Baal – Robert McCammon

I read this book in an evening; it’s a fairly quick read if you don’t lose interest. I had no problem with it, but I can see where others had issues with it. This was McCammon’s first book, so it is by no means his best. The story of Baal (a daemon or demigod of evil) who is born from a raped woman and manages to gather together a frenzied following of believers. The “good guys” we follow include a theology professor, a half Eskimo hunter and the mysterious “Michael” in their quest to end Baal’s influence.

The book is well written, though from the beginning I feared I was reading an “Omen” rip off. Then we changed settings and drifted away from the “Omen” plot and moved on to other plots we have seen before. The problem with this story versus so many other of McCammon’s is that there really isn’t anything here that we haven’t seen before. Granted it’s brilliantly written, but it’s a rehash and remixing of all of the other antichrist movies and books.

As a McCammon fan, you will probably be a bit disappointed since, as I previously stated this was his first book and therefore not as polished or mind bogglingly genius as his following novels, however even his first book is far superior to many of the others on the shelves for purchase. I did enjoy reading this, the Eskimos were a nice touch… but he could have gone much farther than he did. Still I will give it 4 stars because even though it’s not his best, it’s better than most of the garbage that is published.