An ambitious debut but too rough-cut for general release.
Aiden Strong meets new friends in the lands of the dead.
The 15-year-old protagonist who can (as it is redundantly put) “see the ghosts of dead people” enters a series of post-mortem pocket realms where, along with repeatedly failing to defeat a megalomaniac with a device that eats people’s hearts, he meets a group of deceased teens (who can “faze” through walls). He is attached to them by mysterious blue Trancey Strings, and the only way to cut the Strings involves revisiting the scene of each teenager’s death. Aiden goes on to witness suicides (one described at length in detail), murders, and a death in a house fire. Meanwhile, he saves one new dead friend but not another from something “like experiencing death again” in the flares of Infinite Flames. In one of several shoehorned-in side quests, a supporting character hits a mall with a nondead teen after everyone else on Earth somehow vanishes (temporarily, presumably). The writing is unfortunately muddled, repetitive, and in need of a stronger editorial hand: For example, Aiden’s curly hair is repeatedly and awkwardly mentioned throughout (“the curly-haired brother looked back at his straight-haired siblings,” “…the curly-haired male replied…”). Most main characters are assumed White; the one character identified as Black sacrifices her life to save a White person. The descriptions of mental illness in the context of a school shooting are troubling and feed into negative stereotypes.
An ambitious debut but too rough-cut for general release. (Fantasy. 12-14)Pub Date: March 1, 2023
ISBN: 9780645299571
Page Count: 342
Publisher: Moonglow Publishing
Review Posted Online: Feb. 7, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2023
A trilogy opener both rich and strange, if heavy at the front end.
Riggs spins a gothic tale of strangely gifted children and the monsters that pursue them from a set of eerie, old trick photographs.
The brutal murder of his grandfather and a glimpse of a man with a mouth full of tentacles prompts months of nightmares and psychotherapy for 15-year-old Jacob, followed by a visit to a remote Welsh island where, his grandfather had always claimed, there lived children who could fly, lift boulders and display like weird abilities. The stories turn out to be true—but Jacob discovers that he has unwittingly exposed the sheltered “peculiar spirits” (of which he turns out to be one) and their werefalcon protector to a murderous hollowgast and its shape-changing servant wight. The interspersed photographs—gathered at flea markets and from collectors—nearly all seem to have been created in the late 19th or early 20th centuries and generally feature stone-faced figures, mostly children, in inscrutable costumes and situations. They are seen floating in the air, posing with a disreputable-looking Santa, covered in bees, dressed in rags and kneeling on a bomb, among other surreal images. Though Jacob’s overdeveloped back story gives the tale a slow start, the pictures add an eldritch element from the early going, and along with creepy bad guys, the author tucks in suspenseful chases and splashes of gore as he goes. He also whirls a major storm, flying bullets and a time loop into a wild climax that leaves Jacob poised for the sequel.
A trilogy opener both rich and strange, if heavy at the front end. (Horror/fantasy. 12-14)Pub Date: June 7, 2011
ISBN: 978-1-59474-476-1
Page Count: 234
Publisher: Quirk Books
Review Posted Online: March 30, 2014
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SEEN & HEARD
Not much forward momentum but a tasty array of chills, thrills, and chortles.
The victory of Jacob and his fellow peculiars over the previous episode’s wights and hollowgasts turns out to be only one move in a larger game as Riggs (Tales of the Peculiar, 2016, etc.) shifts the scene to America.
Reading largely as a setup for a new (if not exactly original) story arc, the tale commences just after Jacob’s timely rescue from his decidedly hostile parents. Following aimless visits back to newly liberated Devil’s Acre and perfunctory normalling lessons for his magically talented friends, Jacob eventually sets out on a road trip to find and recruit Noor, a powerful but imperiled young peculiar of Asian Indian ancestry. Along the way he encounters a semilawless patchwork of peculiar gangs, syndicates, and isolated small communities—many at loggerheads, some in the midst of negotiating a tentative alliance with the Ymbryne Council, but all threatened by the shadowy Organization. The by-now-tangled skein of rivalries, romantic troubles, and family issues continues to ravel amid bursts of savage violence and low comedy (“I had never seen an invisible person throw up before,” Jacob writes, “and it was something I won’t soon forget”). A fresh set of found snapshots serves, as before, to add an eldritch atmosphere to each set of incidents. The cast defaults to white but includes several people of color with active roles.
Not much forward momentum but a tasty array of chills, thrills, and chortles. (Horror/Fantasy. 12-14)Pub Date: Oct. 2, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-7352-3214-3
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: Sept. 1, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2018
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SEEN & HEARD
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