Review: Ghost of a Chance by Rhiannon Lassiter

I have to confess when I first heard Rhiannon Lassiter read an extract of Ghost of a Chance at the OUP Dark Fantasy event I didn't quite engage with it. Maybe it was sitting on a hard floor, maybe it was the wine I'd drunk, maybe it was just being overawed by such august company. But whatever it was, I felt entirely differently when I actually got my hands on the book and started to read.

Eva Chance, the hero, lives in the House. It's always referred to like that, the House. It's been inhabited by Chances for generations and is falling to bits and Eva's grandfather is now too old, frail and, frankly, poor to do anything much about it. Eva half loves, half hates the House. She's spent too much of her time there, raised by her grandfather and without any friends her own age. She has friends, of sorts, in the ghosts that inhabit the House, ghosts that nobody else can see and as the novel progresses she starts to think that maybe she can see them so clearly because she has in fact become one of them. That's the only explanation she can come up with for why all the live inhabitants and visitors to the House act as if she isn't there. The only problem she has is that she can't remember ever dying.

And that sets her off on her search to find out what happened. On the way she meets an assortment of helpful and distinctly unhelpful ghosts, falls in love with a living boy, Kyle, and with his help takes on the might and venom of the witch in the House cellar. Now, that all makes for an impressively eerie and spine chilling ghost story and one that has you struggling all the way to the end wondering how the author is going to bring that ghost-human love story to a successful conclusion.

But this is not just a ghost story. There is a whole cast of assorted live Chance relations, all of whom seem to have motives for killing off Eva, her grandad, and anyone else who might get in the way so that they can get their hands on the House. There's also a rather androgynous house agent, Kyle's sister, their dad and a bunch of pretty incompetent police officers. Oh, and a couple of murders and attempted murders too. All of which means that the story is as much a mystery as it is a ghost story, and as such it trots along at a pretty pace and keeps you guessing right to the end.

I won't give away the ending, that wouldn't be fair, but I will say that, for me, it didn't quite live up to everything that came before. The witch was such a wonderful creation, depicted with real menace, so I think I found her demise a bit of a disappointment, and as to the resolution of the mystery, well, it just stretched this reader's imagination a bit too far.

Having said that, this is a fantastic foray into young adult fiction, There are some truly scary bits and some wonderfully atmospheric writing. And as an example of gothic it introduces a raft of interesting new ideas which certainly enrich the genre.

The lovely folk at Oxford sent me this review copy. If you want one of your own please order it via the link below and then Amazon will make a contribution to maintaining this blog.

 

Review: Gallows at Twilight by William Hussey

This is the second book in William Hussey’s Witchfinder trilogy and in now characteristic style it opens with a horrifying tale of child sacrifice, plus one of those memorable images that Hussey conjures so easily. In the first novel it was the exploding poisonous toads. This time it is the sacrificed children’s fingers and toes that have been ‘laid out like a row of little sausages’!

Once again Jake Harker is the only thing that stands between the Demon Father and the annihilation of mankind and at the beginning of the book he is in no fit state to fulfil that task. The magic that he found at the end of the first book seems to have left him and although he now has an odd assortment of monsters, friends and his dad on his side, they are no match for the Demon Father and his father appears to be dying. To make matters worse, the girl he’s started to fall in love with, Rachel, appears to be sweet on his best friend, Simon.

So in a teenage pique fuelled quest to re-find his magic, cure his dying father and put a stop to the Demon Father’s plans, he plunges back through time to the seventeenth century, which is where matters start to get seriously dangerous for him.

As with the first book, this is another page turner, packed full of action, horror and a cast of some of the creepiest characters you will find in fiction. There is also a light touch at play: the Badderson father and son combo, for example, are quite adorable, for all that they are trolls, and I became rather fond of the many-armed Pandora. The domestic scenes with the Hobarron family in the seventeeth century are handled with great delicacy too. Will this make the book more acceptable to girls? Probably not unless they like stomach-churning gore as well. But it does make for a more rounded book and a lot more to think about.

And one final warning: the cover. This is definitely not a book to be left face up on the bedside table!

The last book in the series, The Last Nightfall, is due out in September.

The lovely people at Oxford sent me this review copy. If you want one for yourself please order it via the link below and Amazon will make a small contribution to maintaining this blog.
 

Review: Finding Sky by Joss Stirling

Finding Sky is the latest in a stream of American high school romances that pitch good girl against bad boy with extraordinary powers.  Sky, like Bella before her, is the new girl in the school who finds herself drawn, against her better judgement to the mysterious cool guy that her friends warn her against. And Zed, the cool guy in question, like Edward before him, is a member of a tight-knit protective family all of whom have their own special powers. But there the analogy dies.  There are no vampires here, just ‘savants’, human beings just like any other with the exception of super-tuned senses that enable them to talk telepathically, read the past or future or move objects without touching them.

Sky is no Bella either. For starters, she’s English and that fact alone provides the equally English author with no end of opportunities to have fun at the expense of our so-called shared language. She’s a feisty number too, more than capable of holding her own, and of making, often difficult, decisions. And that points to another difference: because in many ways this is as much a book about the choices people make when they are given power as it is a romance or a fast-moving thriller.

This also happens to be one of the best written books about at the moment. The prose is pacey, witty and a delight to read. It sucks the reader in effortlessly, placing them firmly in the mindset of a shy and emotionally damaged English girl struggling to come to terms with her natural attraction to a fine specimen of adolescent manhood, her appalling past and her exciting potential future.

The lovely folk at Oxford sent me this review copy. If you want one for yourself please order it via the link below and Amazon will then send a small contribution towards the maintenance of this blog

Review: Curse of the Wendigo by Rick Yancey

This, the second of Yancey’s Monstrumologist series, does not disappoint. Gore, horror and general yuck-factor opportunities abound along with an evocative depiction of early twentieth century New York and further development of the two key characters of Will Henry and Dr Warthrop.

The Curse of the Wendigo is almost two separate novels rolled into the one. The first half follows Will Henry and Dr Warthrop as they track down Warthrop’s old sparring partner John Chanler who has disappeared in the Western Canadian wilderness. This is the landscape that adults will know from Twin Peaks and X-Files and Yancey draws all that televisual eeriness into his book with an expert’s touch. The second half takes place in a richly drawn New York where appalling slums nestle alongside exquisite high society and both Will Henry and Warthrop get to interact with the opposite sex. This is new territory for the series and bodes well for the next book. The poignant description of Warthrop’s liaison adds a level of complexity to his character and provides something of an explanation for his enigmatic personality. Will Henry’s new friendship, by contrast, provides light relief and a tempting glimpse of what might be to come.

This is a book for horror fans who are bored sick of vampires, werewolves the usual array of evil characters. And, speaking from experience, this is definitely not one to read at twilight in an empty room!

Originally written for writeaway.org.uk

OUP Dark Fantasy Event

On the evening of Wednesday 27^th October Oxford University Press hosted a Dark Fantasy event in The Drawing Room of the House of St Barnabas in Soho. The purple uplighting, chandeliers, and mirrors of the room were complemented by a liberal scattering of carved pumpkins, not to mention a furry spider and a rather wonderful Venetian mask. Where better to gather for an evening of literary chat and spooky readings?

William Hussey, complete with large and distinctly hirsute spider adorning his left shoulder, opened the readings with an excerpt from Gallows at Twilight, the second book of his Witchfinder trilogy, out on 6^th January 2011. His relish in describing the Crowden sisters feasting on children reassured us that the stomach churning gore and shudder fest of the first book will be continuing in the second, right down to something he tantalisingly described as the ‘infamous shopping-bag line’!

Rhiannon Lassiter came next with a reading from Ghost of a Chance, also out on 6^th January. Rhiannon came to the event with a large supporting cast, including her august mother, Mary Hoffman, sporting the be-feathered mask previously mentioned.  Rhiannon came to dark teen fantasy via science fiction, magic realism and thrillers and it was clear that all had played a role in shaping this book. There were shudders aplenty in this reading: definitely not one for the faint-hearted.

Joss Stirling completed the evening’s readings, with an excerpt from Finding Sky, her first novel in this persona  and published earlier in October. Dressed in a sparkly black dress she more than looked the part and opened her talk with a brief discussion of her theory that the English are prone to periodic bursts of the gothic (or should that be gothick given the historical nature of the discussion?)  The book was written with a very specific teenage girl audience in mind, and several had come along to the event to vouchsafe their approval.  The reading gave more than a glimpse of the nature of the book: psycho-horror underpinned by the humour inherent in an Anglo-American culture clash. Sadly we didn’t get a glimpse of what Joss described as her deep hatred of Las Vegas in the reading but I am assured that we will find it in the novel!

This was an exhilarating event that gave a suitably murky teaser to some very dark books.

Review: Behemoth by Scott Westerfeld

Behemoth is the second in a series that started with Leviathan by Scott Westerfeld of Uglies fame and as you might expect, given that parentage, this is an historical novel with a considerable and thought-provoking twist. So, assume that Darwin not only came up with natural selection but that he also pre-empted Crick and Watson, discovered DNA, or ‘life-threads’ as they are called here, and then set about fabricating all kinds of species to help mankind. Then assume that the new ‘technology’ is only accepted by Britain and her allies, whilst Germany pursues a more historically accurate technological development, albeit, unwittingly influenced by the ‘Darwinist’ fabrications. Now place all that in the historical setting of 1914, and add Alek, the young heir to the Hapsburg throne, and Deryn, a girl pretending to be a (male) midshipman aboard the airship Leviathan.

Leviathan ended with Alek and Deryn, now good friends, baby-sitting a trio of mysterious eggs for the redoubtable Dr Barlow (Darwin’s own descendent) and headed towards ‘Constantinople’.  In Behemoth they reach Constantinople but Dr Barlow’s plans to win over the Sultan, stop the Clanker (the Darwinist term for German) advance eastwards and open up the shipping lanes to supply Russia’s fighters, go catastrophically wrong and it is down to Alek and Deryn to turn things round and keep the Ottomans from becoming another Clanker power.

Historians will be intrigued. Much of the environment of this series is historically accurate, right down the 1914 British Embassy in Istanbul not containing anyone who could speak Turkish! Even the names of some of the characters (Admiral Wilhelm Souchon for example) are accurate. But the means of fighting, the way of living is entirely different because of that mind-bending beastie-fabricating twist.

And this is where the fact that this is an illustrated book becomes so important. In Leviathan Keith Thompson’s monochrome drawings superbly pointed up the difference between the ‘fabs’ and the Clanker monstrosities: one all smooth, sinuous lines, and misty depths; the other sharp profiles and harsh lines. In Behemoth Thompson also gets a chance to depict the Ottoman synthesis of the two technologies, producing haunting images of enormous machines, some with almost human features. There is a delightfully early-twentieth century feel to these drawings, whilst at the same time they are undeniably modern. The attenuated figures and impish faces are reminiscent of Chris Riddell’s Edge Chronicles characters, and some of the battle scenes are pure steampunk, but many of the internal scenes would not be out of place in a Sherlock Holmes story.

Behemoth, likes its predecessor, Leviathan, is chock full of action, mystery, deception, and even the early stirrings of love. It raises fascinating questions about man’s relationship to beasts and the extent to which they should be manipulated for our benefit.  It also probes issues around gender expectations which are still not fully resolved today. 12 year olds would no doubt enjoy the series but the more philosophical and ethical content might be more appropriate to a slightly older audience.

Originally written for writeaway.org.uk

Review: Angel by LA Weatherly

The ‘what if’ behind Angel is the idea that angels walk amongst us, feeding off our psychic energy and leaving us, at best, mentally debilitated and addicted to their charms, and at worst, dead.   For Alex, the third-person narrator of part of this novel, this means that ‘the only good angel is a dead angel’. He has been raised as an angel hunter and lost his family to their deprecations. Now he is old beyond his years and has no other aim in life but to avenge his family.

Willow, the other (first-person) narrator, is a misfit, whose only claim to fame is an unnerving ability to see into other people’s futures. Her mother is little more than a child, mentally incapacitated by some mysterious past event and her father unknown. She is raised by her aunt, but just like Alex, her family circumstances have made her older than she really is.

The two meet early in the novel, when Alex is targeted to illuminate Willow. He soon realises that she is no angel, but she doesn’t seem entirely human either and together they embark upon a road trip across America seeking out the truth behind Willow’s birth and why the increasingly powerful ‘Church of Angels’ is desperate to kill her.

Weatherly expertly handles the switches between the first and third person narratives. They provide the reader with unique insight into each narrator’s thoughts and emotions as well as their growing relationship, whilst at the same time, pushing the action along at a breathtaking pace. There is none of the steaminess of Twilight, but the emotions run, if anything deeper, and are perfectly matched by action and excitement.

And then there’s that ‘what-if’. There’s a whole cast of biblically named angels here and they really aren’t very nice. This is delightful twist and certainly provides some opportunity for thought and discussion about the supernatural and its potential interaction with humanity. My guess is that British readers will not have a difficulty with this, but given the reaction of some, mostly US, audiences to Twilight and Harry Potter, a degree of circumspection might be in order.

There’s been a fair amount of hype surrounding the launch of Angel, with even the Guardian newspaper running a piece earlier this year on how Angels are set to be the new vampires. Don’t be put off by this. Angel is one of those ‘can’t be put down books’ that leaves the reader breathless at the end and longing for the publication of the next instalment in Spring 2011.

Originally written for WriteAway.org.uk