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Book Review: Raising Hell by Bryony Pierce

cover art for Raising Hell by Bryony Pearce

Raising Hell by Bryony Pearce

UClan Publishing, 2021

ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1912979547

Available: Paperback  ( Amazon.com.uk )

 

Four years ago Ivy Mann and her friends Danny and Elena did a ritual to raise their friend Violet from the dead. Violet came back as a revenant and killed Danny before Ivy was able to stop her, and the ritual opened a rift that gives teenagers the ability to spellcast, bringing demons and hellhounds through and raising the dead. Ivy has been abandoned by her parents and Elena, her only company a cat possessed by the spirt of her Gran. Now nineteen, she works as a security guard at her old high school, detecting and confiscating magical contraband to protect other kids. In the case of Norah Ortega, she is too late to stop Norah from manifesting hellhounds in the school hallway. Although she defeats the hellhounds, she accidentally gives Norah a concussion, and Norah’s wealthy older brother Nicholas demands that Ivy be fired. Returning home, her Gran insists that Danny is there.

 

Then Norah shows up at Ivy’s place, asking for help. She is still connected to one of the hellhounds and it is draining her life force away. Nicholas follows shortly, and after surviving another hellhound attack, the three of them are off on a journey, chauffered by Nicholas’ bodyguard Andrews. Norah has to stay on consecrated ground, so Ivy, Nicholas, and Andrews go off to find the mysterious store where Norah got her spellbook, in hopes that the spell can be reversed, and discover Elena, who has found a way to bring Danny back because she believes that the three of them must all be there to reverse the ritual and close the rift.  In the meantime, she’s sold an awful lot of copies of the Necronomicon to unstable teenagers intent on raising the dead. What could possibly go wrong?

 

This fast-paced urban fantasy doesn’t make a lot of sense, but it is a lot of fun and it contained some unexpected surprises, including a political subplot that will probably be better appreciated by residents of England. There’s a fair amount of blood, dead teenagers, and zombie gore– Ivy is not a perfect heroine or superpowered, and she isn’t able to prevent collateral damage from taking place– but she’s funny (her machete is named Matilda), no-nonsense, and kicks butt.  Pearce did a great job bringing her character to life. Pearce’s teenagers are a mix of unlikable and sympathetic– regardless of her previous actions, Norah is grieving the death of her sister– which is pretty realistic, and something I appreciated.

 

The one thing that was really strained was Pearce’s attempt to push Ivy and Nicholas together romantically. Not only did he get her fired over his sister’s actions, but their own interactions weren’t romantic and they had no chemistry. It looks like Pearce has set things up for a sequel, so maybe that will be developed a little more, but that romance has a lot to overcome in order to be convincing. Raising Hell may be enjoyed by young adults who enjoy energetic urban fantasy with a dark edge.

 

Contains: blood, violence, zombie gore, self-harm

Reviewed by Kirsten Kowalewski

 

 

Posted on June 23, 2021 by , Reply

Book Review: The Devil and the Dark Water by Stuart Turton

cover art for The Devil and the Dark Water by Stuart Turton

(  Bookshop.org )

The Devil and the Dark Water by Stuart Turton

Sourcebooks, 2020

ISBN-13 : 978-1728206028

Available: Hardcover, paperback

 

Stuart Turton probably wouldn’t describe his books as horror, but they are compelling, original, and dread-inducing. In a departure from the surreal Agatha Christie-like The 7 1/2 Lives of Evelyn Hardcastle, in The Devil and the Dark Sea, this story takes place in 1634, on a ship leaving from Batavia (now Jakarta, Indonesia), the center of the Dutch East Indian Trading Company, for Amsterdam, home of the company’s headquarters, a journey of about eight months during which many ships were lost as sea. Readers expecting accurate historical fiction will not find it here: in a note, Turton essentially says he did the research, but threw it out the window if he found it wouldn’t work with his story. By changing as much as he did, he’s basically written an alternate history, which would be fine except that he never identifies it as such, which is unfair to readers unfamiliar with the setting, who will think it’s solidly grounded in the historical period (I guess once someone calls your work genre-bending it’s hard to commit).

 

Passengers on the Saardam include Jan Haan, the ambitious governor general of Batavia; his wife, Sara Wessell; and their inventive daughter, Lia; his mistress, Creesjie Jens, and her sons; his chamberlain, Cornelius Vos; and guard captain Jacobi Drecht.  Also traveling on the ship is Sammy Pipps, a Sherlock-type detective and alchemist of unknown origin who has been accused of spying, and his bodyguard/case recorder, former Lieutenant Arent Hayes. Before the ship leaves, a leper warns the passengers not to leave, warning that the devil “Old Tom” will be their downfall, but the governor general is insistent on leaving for Amsterdam immediately. Complicating things by bringing religion into the mix on a ship where passengers and crew are already uneasy and superstitious, a predikant, or preacher, and his acolyte Isabel, stow away on the ship as well.

 

Just as the ship sets off, the sail is unfurled to show a symbol that Creesje, the predikant, Arent, and one of the sailors individually recognize and associate with Old Tom. Is the devil really on the ship with the passengers and sailors, are they imagining things, or is someone playing with the characters’ fears in hopes of personal gain? The predikant, a former witch hunter, claims they’ll know for sure once three unholy miracles have occurred. As the ship gets further out onto the open ocean, the unholy miracles are identified, and the weather worsens, the onboard situation gets more violent and treacherous, and it becomes clear that, real or not, Old Tom has followers among the crew. As the histories of the characters and plot twists are unraveled, and the deaths stack up, the situation becomes even more unnerving. Is the ship haunted by Old Tom, or is something else going on?

 

Turton does a fantastic job of creating a sense of mystery and dread. There is no escape from the ship out on the ocean, just people, most of whom don’t like or trust each other, adrift after a storm. Turton admits he took liberties with history for the purpose of the story, so I don’t know if sailors truly lived continually in such brutal, violent environments, but he paints a vivid picture of the dynamics. Characters who could have been one-dimensional were fully developed: Arent turns out to be the governor general’s nephew, and while Haan might have been terrible to his wife and underlings,  he clearly cherishes his relationship with Arent. Haan’s wife Sara could have been set up in opposition to his mistress, but they turn out to be close friends. Sammy and Arent, for all their similarities to Holmes and Watson, are completely different in body type, personality, background, and overarching motivation. I found the very ending unneccessarily brutal, unrealistic and extremely disappointing, and felt it marred the story in a big way,  but I felt the atmosphere, character development, and descriptive language still made this worth reading.

 

The Devil in the Dark Water reveals some very dark aspects of overseas trade and the participants in it during the 1600s. No one comes away untainted. Despite the faulty ending, it’s a tale I won’t soon forget, and I would certainly give Turton another chance.

Contains: violence, gore, murder, implied rape, brutal killing of animals, body horror, mass murder

 

Reviewed by Kirsten Kowalewski

 

 

Posted on February 24, 2021 by , Reply

Book Review: The Good Demon by Jimmy Cajoleas

Life would have to be pretty awful and lonely for a person to agree to be possessed by a demon, but Clare has had a pretty traumatic life, and her demon not only takes her away but protects her from danger. Several years after she discovered her addict father dead from an overdose, her secret is revealed, and her stepfather, an abusive alcoholic, has the demon, who Clare calls her Only, exorcised by an evangelical preacher and his son, Roy.  Bereft, Clare is on a mission to retrieve and reintegrate with her Only, the one being who truly knows and loves her, but clues left by the demon instruct her to make friends with Roy, and despite their rocky beginnings, Clare and Roy become friends.

The One Wish Man has the power to grant Clare’s wish, but there is always a price.  In her eagerness to reunite with her Only, Clare chooses to overlook some obvious red flags: a cardinal crucified upside down at the entrance to the One Wish Man’s property, a nightmarish walk to his house, a stolen scroll of human skin, and others. As Clare’s investigations reveal a rottennness and lust for power at the center of town that is more than its terrible place in history (the Trail of Tears, the KKK, and tornadoes, among other disasters). Clare has to decide how far she can trust her Only, and whether her Only’s love is worth enough to sacrifice the new relationships she is building.

The Good Demon takes place in the deep South and has some great Southern Gothic trappings, and the trope of rottenness under the surface of a small town plays out well here. Clare is an unreliable narrator, and there’s a strange feeling of unreality enfolding her story. Oddly for a book set in the South, outside of Clare’s brief mentions of the town’s history with slavery, the KKK, and Native American genocide in the context of “terrible things happen here”, there aren’t actually any identifiable African-American characters and the book doesn’t really touch on race, which would pretty much flavor everything there. Of course, we are seeing all of this from Clare’s point of view, which is pretty narrow, since her life appears to be basically doing nothing at home, stealing from the secondhand store, or going to the library, and rarely encountering people other than her mother and stepfather, who spend much of their time drunk and arguing, so maybe she is really just that isolated from her community. The more time you spend with her, the more you can see why Clare wants her demon back so badly, and that any child would be in that position may be the saddest and most terrifying thing of all. Recommended for YA collections.

Contains: occultism, body horror, sex, gore, mild violence, attempted rape, references to suicide, drug and alcohol abuse.

 

 

 

 

Posted on January 11, 2020 by , Reply
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