The action picks up in the terrifying Dublin Woods on Halloween Night in 1892. Mick Patrican is badly wounded, and the woods...
Lukegord (The Haunted Trail, 2013) tosses every horror trope imaginable into this sequel.
The action picks up in the terrifying Dublin Woods on Halloween Night in 1892. Mick Patrican is badly wounded, and the woods are crawling with lunatics intent on murder. He knows he must find a safe place to hide, but he’s also charged with locating two magical four-leaf clovers, one of which is ensconced in a mummy’s evil heart. The clovers are the key to defeating the mummy, ending its curse and saving all of Ireland. Luckily for Mick, the ghosts of his dead brothers have stuck around to help him out. However, Lukegord quickly abandons Mick’s quest, turning instead to a series of brutal murders. Police officers are dispatched into Dublin Woods to search for their missing colleagues and sort through the mayhem, and the various teams are swiftly picked off in multiple violent episodes. The officers spend much of the novel stumbling over dead bodies, themselves, and the evil mummy’s resting place. Soon, even more police are dispatched, in what seems to be a narrative excuse to provide new bodies to annihilate. Mick’s quest is finally revisited near the end, when he defeats the mummy and rescues the four-leaf clover, which also contains healing powers. The author finishes with a chapter that focuses on the fates of various underdeveloped characters. Lukegord has an admirable imagination, and he offers a terrifying, intriguing premise. Indeed, a story of haunted woods on Halloween night, filled with lunatics and murderers, feels like something one might see on the big screen. However, readers unfamiliar with Lukegord’s previous novel may have a hard time playing catch-up, although the actual plot here is thin. The narrative jumps from murder to murder, failing to build any suspense. It may be difficult for readers to become invested in characters that make only brief appearances before meeting gruesome deaths. The unfocused narrative also includes too many classic horror-story elements for such a short novel. Interested in a mummy’s curse that started 2,000 years ago “when [the mummy] was mummified in Egypt and possessed by an alien”? That’s only the beginning. Throw in ghosts, cannibals, wolves and leprechauns, and you’ve got yourself a mess.Pub Date: Aug. 27, 2014
ISBN: 978-1499369250
Page Count: 90
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Nov. 12, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
bookshelf
