Not, alas, quite ready for prime time.
When modern 16-year-old Megan McGowan falls to her death from the cliffs at Fort Williams, the spirit of Abby Cummings, who died in a shipwreck off the Maine coast in 1883, awakens to help her.
Abby has risen several times over the years to help the spirits of the conflicted departed move on by resolving the issues they left unfinished in life. Now the girls must discover what is holding Megan back, and that means finding out if her fall was an accident, suicide or murder. Abby herself must avoid the vengeful spirit of her uncle, the Rev. Wheeler, who serves a darker master than he did in life, and discover why she is drawn to teenager Jim Burke. Can the girls avoid Wheeler, his Hell Hounds and the Reapers and solve the mystery in time? Hautala died in early 2013, and this, his last novel, shows signs of premature separation. Obviously planned as the start of a series, this stiff, melodramatic offering would have improved over subsequent drafts had its author lived. Clichéd characters, an obvious mystery, a fuzziness to the supernatural logic, and a rushed, unsatisfying climax belie Hautala’s Bram Stoker Lifetime Achievement Award. An unease in balancing child and (frequently foulmouthed) adult characters further marks the story as still in development. Nevertheless, kids who find their curiosity piqued by unresolved questions about Abby’s world may hope for the stories to continue, as a tantalizing ending suggests.
Not, alas, quite ready for prime time. (Supernatural mystery. 12-14)Pub Date: Feb. 7, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-940161-30-3
Page Count: 232
Publisher: JournalStone
Review Posted Online: Dec. 17, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2014
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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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
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