Review: 'Something Strange and Deadly' by Susan Dennard

"Dead!" a woman screamed. "It's the Dead!

...I'd heard of corpses awakening --- hungry and dangerous though still quite dead.

The purpose of bells in coffins was, after all, to warn us; but if the word on the

street was true, then in the last week more than a few bodies had escaped their graves.

Eleanor Fitt, of the Philadelphia Fitts, has a lot on her mind; her brother is missing and her mother refuses to recognize the truth about the family's financial situation.  And then there are the rumors of a Necromancer leading an army of Dead.  Animated corpses are nothing new, there is a reason cemeteries are surrounded by fences, but a Necromancer has the power to raise and control the Dead.  Eleanor is determined to track down her brother even if that means facing the Dead and working with socially "unacceptable" people - the only ones who can stand against a Necromancer.

Susan Dennard has crafted a wonderfully detailed and original novel that adds a new twist to the YA zombie cannon.  Readers will relate well to both the lead female and male characters.  Eleanor is a strong heroine who is not afraid to fight for her convictions, while Daniel is a multifaceted blend reformed criminal and absentminded inventor.  Several of the secondary characters are integral to the story and add an interesting multi-cultural element to the story.  Historically accurate details add to the story - Eleanor's internal monologue includes pondering the constriction of her corset and how it inhibits movement.

Dennard handles the "zombie" element in a way that blends traditional walking dead elements with modern twists.  In Dennard's world burial doesn't always mean a body's final rest - periodically the dead become the Dead, rising from their grave, driven by a supernatural craving for human flesh.  The Dead can only be controlled by a Necromancer who can use them for his or her own nefarious purposes.

Readers looking for an original novel filled with action and suspense will enjoy Dennard's 'Something Strange and Deadly' and will look forward to the next novel in the series.

Book Source: Local Library
Reviewed by: Rebecca

Recommended Ages: 12+ Zombie violence, paranormal elements

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Review: '172 Hours on the Moon' by Johan Harstad

It’s 2019 and NASA has decided to send another manned mission to a secret space station built years earlier on the moon. To sway public opinion, a worldwide lottery is held among all eligible teens, three of whom will be sent with a crew of trained astronauts to spend 172 hours on the moon. Now Mia, a Norwegian teen looking for free
publicity for her punk band; Midori, a Japanese teen obsessed with moving away from her traditional family; and Antoine, a French teen recovering from a bad breakup, must train and complete the mission while the world watches. Unfortunately, the moon holds one secret the crew wasn’t prepared for – a secret that is bent on killing all of them.

Science fiction horror novels aren’t my usual reading fare, but this book was so hyped, that I thought I’d give it a try. Unfortunately, the hype was undeserved and the book suffered from a number of problems. First of all, this is the English translation of a book originally written in Norwegian. I have read translated books before that worked really well; this was not one of those. The translation seemed rushed, the sentences felt stilted, and the overall feel of the book was clinical. It was also obvious from the writing style that Harstad primarily writes scripts. The benefit of this was that I could practically see the second half of this novel as a movie, but I had
hard time appreciating it as prose.

Harstad also spent far too much time on set up, introducing the characters and the training program. The crew doesn’t even land on the moon until halfway through the novel. This would be fine if I actually felt like I knew and sympathized with the teens by the time the landed, but I didn’t. In fact, there is hardly any character development and none of the characters are likeable. Even though the book is told from all three teens’ points of view, Mia is arguably the main character. She is also the least likable and the least believable. It is hard to get pulled into the suspense of a horror novel when the set up takes so long and readers don’t sympathize with
the characters.

The horror and suspense elements were also lacking. It is hard to get pulled into the suspense of a horror novel when the set up takes half the book and readers don’t sympathize with the characters. The other problem is that the “bad guy” is never fully described and explanations about why or what was happening were left vague. Whether that was intentional or not, it made it difficult to understand what was actually terrorizing the crew. In the end, the book just wasn’t scary and the twist ending didn’t seem possible based on known plot events.

172 Hours on the Moon had so much potential and could have been a unique, thrilling, terrifying YA read. Instead it stumbles at every turn and, ultimately, leaves readers unsatisfied.

Book Source: my local library
Reviewer: Kimberly

Recommended Ages: 16+ for violence and horror elements

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Chills, Thrills & Daniel Radcliffe!

U.K. Edition 2011

Harry Potter is all grown up and graduated to a wonderfully gothic looking film.  In February 2012 The Woman In Black will open just in time to scare the pants off all those lovers for Valentine's Day!  After being creeped out by the trailer (and discovering that the film is based on a novel) I decided to read the original text.  Susan Hill's The Woman in Black was first published in 1986 and lead to one of the longest running West End plays to ever thrill and audience.
The plot is rather simple: A young lawyer, Arthur, is sent out from London to a small villiage to handle the post-mortem affairs of one of the firm's odder clients.  When he arrives in the village he discovers that there is a bit more to the woman's affairs than he expected and soon encounters a vengeful spirit tied to a mystery more than 50 years old.
A few pages into the first chapter of Hill's masterpiece, I realized that I had seen the play many years previously at the Alley Theatre in Houston - without realizing that the script was based on a novel.  I remember the play as being wonderfully atmospheric and spine-tingling and was certainly not dissapointed in the original story.  Ms. Hill has a way of describing a scene while still allowing the reader to use their imagination:

 "Tonight, I smelled at once, and with a lightening heart, that there had been a change in the weather. All the previous week, we had had rain, chilling rain and a mist that lay low about the house and over the countryside...Inside the house, the lamps were lit throughout the day and the walls of larder, outhouse and cellar oozed damp and smelled sour, the fires sputtered and smoked, burning dismally low."

(Chapter 1).

Like the very best of gothic fiction, The Woman in Black is both mentally engaging and wonderfully dark.  I was unable to put this novel down and finished in about a day. Highly recommended.  This is one of my new favorites and I can't wait for the movie!

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