The sequel to Shan’s successful horror debut (not reviewed) is another guilty pleasure. Shan, the author/narrator of this putative true account, is now a “half-vampire” and the assistant to the well-meaning vampire Mr. Crepsley. Since he refuses to drink human blood, Darren is slowly dying. After exiling himself from his family and friends, he is also lonely; so he and Mr. Crepsley return to the freak show where they met. There he bonds with Evra, the reptilian snake-handler, and Sam, a precocious human boy. Unfortunately, he also gets involved with R.V., a stereotypical unwashed hippie eco-warrior, who decides to make his next cause freeing the show’s animal acts. Shan won’t win any literary awards for this one—Darren’s voice is stilted and unconvincing, suspense is created by contrived cliffhangers, ominous foreshadowing keeps falling from the sky like anvils, and the plot is gutted by elementary scientific blunders (such as repeated references to the python’s “poison”). Once Darren becomes a freak-show insider, the eerie creepiness is not so easily maintained; but Shan more than makes up for that by ladling out great glops of macabre grotesquerie: a snake-boy who can lick the inside of his own nose! Mute misshapen dwarfs who feast on human flesh! The circus performer who saws off his own limbs! Gross-out horror fans will devour it and clamor for the next in the series. (Fiction. 10-14)
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-316-60610-3
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2001
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
Jill Jekel and Tristen Hyde are going to need major mojo to win that chemistry scholarship they’re aiming for, because they never seem to do any science. In this ellipsis-laden paranormal romance, the scions of the doomed houses of Jekyll and Hyde—a hand-waving explanation justifies the distinct family trees, and Jill explains that her grandfather changed the spelling of their name when he immigrated, “[y]ou know, to distance us from the bad stuff that happened in England”—fall in love. Tristen wants to save himself from the family curse, which he believes will turn him into a mad killing machine. Jill wants enough money to go to college and get help for her mother, chronically depressed since the mysterious death of Jill’s father. What if Jill holds the ancient Jekyll secret, the chemical formula to create monsters out of men? Can that help Tristen? Sadly, it can’t help this novel. Giving the formula to a boy turns him into a violent killer, but giving it to a girl arouses “hormones” that make her “act so boldly, so embarrassingly forward” and prompt her to demand violence between men while “writhing” against them. There’s plenty of better fantastical love stories for the thirsty fan. (Paranormal romance. 12-14)
Pub Date: May 1, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-15-206390-0
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2010
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