre he wanted his book to fit into. During the course of the novel, the style and tone change dramatically several times. The reader is left wondering whether he is reading a horror book, a teen relationship book, a science-fiction book, a crime novel, or some weird combination of genres. If the latter was intended, it was a less-than-successful effort. Genres can ... Read More
Rating:  - A Gripping and Exciting Read
The Presence, by John Saul, is a truly gripping and exciting read that totally throws the reader into the content of the story and truly makes the reader feel as though the far-fetched nature of the novel could actually be feasible. The novel's focus on main character Michael Sundquist and his unwilling involvement in one of the most influential and terrifying scientific discoveries of all time. This book not only discusses the possibility of life outside of the confines of earth, but it also delves ... Read More
Rating:  - One of Saul's more impressive novels
I had my doubts about The Presence early on. Although the Hawaiian setting was a new one, the subject of human experimentation on children by a mysterious group of seemingly unfeeling men is rather standard fare for Saul. The book started off slowly, moving from an unexplained discovery of a mysterious geode off the shores of the big island of Hawaii to a rather bland account of the move by anthropologist Katharine Sundquist and her son Michael from New York to Maui. Brought there to study the remains ... Read More
Rating: - What was in those tanks?
Imagine you're a good single mother who worries over your teenage son who has a history of asthma. Your son, Michael, says he's going to the movies, but when he comes home late he tells you that he and his new friends decided to play video games instead, and lost track of time. It's a lie. The boys "sort of" broke into a dive shop and went scuba diving at night in a gloomy lagoon. So what? Although it was only Michael's second dive, he's home safe, right?
Unfortunately, there was something ... Read More
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