Home » Archive by category "Uncategorized" (Page 199)

Book Review: Monsterland by James Crowley

Monsterland by James Crowley

G.P. Putnam’s Sons Books for Young Readers, 2017

ISBN-13: 978-0399175893

Available:  Hardcover, paperback, Kindle edition

 

It’s Halloween, and Charlie Cooper is missing his best friend, Billy, who was lost in the river the previous year.  Too dispirited to trick-or-treat, he wanders into the woods, to hide out in an abandoned army base where they used to play. When he sees a figure that looks like Billy, he follows him through the base and into a graveyard he’s never noticed, down into a crypt that leads to a tunnel, and discovers that he has not been following his friend: he has followed a vampire, into Monsterland, an unmapped territory where the U.S. government has contained the world’s monsters. The vampire is Prime Minister of Monsterland, tasked with keeping the peace between all the factions and creatures. Learning that Charlie is looking for his “lost” friend, the Prime Minister sends him on a journey with Frankenstein’s Monster that will lead Charlie to a place where he might find Billy, if he’s lucky.

Charlie’s journey with the Monster is eventful, with kidnappings, near-drownings, robberies, and dramatic rescues. He meets various types of monsters, who are fascinated to find a live boy in their country.  While some characters are well-drawn, especially the Monster, Crowley spends several chapters at the beginning introducing Charlie, with the result that, while Crowley does some terrific world-building, the story is too jam-packed with action and new characters to do everything (and everyone) justice. The door is definitely left open for a sequel– there are many characters I wanted to know more about, and the overall idea that government budget cuts are undermining control of Monsterland is intriguing.

What is most interesting, and most fully developed, is Charlie’s relationship with the Monster, who is not just uninterested but actively hostile to the idea of traveling with Charlie. Charlie insists that nobody should be referred to as Monster or Creature all the time, and helps the Monster choose a name (the discussion, which involves his annoyance with Mary Shelley, leads to the Monster being named Franklin Prometheus), something that significantly changes their relationship. Watching them interact is one of the most interesting parts of the book.

I was bothered by the plot being driven by Charlie’s need to look for Billy. It is pretty clear from the very beginning of the book that Billy isn’t just lost, and I didn’t like that the Prime Minister and all the monsters encouraged Charlie’s magical thinking and the idea that Billy was tangible. Magical thinking is a part of grief you want children to work through, and Charlie is protected from having to do this. Crowley did a nice job of depicting Charlie’s grief before he entered Monsterland, but once there, the possibility of finding Billy made it an adventure.

I wouldn’t call this horror so much as a monster-laden fantasy adventure, but there is certainly potential for it to go darker if there is a sequel. It is a great choice for monster-loving kids. Recommended.

Posted on October 6, 2019 by , Reply

Book Review: The Remaking by Clay McLeod Chapman

The Remaking by Clay McLeod Chapman

Quirk Books, 2019

ISBN-13: 978-1683691532

Available: Hardcover, Kindle

 

The Remaking is a meta-supernatural thriller that follows a true crime paranormal case revived by various means every twenty years. The book starts in 1951, with the telling of a campfire tale, “Witch Girl of Pilot’s Creek”, that occurred in the 1930s. For ten years, Jessica and her mother, Ella Louise, lived in the woods surrounding Pilot’s Creek, Virginia. They did not live within the town itself, since they were ostracized by the citizens of the town, as well as by their own family: Ella had no use for the societal game, and Jessica was born out of wedlock. Ella ran an apothecary from her cabin, and while the townspeople avoided the family in public, they were not above patronizing Ella when in need of a cure. But when a well-known customer died, Ella was immediately accused of witchcraft and both mother and daughter were burned at the stake. Because of the superstitions and paranoia of the townspeople, Jessica, thought to have magical abilities, was entombed in a steel-reinforced coffin surrounded by a fence of white crosses.  Ella was buried in an unknown location.

In 1971, someone who was present at the telling of the campfire story has grown up to become a film director. He casts Amber Pendleton as Jessica in his horror movie. Amber’s overbearing mother thinks this will be a great opportunity for her, and make her a star. The tensions and stress on set drive Amber to run into the woods, where she comes face to face with something nobody believes happened. Fast forward to 1995, and Amber is trying to make ends meet by doing the horror convention circuit. A young, up-and-coming director with money approaches Amber to play the part of Ella in his remake of the film that cost her an early career. She reluctantly agrees. She becomes the star of her own witch hunt after something happens to the new Jessica actress on this set.

The book then switches to 2016, with a popular form of media, the true crime podcast. An enthusiastic, greedy, journalist hunts down Amber (who has, strangely enough, moved to Pilot’s Creek), to get her side of the story. Amber thinks telling her story might just be her best bet to redeem herself. Of course, there’s also a chance that it will just add to the neverending cycle of the nightmare of Jessica and Ella.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. An interesting aspect of the book for me was that it was always ambitious, heartless men at the core of each of the retellings of Jessica and Ella’s story. There was no heart in the development of the original film, nor the remake, only prestige and greed. Both directors were convinced that Jessica was demanding that her story be told, only to become so firm in their own vision that they missed the point. Amber immersed herself in both roles, and was chastised and abused for her intuitive reactions to her characters, first as the young Jessica, and in the remake as Ella Louise. She is blamed for creating her own drama and trauma, and ultimately put on actual trial for an incident that occurred during the filming of the remake. Then the podcaster aims to debunk the sightings of Jessica and Ella, as well as dig as much information out of Amber as he can to debunk that, too. Chapman’s characters and layout of the story are great. The Remaking is a fast and engaging read. I would recommend this for those who like true crime (it was based on the true story of a mother and daughter who were burned for being witches) and unique storytelling experiences. Highly recommended.

 

Reviewed by Lizzy Walker

Posted on October 5, 2019 by , Reply

Book Review: The Grave Digger by Rebecca Bischoff

The Grave Digger  by Rebecca Bischoff

Amberjack Publishing, 2019

ISBN-13: 978-1948705523

Available: Pre-order, hardcover and Kindle edition

 

It’s 1875 in Circleville, Ohio. Captain Cooper’s mother is ill,  and the doctor has to be paid. Although Cap is not yet thirteen, his father has decided it’s time for him to join him and his partner Lum as a “resurrectionist”, a person who digs up dead bodies in order to sell them to medical schools for dissection. The plan is to dig up the bodies of those who won’t be missed (mostly “colored” people), but the dead don’t appear to be staying dead. Cap’s classmate Jessamyn comes back to life after he touches her, and the next body wakes up while they are actually digging. The secret activities of the grave diggers are out, and they have to cover them up and find other ways to acquire the bodies. Cap is spooked, but his mother’s medical bills still have to be paid, and his father insists this is the only way they can raise the money. Beyond acquiring the bodies, Cap realizes that there is a larger conspiracy at work, involving not just unsavory characters, but also some of the most respected individuals in town. While the newspaper stirs up the town, it is mainly the “colored” people who are affected, and their demands for a cemetery guard are left unanswered. We can all be grateful that this is a middle-grade novel and that, while a book about grave robbing, burying people alive, and human dissection will obviously have some disturbing moments, it doesn’t get gratuitously gruesome.

Racism in Circleville’s general population doesn’t rear its head in overtly violent ways, but in white people’s daily choices and conversations, like the Coopers’ housekeeper’s resentment of and unwillingness to interact with Jardine, an African-American woman who is a friend and hear of Cap’s mother, comments about “those people”, and the choice to zero in on body-snatching the African-Americans in the cemetery.  It intersects with sexism as well, with Jessamyn’s mother feeling that the only choice she has to support her child is sex work (it’s referred to indirectly), and Jardine’s daughter Delphia, after telling Cap of her ambition to be a doctor, bracing herself for the expected comment “but you’re a colored girl!” and laughing when he says “but you’re a girl!” instead (either way, in 1875, ten years after the Civil War ended, she’d be unlikely to get into medical school, but the book treats it like it’s a real possibility– props to Bischoff for that).  It is noticeable (and relevant to the present day) that there are so few consequences for anyone who participated in the grave-robbing scheme and lived to tell about it.  That’s probably realistic, and in a middle-grade novel you want things to turn out for the protagonist, but I think this ending requires a conversation. There is a myth in the Midwest that because the Underground Railroad had a strong presence that there must not have been other race-baced issues (I can’t tell you about Ohio specifically, but it’s definitely the case in Indiana), and this book exposes that.

There are a lot of schools that can’t officially celebrate Halloween (my district doesn’t allow it) but that doesn’t mean there aren’t ways to celebrate the season. The Grave Digger is a great historical fiction choice with a macabre touch to promote to the right elementary and middle-schoolers at this time of year.  Highly recommended.

Posted on October 4, 2019 by , Reply
First « 197198199200201 » Last