Playing With Fire by Derek Landry

Playing with Fire by Derek Landy
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is a crazy book series, but I like that about it. A lead character who is a sorcerer whose body is skeletal. A thirteen-year-old girl who stays out all night fighting evil creatures and sends her reflection to school as a stand in. Heinous, and I do mean heinous villains who don't mind exploding people, along with psychopathic assassins with Southern accents who can dig through the ground and who have a favorite straight razor. Yup. That's what this book is about.

I think that this one is a lot more dark, violent and disturbing than the first book, so I'd definitely warn a parent to read it first before letting a kid younger than twelve read this. The narrator was great. I loved his accents and how he makes these very strange characters stand out. I like his intonation for Skulduggery, rather sarcastic and one of those people who really don't panic. If he does, then you're in trouble. I enjoy his relationship with Valkyrie/Stephanie. She talks to him kind of disrespectfully, but it doesn't bother him. He treats her as an equal.

There were loose ends tied up from the first book that really needed tying. Even a cameo of sorts from Valkyrie's deceased uncle who left her his house and fortune. The sorcerer world grows bigger and more complicated in this book, and Valkyrie has cause to think about the life she's chosen as the descendant of Ancients who has decided to fight the good fight. She realizes how much time she's missing out with her family.

This book is just plain weird. If you don't like weird, pass it by. If you have strong opinions on what young people should read and that list includes violent books with sorcery, monsters and psychopathic characters who have no qualms about harming a 13-year-old girl, then you won't care for this. But if you like fun, weirdly humorous, quirky, sometimes scary, and sometimes creepy crawly books with not a small degree of wish fulfillment for tweens (and messages about empowerment for young girls), then you might like this.


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The Hollow Boy by Jonathan Stroud

The Hollow Boy by Jonathan Stroud
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I was thrilled that my library finally got the audiobook for this latest release in the Lockwood and Co. series. I've been listening to it from the beginning and I hated to have to change format. The narrator is a different person, but she was very good. She brings Lucy, George, Lockwood and the other characters to life distinctively.

I was slightly less impressed with this than the previous books, but it was still very good. I wasn't sure I liked the addition of a new agent to the team. The trio has such a good vibe, but the advent of Holly causes some tension and throws off the chemistry. Lucy is violently jealous of her. Lucy is very possessive over Antony, and it seems as though she has a raging crush on him. Lockwood is a dashing figure (if you're a teenaged girl). I think he does have a lot of gravitas and maturity. I wish that he wasn't so oblivious to the emotions roiling around him at times. Lucy practically seethes, but he doesn't seem to pick up on it. I didn't dislike Holly, but I'm not sure exactly why Stroud chose to add her to the team. Maybe me and Lucy are on the same page here. George is his same endearing self. He's such a character. I liked that the Lockwood team actually joins forces with Quill Kipps and his two agents for the investigation of the department store that is frightfully haunted.

Lucy is delving deeper into Antony's past, and developing her ability to talk to ghosts, one that is admittedly dangerous. Like the other books, there is a spectacular climax, but that's not the end of the tension, since this one ends on a cliffhanger. I wasn't too happy with that. I hate cliffhangers.

I'm a huge fan of ghost stories, and I love Stroud's take on it. Ghosts are anything from irritating to downright lethal. And with each book, the layers get pulled back more, revealing how dangerous and disturbing a world in which ghosts are everywhere and can do humans harm might be.

Eagerly awaiting the next book in this series.

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Curse of the Bane (The Last Apprentice / Wardstone Chronicles, Book 2) by Joseph Delaney, Christopher Evan Welch (Narrator)

Curse of the Bane by Joseph Delaney
My rating: 3.5 of 5 stars

I started this series years ago, and I was impressed that this is genuinely scary horror fiction for younger readers. Finally, I was able to pick this series up with the second book. I actually own this in Kindle and Paperback, but I wanted a scary book to listen to on audio for Halloween. Needless to say, I didn't finish it until November.

So I guess I should talk about my thoughts on the book. Frankly, I didn't like this as much as Book One. I guess I liked the evil witch villain more than I liked the Bane (and the weak humans he manipulated and used to do his evil).

The storyline touches in uncomfortable ways how the church may have done more harm than good in the fight against evil. Witches are being persecuted and burned (and many aren't even witches) in the name of God. Yeah, that can definitely lead to trouble when you use God as an excuse to hurt others or to manipulate things to your advantage over others. That doesn't speak to God's character at all, but many who don't know God can sometimes believe in the evil acts of people more than they believe in who God really is. The truth is that God is represented through a believer's actions than anything else.


The book shows that sometimes the worse evil is human evil. That's not to say that there is not an obvious supernatural component to this book. But frankly, if the Bane was not able to find humans to use and manipulate, he probably wouldn't have done as much harm in this book as he did.

One thing I can say about Delaney is that he taps into the complexity of human nature. Alice is a young woman who is on the edge. She tiptoes into the dark in the name of doing what is right, and young Thomas feels sympathy and loyalty for her that conflicts with his loyalty to his master, the Spook, John Gregory. Even though he knows and fears the worst about Alice, he can't abandon her without trying to help her. Ultimately, it turns out that his instincts are right in many ways, and he has to stand by them even when things look most dire.

I really liked the backstory on Thomas' parents. That was very, very cool. Another look at the complexity of good and evil in this context of this story. But Delaney also stresses that it involves the choices that we make. If you're going to be a good person, you have to choose to do what is right, and if you take the step in the other direction, it's because of choices you make. Even in the contest of Christian belief, while we believe in salvation through faith, a person still has to choose to believe and to live a life that reflects that belief with the help of God's spirit living in them.

The Bane was a scary bad guy, and the story has some genuine chills and thrills. However, I didn't find it as magnetic as the first book. I think the Bane was too one-dimensional as a villain. Having said that, I still enjoy this series and I'm eager to see what the next book has to offer this reader.

I definitely wouldn't recommend this to any readers younger than a mature twelve. It's scary and it shows some really dark aspects of human nature. As far as parental oversight, reading this book would have some very important discussion points about what faith really represents and how the church has a responsibility to the community and others. This book does not show the church in a positive light at all.

Overall rating: 3.5/5.0 stars.

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Courtney Crumrin and the Night Things by Ted Naifeh

Courtney Crumrin and the Night Things by Ted Naifeh

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


Courtney Crumrin has a very informative preface by Kelly Crumrin, addressing the inherent scariness of childhood. It gave me something to think about.  I know I was a kid that loved reading scary books, although I admit I did get a bit too scared a time or two.  One part of his commentary that hit me hard was that he felt the collective conscious of children picked up on the real monsters that prey on children in the world. I didn't like to think about that, because I hate the idea of children being harmed or suffering.  However, I can see some logic to his comment that childhood nebulous fears might be a manifestation of a subconscious awareness of what real children face.

With that thought-provoking beginning to this graphic novel collection, I had some higher expectations but also that this volume would 'go there.' It did. I'm not sure how I feel about some of the plot elements.  I stand strongly against children being harmed or killed, and there is one aspect that felt so wrong to me in this book.  I kept wondering why Courtney didn't use the power she gained over the goblin for a different result.  I do feel that there was a bit of nihilism to this graphic novel, and that's something I just can't go for.    Courtney has had a tough life, and her parents are beneath contempt. I can see things from her viewpoint and accept that she didn't get a very good moral foundation for her life, and that certainly affects her choices. I did cheer for her that she pursued her baby sitting charge into the Goblin Market, even though she did it for selfish reasons. The result of that didn't hit me with the right note, although the faerie enthusiast in me loved a look at the inhabitants of the Market, not to mention the changeling folklore and a talking cat (not sure I want my own cats to be able to talk, since they'd probably cuss me out).  One thing I did like about this novel is how it addresses the situations that kids face everyday: bullying, isolation and ostracism, and parents who aren't sufficiently involved in their day to day sufferings (for whatever reasons).  Of course I hope most parents are better at parenting than Courtney's but I acknowledge that good parents can have so much going on that they don't have the energy to address issues that seem so trivial like being mildly bullied or feeling like a social outcast.  I was bullied and I know how that felt.  I know my mother cared, but how much could she do, day to day? And children are very creative in their cruelty.  Sometimes you just have to grit your teeth and get through it. In a lot of instances, parental interference can make it worse, although there are certainly times when a parent definitely needs to step in.

I didn't like Courtney's dabbling in witchcraft at all.  I have an aversion to witchcraft, so that's part of it. I don't have an issue with magic in the abstract sense, but I really dislike the use of spells to control people (which is the crux of my dislike of witchcraft), which is what Courtney was doing. At least, the author shows the negative results of this, and has Courtney's Great-Great Grand-Uncle step in.

One of the things I wasn't keen on with this book was the ambiguous and somewhat unresolved  and rather dark endings.  Yeah, yeah, that's the whole theme of this book, I know. Maybe this is going back to the overall theme of the inherent darkness of childhood.  I am more of an upbeat ending girl, even as a fan of horror. I think you can have horror and still get a sense of hope, and in the case of Courtney's situations, I don't feel that much hope, even when the original crisis is somewhat resolved.

Will I continue to read this series? Probably, but not back to back. It's a bit too dark to pile these on one after another.  I wish this was in color, but I did like the drawings and the manner in which the character personality is conveyed. And I loved Courtney's hair so much!

Overall, this was pretty good, but I didn't love it, for the reasons above.  It's definitely an appropriate choice to read in the month of October for an atmospheric and horror-esque book.  Or just anytime if you like books that are dark in theme with younger characters.

I think that this book is for readers over 11, more or less okay for the middle grade/juvenile age group.



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