Tucked away in the foothills, surrounded by pine forests, loaded with kids who still play outside, Millwood is the small town everyone knows. The local deputies grapple with petty vandalism and local drunks. The local teachers know the name of every kid in town. For Heather Bradley, it's a place that keeps her family safe and their lives in order; her biggest worries are the daily grind of her job and the kids coming home late. She doesn't know that unfathomable forces are set to converge on her town and thrust their neat lives into darkness, but when her oldest son Stuart opens a one-sided door in the woods and a black cloud pours out, the Bradleys and their whole town find themselves locked in a desperate struggle for survival. As the chaos grows and the nature of the real threat emerges, the only question becomes whether or not come morning the town will exist at all.
Andrew Najberg is the author of the novel The Mobius Door (Wicked House Publications, 2023) and the forthcoming novels Gollitok (Wicked House Publishing, 2023) and The Neverborn Thief (Olive-Ridley Press, 2024), as well as the collection of poems The Goats Have Taken Over the Barracks (Finishing Line Press, 2021). In addition, his collection of short fiction, In Those Fading Stars, is due out through Crystal Lake Publishing in November 2024 and his novel Extinction Dream comes out in May 2025 through Wicked House Publishing. His short fiction has appeared in Prose Online, Psychopomp Review, Bookends Review, The Colored Lens, Utopia Science Fiction, The Gateway Review, Dark Death Things, Creepy Podcast, and is forthcoming in Fusion Fragment, Translunar Travelers Lounge, and the Gods And Globes III anthology. Currently, he teaches for the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga and is serving as a senior editor for Symposeum magazine.
I was intrigued and drawn to this book by the title, The Mobius Door. August Ferdinand Mobius was a 19th century German mathematician and theoretical astronomer who created the theoretical 'Mobius Strip'. It is represented by an infinity symbol. It is a double paradox and could point the way towards other dimensions. Now for this story. A door that leads into and out of infinity - fascinating! This particular story was a twist on reality and is solidly written and very atmospheric. A door opens and something comes through into our reality and something worse follows, something from a multi dimensional universe. Read the book, enjoy the ride and reflect on how inconsequential our world is in the greater scheme of things. A superb story and what an ending!
This book is an amazing cross between Chuck Wendig's 'Book of Accidents' (though far tighter and original) and Stephen King's Dark Tower Series (at its best)! Written with incredible intelligence, it covers a lot of ground, with many points of view and several chilling moments. The author offers an excellent, fast-paced, complex story in just a single volume: the eponymous door of the title opens, something comes through, and something worse follows; a family gets involved, local police try to help, and as the suspense grows the whole town is affected. I found the descriptions of the nasties utterly original, the contacts with the evil forces resonated with me as if they were my own experiences, and although a familiar feeling of mythos-building started creeping on me as the story progressed, the author avoided all tried and true formulas, and the payout was glorious! Very highly recommended!
“What absolute proof do we have that the world into which we wake is the same one from which we drifted into sleep?”
A boy opens a door in the woods and the end of the world begins!
Honestly, there were A LOT of characters and shifting perspectives at the beginning of this book. It was a bit of a slog to get through all the info and who’s who, and you still have no real understanding of the door and the fog and creatures coming out of it. Things start to come together in the middle and end of the story, but some of the concepts were still a bit too much for me to grasp.
What I know for sure is that Andrew Najberg has some fantastic ideas and really knows how to weave words. I enjoyed the story as a whole, but again, the details of certain events were beyond my understanding.
I also love the cover of this book! It’s definitely eye catching.
I made it through the first two chapters of the book. I’m kind of proud of that because it is a mess.
I have this thing where I really don’t want to leave a book at DNF. No matter how little I like it. How little sense it makes. How har dot is to read. I want to just get it done. But this one is so unappealing that I really don’t see a point in continuing to read.
It is a giant waste of time.
And this might be the most cras review I’ve ever written.
The language is bad, the set up is lacking. I felt like it was just a really long parade of name dropping and character introductions. There is zero flow to the story.
At page 38 I was introduced to the 6th character and that’s at least 3 too many.m in such a short span.
It doesn’t allow me to sink into the story because I became super busy just keeping track of everyone. In case they are important later.
Grievances Too many characters. Just in the first two chapters there are too many people introduced. All of them keep name dropping other people. It’s basically too many people to keep track of. This is not a story you sink into from the get go. Which is fine. I can be good with trying to figure out what’s happening. Who are we dealing with. But when I have to spend literal hours having to just figure out who everybody is and who is related to who. That’s just annoying. A 7th person is introduced at the beginning of ch 3. That’s when I decided to bow out.
Just pick a perspective and stick with it. Also be consistent when talking about individuals. One of the characters is named as 3 different names when we are “looking” into his perspective. It’s confusing AF. I felt disrespected as a reader.
The language feels unnatural and stifled. So many unnecessary thoughts flying around. Trying to hard to make some of the characters be philosophical in a way that feels unnatural and pointless.
The kids are unbelievable as kids. They read like adults who are busy showing off their vocabulary.
The mother has some pretty violent tendencies right of the bat. We haven’t even met the father yet, but he doesn’t seem much better. The dude has an urn he keeps all of his deceased relatives ashes in. That could have been an interesting side to the dad. Idk why we are being told this, but also I don’t care about it.
The mom is very unlikable. She gets annoyed when she gets home from work because her oldest son isn’t home. This leads to annoyance on her part because he knows to be home when she gets home. Best to not disturb her “routines”. She takes the youngest son with her to go find the oldest son.
Why she takes the youngest with her is a mystery. The boys are pretty young, but have been home alone all day. He could have just stayed home and waited tbh.
When she arrives at the place where the oldest should be. She yells into the area a threat about giving him a beating.
There is a car crash. She ends up hitting the dude who crashed into her car. Which is not surprising tbh. She is clearly a violent person.
Ugh. This is just the tip of the ice berg really. All in all. I was looking to read a horror. In a sense, I did receive what I was looking for. This book is horrific and it makes me think that the author might have self published. If he didn’t. Then his editor fell asleep while reading through this mess.
Get this book!!! I loved it so much!!! The characters created in the story, weave a tale of a curious boy, wondering the woods alone. He should of been home, with his little brother, but he just couldn't come home yet. What he saw in those woods, he had to touch it, open it, look inside a cold dark doorway into the darkest of dark. Many people in this town will be affected from the outcome. READ THIS BOOK BEFORE TAKING A LITTLE WALK IN THE WOODS!!!! IF YOU HAPPEN TO FIND A RANDOM DOOR STANDING ALONE, WILL YOU OPEN IT??? MUST READ HORROR!!!
To be honest I am not a fan of horror movies and I’ve not read many horror novels, if any; however, I was so attracted by the title of Andrew Najberg’s novel The Mobius Door, I wanted to read it. I had to find out: What is a mobius door?
Of course in the end, the door has little (and everything) to do with the story, but I remained intrigued wanting to find out what was happening. The book may say it best: “Some events are so outside of one’s experience of reality that they distort the moment leading up to the event, despite a lack of any preceding physical effect on the world.”
What did I expect? Zombies? Ghosts? Evil magic? But I found none of those things, making me think this book is original in action and themes. While there are many characters, each with their own brief sections, I had no trouble keeping them straight.
The core characters (a family of four) become important to me. I got to know them, and I cared about what happened to them. Even though “the world seemed to be coming apart at the seams . . . ,” Mom Hannah and her son Mica keep trying to figure out how to make everything normal again. Desperate, confused, and exhausted, Hannah wonders: “Why was she even trying? What could she possibly do to stop it? She was so small, so insignificant. Nothing she’d ever done, nor ever would do, could possibly matter. It would be better if she just stopped. If she just sat and gave up.” Or would it? And does she?
I recommend you read this book for a twist (a mobius twist) on reality. This book is solidly written and I enjoyed the many original descriptions from poet Najberg. (I wanted to quote some of my favorite lines but I was afraid I would give things away.) I’m glad he’s ventured into this world of the novel—and horror.
Man what a surprise this was. I loved every word of this book. Andrew Najberg really has a unique way of describing things that made me seriously see what he was imagining (and what an imagination he has). He wrote so many characters for me to get invested in…and I had no idea what he would do to my new feelings for these people. I felt like I was reading an awesome mix of movies and shows and books that I’ve come to love while growing up, such as The Thing, Stranger Things, The Mist, Under the Dome, The Edge of Darkness, and even Men in Black. I’m sure there were other things I thought of as well, but these are what I can remember right now. And it didn’t feel like it was ideas that were stolen; it felt original and somehow familiar. Some of these creatures he created were soooo good and cool (in an f’d up type of way).
Andrew Najberg, with dashes of John Carpenter, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Kathe Koja, has prepared a sumptuous, slow-burn, supernatural horror feast in The Mobius Door fit to satiate any connoisseur’s ravenous desire for the darker dimension of existence. At the heart of this novel, however, is the question: how can anyone be human when the impossibly vast universe (multiverse?) constantly threatens to devour us whole?
Book was recommended on Tik Tok and is worth the read. Stuart, a young boy, opens a door that brings evil and horror into the world. This book has an interesting plot, great characters, and made you think long after finishing it about the darkness some people carry in their hearts. No spoilers go read it.
While this book draws many influences from some great horror novels, it feels as original as those which inspired this story. I found it to be a nice combination of sci-fi, horror and fantasy. It had a nice flow to it and the ending was perfect.
Great plot, great imagery, but waaaaaay too much imagery. I couldn't invest in the story with so much imagery, and then a related flashback and then a metaphor and then paraphrase and then feelings about the scene, and the some irrelevant or minuscule detail. I was pulled away from the story constantly with side notes to zone in on the scene. These scenes last forever. I'm on page 282 of 324 and 100% sure this entire novel takes place in one day. I'm 90% through the book and fighting DNF but will probably finish just because I'm so close to the end. Honestly, I don't even care how it ends. I just wanna be done already.
The Mobius Door is an exciting, original novel in the spirits of Carpenter, King, and Lovecraft. I love a book with monsters, body-morphing, and other dimensions. The horror starts in the first few pages and doesn’t let up until the end. Najberg has some thought-provoking insights on humanity, existence, and what it is to be a person. Looking forward to his next one!
A door that leads to a multi-dimensional universe? Sounds like an episode of The Twilight Zone on steroids. The world-building in this novel was what made me fall in love with it. The story hops between different POVs, but Andrew does a great job ensuring the flow isn't broken.
While the horror aspects were fun, the big draw for me was the dialogue. There were plenty of quotes that hit me hard. For example...
“People need a little chaos thrown into their lives now and again. Reminds them they’re human.”
Man, isn't that quote too damn true. Andrew's words were a thing of beauty. I've read his other works, but the prose on this one was S-tier. Ok, I know I'm gushing on the prose, but it's what kept me reading. It's a work of fiction, yet the physics involved make the story not so farfetched if you believe hard enough.
If you enjoy a creepy horror mixed with sci-fi and metaphysical elements you need to give this one a read.
So many people loved this book! I wanted to love it. It started out really interesting, but then the story got muddy. I couldn't keep track of who was who, I couldn't keep track of who was infected or not, and my mind would immediately start to wander every time I started reading. I think this might be a better movie than a book, I could totally see myself digging it as a movie.
A boy, Stuart, finds a door that lets in darkness. The darkness infects the town and the people. ...There's probably a lot more , but that's really pretty much all I got out of it.
I should have DNF'd it early on, but I chalked it up to the normal confusion of a lot of characters, and that soon, everything would all gel together. It never gelled for me. And by the time I realized this, I was already more than halfway, so I ended up slogging through the rest, and I'm now glad to be done.
Andrew Najberg has done it again with this great book. in my opinion, this book was even better than the last one I read, Golitok.
One of the things I really enjoyed about this book is getting to know all the many characters in this small town. It almost had the slice of life that is often so present in Stephen King books.
Speaking of King, the premise of this book almost reminds me of the book The Drawing of the Three.
When a young boy, Stewart, finds a door in the forest, he contemplates opening it. He discovers that both sides of the door are the same side, but when he leaves it open, something comes crawling out.
Oh man. I don’t even know where to start! I feel like I just went quantum jumping and explored my consciousness from the inside out. First and foremost, Najberg’s writing is superior and there was a balance of storytelling, science-fiction, horror, fantasy and meta-physics. I’ve never been one to pick up a sci-fi read but I believe The Mobius Door has turned me on to the genre. I didn’t expect humanity to be narrated in a way that’s somehow terrifying but also therapeutic. Some of Najberg’s words just brought so much beauty to being human and brought me gratitude.
I liked the start of this, but wanted more description of The Source rather than simply relying on it being a creepy mystery, which wore a bit thin after a while. I also thought there were too many characters' POVs to follow.
I got a chance to meet Andrew at a book signing at Spalding University. This is an interesting Sci Fi with myst vibes. As always I tend to round up but it’s a 3.5. There were a few too many characters and that took a while to get use to and keep straight. As I did I wanted to follow the mother and her son involved in a car accident the most.
Wow. I really was not sure what to expect. What I got was a story about a family battling to save our world. This starts as a drama but turns into a cosmic story that is full of twists and turns. It explores who we are at our most basic level and what we rise to become. You won't be sorry.
This really grabbed my attention. Well written with great insight into the different characters - each had their own flavour. I was haunted by the evilness - suitably creepy and the ending was so clever. Well done Andrew I will be looking out for more of you!! So original too
This was an amazing read, 5 stars all the way! Very well written, keeps you on the edge of your seat from start to finish. From gore, to ancient magic, to abominations, The Mobius Door takes your imagination on a rollercoaster of a ride!
The book kept my interest. Very well written. I got a bit lost in who the character's were and the full meaning of the story. I kept reading in hopes the story would make sense at the end, but it did not. So I don't really understand what the story was trying to convey but anyone who enjoys a book for the reading value will enjoy this.
Seldom does a novel envelope me with thoughts of life, death, good, evil, and the possibility that we are small and linear creatures. The Mobius Door ushers us into the midst of something I can only describe as a multidimensional/spiritual reckoning.
Without giving anything away, I must confess that Najberg created a situation that to horror reader is fresh and yet somehow a comforting construct. That is NOT to say that anyone in the book is comforting nor did I feel comfortable on its journey. No. What I mean is that it sustained the right amount of tension throughout that needs to be successfully sustained for me, the reader, to feel anxiety and discomfort. Would a better word be cathartic?
This story, set in a small town with realistic characters, takes us on the journey of the Visitor—as contained in a twelve-year-old boy’s body. Some might call it possession, but on technicality that’s not true. I wish I could say more about each of these characters but I want the reader to understand the situation and it’s stakes for themselves.
Najberg uses densely-written, poetic scenes to entwine us in his world. I was hooked from the moment Stuart first saw the door (and Najberg’s intriguing description of said door).
I recommend this book to anyone who’s wants to be up late at night pondering our frailty in the middle of a multi-dimensional universe.
I wanted to like this book but I really didn't for the most part. I like the first few pages but then the door got opened and that was just not for me. Maybe I had too high of expectations after hearing all the great comments, maybe I set myself up by holding off reading it for so long that my anticipation got the better of me, more likely it's just that I had no concept of the content and honestly this is just not the type of story I really like. Sometimes I read a book I don't think I'll like and it surprises me. But that's probably because I started out not expecting to like it so the threshold was low.
The good thing is, the book is very well written. As I write this I can think back on many parts that were quite good. But overall I just didn't care for it because it's a fantastical story and that's just not in my wheelhouse. So sadly I didn't care for it, thus only giving it three stars, but that is based on my personal preference in "subgenres" if you will. For the reader that appreciates this style of book, I think it would be an amazing read. It's been appreciated by a lot of people. So I would definitely encourage people to give it a try. Even though I didn't like it that much, I don't feel like I wasted my time and I'm glad I read it.
"The Mobius Door" is a masterful work of dark, speculative, fiction written by Andrew Najberg.
The characters are expertly fleshed out, and the plot guides you down a winding path of interdimentional terror.
The characters are relatable, and draw the reader in until you're connected by empathy, and experience their torment.
The plot is fictional, yet based on laws of physics, so there's an underlying dread that lies just underneath the surface as you read this complex narrative.
There's no end to the steady increase in the severity of the bizarre manifestations in which the villain appears.
The ending is bittersweet, and leaves you with a reprieve, but the brief respite has danger on the horizon.
I really wanted to like this one because the cover is so creepy, but, there are so many POVs it’s hard to connect with the actual story and/or any given character.
I couldn’t tell if it was a slow burn or if it was just because there were too many characters coming into play that it made the story feel like it was dragging.
Sadly a miss for me.
Just because this book wasn’t for me doesn’t mean you won’t enjoy it! I’ve read plenty of books that others loved that just fell flat for me! So I still recommend checking it out!!
I was originally drawn to the cover art for The Mobius Door, which kept me thinking about the book for several days. Eventually, I downloaded via KU and am glad that I did. Without spoilage, I can report several clever concepts that powered plot points in a (?) believable direction. The prose was always serviceable and sometimes lyrical. I enjoyed The Mobius Door and recommend it as a quick and entertaining novel.
The Mobius Door - this is where nightmares come from!
This is one creepy journey of events. I was not expecting the world to be recreated by the 'Mobius Door'. Apparently, no matter what it's called, there are portals that expose us to the supernatural terror, usually reserved for nightmares and borderline psychotic individuals. If your subconscious is easily suggestible, you may want to read this with someone you trust. I mean, really trust. There could be a door anywhere.