More icky than scary.
YA fearmonger Stine tries his hand at adult horror, with decidedly jejune results.
When travel blogger Lea Sutter (ignoring urgent forecasts) visits a Carolina coastal island just before a hurricane, that is only the first of the foolhardy decisions that Stine’s plot demands. (What if horror characters went on strike and refused to throw caution to the wind?) After the hurricane levels the island, Lea witnesses carnage, lovingly described. While walking in an ominous post-hurricane red rain, she’s approached by two angelic-looking twin boys, Daniel and Samuel, who utter anachronisms in brogue. Instead of calling Child Protective Services, Lea takes the 12-year-old twins home to Sag Harbor over the objections of husband Mark, a child psychologist and the author of a controversial parenting book. The Sutter offspring, Ira, who is also 12, and teenager Elena, resent the interlopers, as does Mark’s sister, Roz, particularly when Daniel, the obvious sociopath of the duo, keeps comparing her young son to a monkey. The book occasionally switches point of view to the twins, so right away readers know they are scamming the well-meaning Long Islanders, but to what end? At the same time, they seem to have a plan for world domination, starting with ruling their new middle school. In fact, the child characters take up so much space that, but for the sex and profanity in the adult sections, this could easily be another Fear Street or Goosebumps chapter book. Aside from wondering when the police (who also share narrative duties) and the Sutters are going to catch on to who is responsible for some bizarre and garishly depicted mayhem, readers will be puzzling over exactly which horror stereotype fits the twins. Are they zombies from the past, as a bit of foreshadowing hinted? Are they demons or just your garden variety bad seeds? Bottom line, they cannot wreak havoc without the witless collusion of the adult characters, who are definitely not on strike.
More icky than scary.Pub Date: Oct. 9, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-4516-3612-3
Page Count: 384
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Sept. 1, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2012
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BOOK REVIEW
A charming and persuasive entry that will leave readers impatiently awaiting the concluding volume.
Book 2 of Hearne's latest fantasy trilogy, The Seven Kennings (A Plague of Giants, 2017), set in a multiracial world thrust into turmoil by an invasion of peculiar giants.
In this world, most races have their own particular magical endowment, or “kenning,” though there are downsides to trying to gain the magic (an excellent chance of being killed instead) and using it (rapid aging and death). Most recently discovered is the sixth kenning, whose beneficiaries can talk to and command animals. The story canters along, although with multiple first-person narrators, it's confusing at times. Some characters are familiar, others are new, most of them with their own problems to solve, all somehow caught up in the grand design. To escape her overbearing father and the unreasoning violence his kind represents, fire-giant Olet Kanek leads her followers into the far north, hoping to found a new city where the races and kennings can peacefully coexist. Joining Olet are young Abhinava Khose, discoverer of the sixth kenning, and, later, Koesha Gansu (kenning: air), captain of an all-female crew shipwrecked by deep-sea monsters. Elsewhere, Hanima, who commands hive insects, struggles to free her city from the iron grip of wealthy, callous merchant monarchists. Other threads focus on the Bone Giants, relentless invaders seeking the still-unknown seventh kenning, whose confidence that this can defeat the other six is deeply disturbing. Under Hearne's light touch, these elements mesh perfectly, presenting an inventive, eye-filling panorama; satisfying (and, where appropriate, well-resolved) plotlines; and tensions between the races and their kennings to supply much of the drama.
A charming and persuasive entry that will leave readers impatiently awaiting the concluding volume.Pub Date: Feb. 4, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-345-54857-3
Page Count: 592
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Nov. 24, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Fans of smart horror will sink their teeth into this one.
Things are about to get bloody for a group of Charleston housewives.
In 1988, the scariest thing in former nurse Patricia Campbell’s life is showing up to book club, since she hasn’t read the book. It’s hard to get any reading done between raising two kids, Blue and Korey, picking up after her husband, Carter, a psychiatrist, and taking care of her live-in mother-in-law, Miss Mary, who seems to have dementia. It doesn’t help that the books chosen by the Literary Guild of Mt. Pleasant are just plain boring. But when fellow book-club member Kitty gives Patricia a gloriously trashy true-crime novel, Patricia is instantly hooked, and soon she’s attending a very different kind of book club with Kitty and her friends Grace, Slick, and Maryellen. She has a full plate at home, but Patricia values her new friendships and still longs for a bit of excitement. When James Harris moves in down the street, the women are intrigued. Who is this handsome night owl, and why does Miss Mary insist that she knows him? A series of horrific events stretches Patricia’s nerves and her Southern civility to the breaking point. (A skin-crawling scene involving a horde of rats is a standout.) She just knows James is up to no good, but getting anyone to believe her is a Sisyphean feat. After all, she’s just a housewife. Hendrix juxtaposes the hypnotic mundanity of suburbia (which has a few dark underpinnings of its own) against an insidious evil that has taken root in Patricia’s insular neighborhood. It’s gratifying to see her grow from someone who apologizes for apologizing to a fiercely brave woman determined to do the right thing—hopefully with the help of her friends. Hendrix (We Sold Our Souls, 2018, etc.) cleverly sprinkles in nods to well-established vampire lore, and the fact that he’s a master at conjuring heady 1990s nostalgia is just the icing on what is his best book yet.
Fans of smart horror will sink their teeth into this one.Pub Date: April 7, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-68369-143-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Quirk Books
Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
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