Combining Korean-American experience with ancient cultural traditions for a new twist on exorcism, this tale’s for beginning...
A neophyte Korean shaman, or “mudang,” takes center stage in this chilling thriller by Oh, of We Need Diverse Books.
The story starts when mixed-race 12-year-old Harper Raine, who is half white and half Korean, moves into a new home in Washington, D.C., that her new Jamaican friend, Dayo, tells her is haunted. Before the Raines left New York City, Harper survived both a fire and a traumatizing illness, but she has blocked all memories of these events. The creepiness ramps up in mind, gut, and heart as readers see Harper’s little brother making a new “friend” in their home. As she witnesses an evil spirit slowly overtaking her brother, Harper’s memories begin to resurface. While Harper selflessly tries to save her brother’s life from multiple evils, she juggles the psychological conflict of her mother’s broken relationship with Harper’s beloved Korean grandmother, who lives nearby. The tension of the life-ending danger stretches across sometimes confusingly paced chapters, as help arrives slowly. While the writing level skews young, the graphic content is gruesome. Readers will not want harm to come to the likable Raine family. The well-rounded and diverse cast provides interesting cultural touchstones of Korean and Jamaican heritage throughout the novel. Korean shamanism, specifically, is explored with respect and curiosity.
Combining Korean-American experience with ancient cultural traditions for a new twist on exorcism, this tale’s for beginning horror fans and readers looking for a decent scare. (Horror. 10-14)Pub Date: July 25, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-06-243008-3
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: April 25, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2017
PROFILES
A fun, if messy, thriller that’s not afraid to go straight over the top.
A middle schooler must outrun a cadre of strange individuals while puzzling out the truth of what he is in this science-fiction offering.
Fourteen-year-old Noah Prime longs to live somewhere bigger than his small town of Arbuckle, Oregon, though he is happily involved in motocross—at least until he learns that the course is being torn down to make way for a condo development. This bad news coincides with some particularly strange happenings in Noah’s life, such as a literal (and very confusing) collision he has with Sahara, a girl that he comes to find very interesting. This is followed by his experiencing a brief and total paralysis while arguing with some bullies, which his friend Ogden, who is on the autism spectrum, insists is due to a psychological phenomenon called conversion disorder. The truth turns out to be much more complex, and it sends Noah, younger sister Andi, Ogden, and Sahara on a madcap quest involving aliens, time travel, an erupting volcano, and much more. The adventure is laced throughout with goofy, sarcastic humor, balancing the fantastical and somewhat confusing turns of events. While there is resolution at the story’s end, it also clearly sets the stage for a follow-up. The main characters read White by default.
A fun, if messy, thriller that’s not afraid to go straight over the top. (Science fiction. 10-14)Pub Date: April 11, 2023
ISBN: 978-0-7595-5524-2
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Jan. 24, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2023
Light on gore and corpses; otherwise a full-bore, uncomplicated shriekfest.
Does anyone who volunteers to spend a night in a derelict haunted hotel on a dare deserve what they get?
“The hotel is hungry. And we aren’t leaving here until it’s fed.” In what reads like a determined effort to check off every trope of the genre, Alexander sends new arrival Jasmine, along with two friends and several dozen other classmates, to the long-abandoned Carlisle Hotel for the annual seventh grade Dare—touching off a night of terror presided over by the leering, autocratic Grand Dame and complete with sudden gusts and blackouts, spectral visions, evil reflections in mirrors, skeletons, a giant spider, gravity reversals, tides of oily black sludge sucking screaming middle schoolers down the drain, and so much more. (No gore, though, aside from a few perfunctory drops of blood from one small scratch.) The author saves a twist for the end, and as inducement to read alone or aloud in the dark by flashlight, both his language and the typography crank up the melodrama: “He walks toward us, past the mirror, and I see it— / a pale white face in the reflection, / a gaunt, skeletal grimace, / with sharpened teeth / and hollow black eyes, staring at him / with its mouth / wide / open / in a scream….” Jasmine presents White; her closest friends are Rohan, whose name cues him as South Asian, and Mira, who has dark skin.
Light on gore and corpses; otherwise a full-bore, uncomplicated shriekfest. (Horror. 10-13)Pub Date: Nov. 2, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-338-70215-6
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Sept. 14, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2021
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