My Review of Ira Levin's "Son of Rosemary"

After getting my hands on the original "Rosemary's Baby", I was fascinated to see where Mr. Levin would take the characters after having left them untouched for almost 30 years. I was not disappointed. This story takes up 34 years after the conclusion of the first novel. We find Rosemary waking up from a coma she had fallen into some 28 years earlier. Her last memories were of still living in the Bramford, and glancing at her son Andy who had recently celebrated his sixth birthday. From the other side of the walls, she could hear the coven chanting as usual then blackness. She awakens in the year 1999, to learn that the coven had put her into a long-term care facility under the name of Rosemary Fountain (the last name of one of cults members). Realizing the coven had put her into a coma as they had her friend Hutch, she is outraged and fearful for what had become of her son Andy, whose father is Satan himself.  She soon learns that Andy, has become a respected man of influence who is loved and reknowned around the world. Thanks to her own celebrity status as Rip Van Rosemary, the woman who woke up from a 28 year coma, she uses a television interview to reach out to Andy and let him know she's alive and well. After a tearful reunion, she learns that the coven had told Andy she had died in an effort to raise him in their ways. But as Rosemary had hoped at the end of the first novel, his human half made him rebellious and he has been using his 'influences' to thwart his father's plans and machinations. Or so Andy says. The story continues with Rosemary being both relieved and skeptical of her son's motives and actions, along with the God's Children organization he has formed to make changes towards peace and tolerance throughout the world. Yet in spite of all the good she sees he has done, something still does not feel right. Especially in those moments when his horns peek out (literally) and his eyes turn from hazel to "Tiger". Still she does her best to aid his more noble efforts, not realizing that they are both being manipulated to bring about the end of man on New Year's Eve at the stroke of midnight, when almost everyone in the world will light special candles provided by the God's Children network. Many have criticized this book because of how the story ends... ****Warning Spoiler Alert--Do not read further unless you want to know what happens**** Satan reveals himself to have been in Rosemary and Andy's midst all the time. He even crucifies his son for rebelling against his plans thanks to his mother's influence. Yet at the moment of Satan's apparent triumph, Andy manages to send his mother back in time to before his birth and arrange her life in such a way that she and Guy (her husband) do not wind up moving to the Bramford, thus escaping the coven's trap. The complaint with this angle is that Rosemary wakes up from this prolonged nightmare (i. e. "It was all a dream...").  Yet we are given definite hints that it wasn't and that a part of Rosemary does realize what her son had actually done and that her fondest wish that his human half won out in the end. Like the first book there is not a lot of gore or outright horror, as seen in other Son of Satan works such as the "Omen" series. Instead, Mr. Levin sticks to the spirit of his original work and plays a psychological game with the readers and Rosemary, leaving us wondering until the end if Andy can be trusted or not.  A brilliant effort by the man who also gave us "The Stepford Wives".