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Book Review: The Bone Carver (The Night Weaver, Book 2) by Monique Snyman

cover art for The Bone Carver by Monique Snyman

The Bone Carver (The Night Weaver, Book 2) by Monique Snyman

Vesuvian Press, 2020

ISBN-13 : 978-1645480082

Available: Paperback, Kindle edition ( Bookshop.org   | Amazon.com )

 

The Bone Carver is the sequel to The Night Weaver, a previous Stoker nominee in the YA category. These two factors mean it has a high bar to jump, as the second book in a series usually isn’t able to stand alone.

In The Night Weaver, seventeen-year old Rachel Cleary lives in the isolated New England community of Shadow Grove. She discovers her neighbor across the street, Mrs. Crenshaw, is a guardian protecting the boundary between our world and the fae realm in Shadow Grove. While out with Rachel, Mrs. Crenshaw’s visiting grandson, Dougal, recognizes the Black Annis, a fae creature who feeds on children. With the help of her former boyfriend, Greg, and Dougal, Rachel realizes there is a pattern of children’s disappearances over time that has been covered up by the town council and the sheriff. Complicating this mess is the involvement of a Orion, a drug-dealing fairy prince who has a strange connection with Rachel. She defeats the Night Weaver and saves the children.

The Bone Carver continues Rachel’s story. Reasonably wanting to escape Shadow Grove and go to college, Rachel has studied hard, but unfortunately she has a panic attack during her SATs.  Dougal is now enrolled in school with her, Greg is attempting to make her jealous, Orion has returned to the fae realm, and a creepy new boy, Cam, is following her around. Entering an abandoned part of her high school, she discovers popular girl Mercia, who has epilepsy, having a seizure, and helps her recover. After the seizure is over, Rachel finds a bone carving of Mercia having a seizure.  Later that day, after Mrs. Crenshaw falls and breaks her hip,  Rachel finds another bone carving. Rachel is convinced a “miser fae” called the Bone Carver is causing the accidents. As more people find disturbing bone carvings of themselves, Rachel and Dougal investigate, and find gory evidence of powerful fae magic. They determine that Rachel needs to enter the fae realm to find Orion.

Mercia reveals that she is a witch able to open a dimensional portal to the fae realm, and Rachel goes through, wanders aimlessly, causes a disaster, is kidnapped by Orion’s older brother Nova, the king of the fairies, and finally leaves with Orion to (hopefully) save the day. During her five days in fairyland, things have gotten exponentially worse, with people, including her mother, ending up in the hospital or acting violent or irrational, and the high school in a shambles. Despite her recent desire to flee Shadow Grove, Rachel decides she is willing to die to take the Bone Carver down and save the town.

The Bone Carver is suitably chilling and gruesome and doesn’t stint on body horror. Snyman has a talent for vivid description, as evidenced by Rachel’s visions of the vicious deaths the Bone Carver has inflicted on the girls he’s murdered. The plot around Jenny, Rachel’s mother, was extremely disturbing. There’s a heavy #MeToo, anti-incel message to the book as well, and the scenes between Rachel and Greg, Rachel and Cam, and Rachel and the Bone Carver thoroughly creeped me out.

However, what most impressed me, was the author’s depiction of Mercia. She is a well-developed character: competent, smart, caring, attractive, and popular, and when Greg gets irrational and handsy with Rachel, Mercia has no problem knocking him out. It’s easy to write a character who is living with epilepsy as an invalid or pitiful and in need of rescue, but Mercia is never written that way or treated like one by other characters. Although she comes from a family of witches (and it irritated me that her epilepsy was magically caused) she isn’t effortlessly “magical”, and she isn’t suddenly “cured” at the end of the story. In fact, her seizures aren’t quite under control, and she needs medication to help. As someone living with epilepsy I can tell you that this is a character type I have NEVER seen in any book depicting someone living with epilepsy in any age group or genre, and it was absolutely a pleasure to read this.

Unfortunately, Mercia is one of the few characters that actually did have character development and purpose in the book. Dougal and Mrs. Crenshaw are out of the picture for a majority of the book, Greg is essentially a plot device, and after all the to-do about going to the fae realm and bringing back Orion, I question whether he was useful enough to justify Rachel’s disappearing for five days while everything fell to pieces. There’s a huge reveal at the end of the book, so I assume he’ll be more involved in book three. While a nice addition to the series, though, The Bone Carver really cannot stand alone as a novel, and doesn’t hold together as well as the first book. For its depiction of a character living with epilepsy, however, I highly recommend it.

 

Contains: body horror, gore, violence, sexual assault, mentions of self-harm and suicide.

 

Reviewed by Kirsten Kowalewski

 

Editor’s note: The Bone Carver (Shadow Grove, Vol. #2) is a nominee on the final ballot for the Bram Stoker Award in the category of Superior Achievement in a Young Adult Novel.

 

Posted on May 7, 2021 by , Reply

Musings: Clown in a Cornfield by Adam Cesare

 

cover art for Clown in a Cornfield by Adam Cesare  (  Bookshop.org |  Amazon.com )

Clown in a Cornfield by Adam Cesare

HarperTeen, 2020

ISBN-13 : 978-0062854599

Available: Hardcover, Kindle edition, audiobook

 

Clown in a Cornfield has the cover art, title, and pacing I’d expect from a pulp paperback from the 1970s-1980s, but a very contemporary feel. It takes place in a small, rural town in Missouri. Quinn Maybrook has just moved from Philadelphia to Kettle Springs, where her father has taken over the town doctor’s practice to give both of them a fresh start after her mother died by drug overdose. A year prior to the events of the book, Cole Hill and his friends livestreamed a prank for their YouTube channel that led to the accidental death of Cole’s younger sister, and shortly before the story begins, Cole attempted to burn down an abandoned factory owned by his father’s company, Baypen. Baypen’s mascot is a clown, Frendo, and it might as well be Kettle Springs’ mascot, as well.

Quinn’s first day at school gets a rocky start when she is caught in the crossfire between Cole and his friends and the science teacher as he angrily ejects them from his classroom, but she soon finds herself included in the group. Quinn discovers that almost everything they do is to get an on-camera reaction. A dangerous prank at the town’s Founder’s Day parade causes a lot of anger in the community, especially from the sheriff, who holds a lot of power and is a very convincing man.

The teens have planned a party in a barn in the middle of a cornfield on the farm of a family who has left on vacation, and despite the damage, a huge crowd arrives to drink and dance. That’s when Frendo, the clown, shows up, and events quickly escalate into a large-scale, fast-paced, violent, and bloody massacre.

Small, rural towns in mid-America tend to be very conservative, very white, and attached to traditional values. They are mostly financially depressed, mainly because nearby manufacturing has failed and family farming isn’t very profitable. Gun ownership, especially for hunting, is common. And communities are usually small enough that their identities center on high school sports, including the mascots. I’ve worked in a really small, rural town, and every day when I got off the highway exit I drove past miles and miles of corn. Cesare really captures the character of these communities, and while some characters are relatively stock, such as the sheriff, others are well-fleshed out.  I especially was impressed with the portrayal of Rust,  who could easily have been a cariacature of a gun-happy redneck but instead was a nuanced, thoughtful, and resourceful character. There’s also positive representation of gay characters, and an interesting Asian “mean girl”.

My daughter didn’t feel that the motivation for the massacre was believable, but having watched the events of the past week play out, I can now fully believe that clowns could turn in a violent and deadly way on people they feel alienated from if they believe there is a threat to their way of life. Clown in a Cornfield moves along quickly and may appeal to reluctant readers. Slasher fans and teens looking for a terrifying, gory story will find it here. Highly recommended for grades 9+.

Contains: extreme violence, gore, murder, body horror

 

 

Posted on January 14, 2021 by , Reply

Book List: Chosen Ones: Most Unlikely To Be Chosen

We all know the “Chosen One” trope that is prevalent though all kinds of literature and media from King Arthur to Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and its mutated dystopian form that divides families and communities, as in Veronica Roth’s Divergent and Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale to produce its hero.

But being the “one girl to save the world” or “the Boy who Lived” isn’t always what it’s cracked up to be. Recently, I’m seeing a number of takes on Chosen Ones that are a little different.

cover for Chosen Ones by Veronica Roth  ( Bookshop.org )

Chosen Ones is Veronica Roth’s newest book, and after her runaway success with Divergent, a series grounded in the “chosen one” trope, it’s interesting to see what she does with it.  In it, the government receives a prophecy that could describe any of a number of children. It’s not clear which one is the Chosen One in the prophecy, so all five of the children are trained together to defeat the Evil One. Roth focuses on what happens when the battle is over and the Chosen Ones grow up. Is the battle really over, though?

 

cover art for Slayer and Chosen by Kiersten White  ( Bookshop.org )

Slayer and Chosen are Kiersten White’s contributions to the Buffyverse. Twins Nina and Artemis live in an Irish castle with what’s left of the Council of Watchers, two months after Buffy shut down all interdimensional portals and destroyed magic, killing off many of the Watchers and potential Slayers, and disappeared. Nina has always felt inferior to Artemis, believing she is only good at being the castle medic, and pretty much everyone around her has shared that belief, but it turns out that she is much more than anyone could have expected.

 

cover art for Un Lun Dun by China Mieville     ( Bookshop.org )

Un Lun Dun by China Mieville is an older title, but one I just encountered myself. It looks like it’s going to be a conventional “Chosen One” story, but plays with the tropes in some surprising ways. Londoners Zanna (the prophesied Chosen One) and her friend Deeba enter UnLondon, a surreal alternate London that gives a new life to the broken and out-of-date things that have been discarded or forgotten by the original Londoners. UnLondon is threatened by a fantastical, sentient version of a very real problem; Smog. Unfortunately for Zanna, the prophecies aren’t exactly right, and Mieville knocks home to the reader that you don’t have to be chosen to save the world. With living words and clothes made from the pages of books, this has a lot in common with The Phantom Tollbooth, but it has some very dark and grim moments among the playfulness, and its urban, underground alternate reality is very reminiscent of Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere. 

images for covers of Simon Snow series books by Rainbow Rowell ( Bookshop.org )

Carry On and Wayward Son are the first two books of a trilogy about Simon Snow (the third, As The Way The Wind Blows, comes out in 2021), the hero of a fictional series created in Rainbow Rowell’s standalone novel Fangirl, where the main character writes fanfic about the series, which itself seems to be loosely based on the Harry Potter books. In Carry On, supposedly the last book in a series of eight, we learn that Simon was told by a Dumbledore-type character that he was chosen to defeat the evil Humdrum. While Simon has his good friend Penelope watching his back, he’s basically no good at magic, his girlfriend has dumped him, he isn’t all that excited about being a Chosen One. Fangirl’s Cath mainly focused on a developing romantic relationship between Simon and his vampire nemesis/roommate Baz, and that is pretty essential to the plot. Wayward Son follows Simon after his final battle with the Humdrum, at a loss of what to do with himself or even communicate with the people who care about him. In an attempt to break him out of this state of mind, Penelope and Baz suggest a road trip across America. It’s kind of an interesting idea to explore “what happens next” in this way, but the lack of communication, especially between Simon and Baz, throughout the majority of the book, drove me bonkers. In both books, Baz is the most interesting and shows the most growth. It is interesting to see Rowell play with and critique the Chosen One tropes while shifting the focus, and the overt LGBTQ+ love story.

cover art for Trials of Apollo by Rick Riordan box set  ( Bookshop.org )

The Trials of Apollo series by Rick Riordan is the most adult of Riordan’s series in the Percy Jackson universe. Beginning with The Hidden Oracle, the fifth and last book in this series, The Tower of Nero, was just released a few months ago. In this series, the arrogant, selfish, handsome Apollo, god of music, prophecy, the sun, and archery is tossed from Olympus by an angry Zeus in the form of a powerless, pimply teenager and forced to serve a sullen tween girl while making up for the harm he has thoughtlessly caused for others, not just in the past but in the present, which turns out to include not just redeeming himself but saving the world. This series has some great LGBTQ+ representation, not just in Apollo but with other characters.

 

cover art for Unchosen by Katharyn Blair  ( Bookshop.org )

Unchosen by Katharyn Blair, soon to be released, takes place in an apocalyptic dystopian future, where a plague called the Crimson that is spread by eye contact is turning people into ravenous, flesh-eating, intelligent zombies. Charlotte, the narrator, is the unnoticed middle sister to Harlow, who leads a band of survivors, and Vanessa, the Chosen One. Charlotte and Vanessa share a bedroom, and as Vanessa mutters prophecies in her sleep, Charlotte writes them down. When raiders seeking the Chosen One attack their encampment, Charlotte claims to be the Chosen One in order to protect Vanessa.

 

   ( Bookshop.org )

The Year of the Witching by Alexis Henderson has a completely different approach and it is the closest to straight horror on this list. This story takes place in an isolated, patriarchal, oppressive, religious community.  The protagonist, Immanuelle, doesn’t know she was chosen for anything special, and doesn’t want to be. She has not been told or even given a choice in the role she will play in the destruction of her community.

 

Posted on December 27, 2020 by , Reply
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