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Book Review: Rules for Vanishing by Kate Alice Marshall

Rules for Vanishing by Kate Alice Marshall

Viking Books for Young Readers, 2019

ISBN-13: 978-1984837011

Available: Hardcover, paperback, Kindle edition

 

 

The legend of Lucy Gallows says that 12 year old Lucy Callow ran into the woods after an argument with her mother, and when her brother went after her, he saw her step onto a road, and as she walked away, both she and the road vanished, never to be found.

Sara Donoghue’s sister Becca was obsessed with the legend of Lucy Gallows, going so far as to fill a notebook with thoughts, drawings, photographs, and clues that could lead her to the vanished road and find Lucy.  A year ago, on April 18, Becca disappeared, and Sara is certain her sister found her way to the road. Now everyone in her school has received a text message to find a partner and a key to find the road by midnight. Anthony, Trina, Kyle, Mel and Nick were Becca and Sara’s closest friends, and despite doubts, all of them show up to see if the road appears. The road has seven gates, and you need a partner to hold on to as you take the thirteen necessary (and disorienting) steps through each gate.  Becca’s notebook contains rules for traveling on the road:

Don’t leave the road.

When it’s dark, don’t let go.

There are other roads. Don’t follow them.

The road does appear, but since three of the friends have shown up with partners for the game, there is an odd number, meaning someone won’t have a partner. And in the dark, it’s easy to get separated and accidentally step off the road. The teens are not on a friendly stroll here; they are on a terrible road with frightening and sometimes deadly obstacles, and once they’re through the gate, they can’t turn back. But they also can’t help breaking the rules. If the reader isn’t filled with dread at the beginning of their journey, it won’t take long for that to happen.

Marshall constructs her story in a complicated way. First, we get Sara’s relatively straightforward narrative, told entirely from her point of view.  Then we move to a point past the events on the road,  with transcripts from interviews with Sara, and others who were on the journey, by Andrew Ashford, a discredited researcher of the paranormal.  There’s also documentation of what happened before the teens stepped onto the road (through text messages between Sara’s friends) and while they were on it (cell phone recordings and videos, and photographs) suggesting that maybe Sara’s story is not as straightforward or reliable as it seems to be. Marshall balances these nicely to create a cohesive, if sometimes hallucinatory, story.   The creativity of the story and the work that goes in to structuring a book like this are impressive. I wasn’t a big fan of most of the characters, but the world-building is outstanding (although I am curious as to why the author chose to ground her story in a legend from Brittany when the book is set in Massachusetts), and the suspense is terrific.

I wonder if this is meant to stand alone (it certainly can) or if it’s meant to be part of a longer series about Andrew Ashford’s investigations of the paranormal, which I would find intriguing. Either way, for those who like the puzzle of pulling a story together, it’s a compelling and worthwhile read. Recommended.

Contains: Violence, gore,  murder

 

Reviewed by Kirsten Kowalewski

 

Editor’s note:  Rules for Vanishing was nominated to the final ballot of the 2019 Bram Stoker Award in the category of Superior Achievement in a Young Adult Novel.

Posted on March 31, 2020 by , Reply

Book Review: Oware Mosaic by Nzondi

Oware Mosaic by Nzondi

Omnnium Gatherum, 2019

ISBN-13: 978-1949054163

Available: Paperback, Kindle edition

 

I am always excited to see Afrofuturist writing getting positive recognition, so I was really looking forward to reading Oware Mosaic.  The novel is set in Ghana in 2025, following worldwide natural disasters caused by climate change and a nuclear war leading to  a “Final Event” that created radioactive areas and caused mutations in the animals in Ghana.  Instead of cell phones and computers, people have neural implants that serve as communication, entertainment, and information searching devices. Seventeen-year-old Feeni is an “ennie”, an “enhanced human” who “gains sustenance from blood” but is not a vampire. Ennies are persecuted, killed, and trafficked by anti-ennie humans.  Feeni grew up in abusive foster homes, although she is now living with her own family, a close-knit group that can get crowded. Her escape is an immersive online game, House of Oware, where she plays the character of a forensic scientist. Real-life cases are sometimes assigned to her online character, and she finds herself investigating a hit-and-run she was responsible for and covered up.

Despite my really wanting to love this, there is a serious flaw in this book that made suspension of disbelief for this book impossible for me. The book is set in 2025 (it is not an alternate reality, as it references Obama’s election and the recent television show Uncle Grandpa,  among other things), and a majority of the characters have neural implants. There is absolutely no way so many people would have such a piece of technology surgically implanted in the next five years. Nzondi is inconsistent and sometimes unrealistic in the way he presents Feeni and the way she moves, dresses, and talks, and some of his cultural references are confusing. I enjoyed the interactions with family members and out in the community, which created a much-needed rounding out of the Ghanaian setting (and he did this really well), but it also slowed the story down, and it’s unclear where the plot is going. There is the germ of a good story in here but it needs much more work for that to emerge. Based on what I read, though, I don’t think I can recommend this as YA horror. Is this science fiction? Post-apocalyptic fiction? Crime fiction? A combination? If Nzondi decides to reshape the story, I will be interested to see how he does it.

 

Editor’s note:  Oware Mosaic was nominated to the final ballot of the 2019 Bram Stoker Award in the category of Superior Achievement in a Young Adult Novel.

 

Posted on March 19, 2020 by , Reply

Book Review: Speak No Evil by Liana Gardner

Speak No Evil by Liana Gardner

Vesuvian Books, 2019

ISBN-13: 978-1944109363

Available: Hardcover, paperback, Kindle edition

 

Speak No Evil is an unusual book in that while it has some mild supernatural elements, is really about the often unspeakable horror of what humans do to each other.  Melody is a selectively mute 16 year old girl in foster care, going through court-mandated therapy after stabbing a popular boy at her high school. The therapist, Dr. Roger Kane, needs to get Melody to speak so she can make a statement about the events that led to the stabbing and the case can be resolved.

Melody has a gift with music that is almost supernatural, and a unique backstory. Her biracial mother and her family belonged to an evangelical snake-handling church, and her Cherokee father reached an agreement with Melody’s mother and the church’s pastor that he would care for the snakes, healing and releasing them when they were ill and replacing them with newly caught ones. Melody, while not allowed near the snakes, can charm them with her singing. When her parents die, she is removed from her uncle’s care after he threatens her with a rattlesnake, and she enters the foster care system. Melody has a loving, long term relationship with her Native American foster mother, a wise woman who encourages Melody’s singing. Unfortunately, her foster mother is elderly and becomes ill. Melody has to go to a different placement with a family that overlooks disturbing behavior on the part of their son that eventually results in violence towards her, and then a placement with a different family that results in even more traumatic experiences, bullying at school, and, after she tells her social worker what happened, a life-threatening assault. The icky, vicious, and vile things done to Melody are very convincingly written, a punch to the gut. This combination of circumstances over time has convinced Melody that every time she speaks up, something terrible happens, so she refuses to speak, even to defend herself. It’s a heartbreaking story.

Her therapist is able to get her to open up by approaching her through her love of music.  Choosing music that communicates her feelings from her MP3 player starts to get Melody to open up, bit by bit. Most of the music is original to the book;  it was written by Lucas Astor and is attributed either to Melody (such as “Rattlesnake Song”, which she sings spontaneously to charm snakes) or appears in the story as unnamed choices from her MP3 player. The lyrics are a perfect fit to the story, and I only wish that the music had been recorded.

Dr. Kane’s nonconfrontational approach to what are clearly symptoms of PTSD allows Melody to share at her own pace, building up her comfort level until she’s able to communicate verbally. Gardner segues smoothly between therapy sessions and Melody’s memories, but the memories are out of order chronologically, which makes it a little difficult to follow the story. While I found the therapist and his approach interesting, I was somewhat surprised by his level of informality with Melody and his strong dislike of  Melody’s foster mother (not the most insightful person, but obviously trying to make things work). Melody’s strong, positive relationship with her caseworker, Miss Prescott, was also surprising, as Miss Prescott left Melody in terrible situations, completely obliviously, two separate times.  Gardner makes it clear, though, that both adults are solidly in Melody’s corner.

In a note, Gardner writes that the story comes in part from her personal experiences, and her writing gives a powerful voice to Melody and other girls and women who feel they cannot speak to defend and protect themselves. Speak No Evil is certainly a novel for the #MeToo era. I’m not sure it belongs in the horror genre, but it certainly contains horrors, and it isn’t a book that will be forgotten easily.  Recommended for high school and YA library collections.

Contains: Violence, reptile torture and killing, child abuse, child sexual abuse, rape, attempted rape, bullying.

 

Editor’s note:  Speak No Evil was nominated to the final ballot of the 2019 Bram Stoker Award in the category of Superior Achievement in a Young Adult Novel.

 

 

Posted on March 15, 2020 by , Reply
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