Tag: ghosts

The Screaming Staircase Review—Teenage British Ghostbusters

The Screaming Staircase coverTeenage British ghostbusters… need I say more? I’ve been a fan of Jonathon Stroud’s writing since I picked up the first book of the Bartimaeus Trilogy many years ago and started laughing out loud in the bookstore. I was thrilled to discover that Stroud was back at it with a new series, this time about one of my favorite topics—ghosts!

The Screaming Staircase is the first book in Stroud’s Lockwood & Co. series. It takes place in a modern British setting in which history has been altered by the emergence of The Problem—several decades ago, the appearance of ghosts increased drastically and their deadly touch became a serious threat to society. To combat this threat, a number of ghost-hunting agencies emerged, employing psychically sensitive children and teenagers to investigate hauntings. Lockwood & Co. is one such agency, though unlike the others it employs no adult supervisors or managers, allowing the teens to fend for themselves. Continue reading The Screaming Staircase Review—Teenage British Ghostbusters

The Graveyard Book Review–A Ghost Story for All Ages

The Graveyard Book CoverNeil Gaiman is known and respected in the gothic community for many reasons. His comic book series The Sandman, which revolutionized the world of comics, stars a character called Death who became a fashion icon for goths for decades to come. His book Coraline brought creepy children’s tales to the public eye when it was made into a movie in 2009. My favorite work of his that I’ve read so far, however, is another kid’s book—The Graveyard Book.

This book is a tale for practically any age (the back recommends 10 and up, it does contain some mentions of violence). While certainly accessible to children, I found it perfectly enjoyable to read for the first time as an adult. There are many subtleties that might be missed by young readers (as they are often missed by the character Bod) that enrich the story for adults.  Continue reading The Graveyard Book Review–A Ghost Story for All Ages

Afterworlds Review–All of the Genres

Some of you may be familiar with Scott Westerfeld from his delightfully disturbing dystopia series Uglies. In Uglies, we saw that Westerfeld has the potential to get very dark in the doom and gloom of a futuristic totalitarian government kind of way. Westerfeld’s latest book, Afterworlds, goes down a completely different path, but may be equally entertaining to dark-minded readers.

Afterworlds coverI don’t even know how I would classify the genre of this book. There are really two different stories going on in alternating chapters: a simple realistic coming of age story of Darcy Patel—a teenage writer struggling to navigate the adult worlds of New York City, publishing, and true love; and then you have the story of Darcy’s novel about a teenage girl named Lizzie who becomes a psychopomp and falls in love with a death god as she struggles to come to terms with her new relationship with the dead. It’s really in this second story that the darker elements come into play.

Continue reading Afterworlds Review–All of the Genres