Rachel Smith's Blog: Guinea Pigs and Books, page 44

“Flesh is a trap and magic sets us free.”

79. Fatal Magic – Janice Harrell

A tiger and car crash descriptions are the main takeaways from this novel. This is not necessarily a good thing. Harry, the magician’s son who is clearly learning from his father, is well creepy and also has the arrogance to think a tiger you ask to eat high school students is going to stay controllable…it’s a tiger. As for Blythe, she was one of those girls who thinks she’s got to check it out when there’s something weird going on at a big mansion. You know that type of human. They can never get it out of their system by going once, either.

Ozymandias knows the type.

 

Danger Crumples loved exploring. He wouldn’t leave anything unturned or unsniffed.

“The sun won’t set for hours, Take your time”

66. Home Before Dark – Beverly Hastings

Sarah moves from Los Angeles to Overton, OH, a town with a complex about not being Los Angeles displayed through Sarah’s old school “not that women’s lib crap” uncle, Rick the high school jerk who she thankfully slams in the gut with a textbook once he corners her in the library after another student has been raped in the town and she’s scared enough, her new boyfriend Mike who has an anger problem but is mostly okay, and actually I guess it’s really very much the men’s problem… Feeling inadequate, I guess. Sarah doesn’t seem particularly concerned about the comparisons, she is not Stacey from the Babysitter’s Club who has diabetes and is from New York Ci-tay.

No, Sarah is more concerned about making and keeping friends like Julie while also being “mule headed” level stubborn, this Melodie character who targets her for dating her ex-boyfriend (who she broke up with, seriously, Melodie, even in L.A. I’m sure that kind of dibs just isn’t a real thing), and being on student council – oh and not getting raped or murdered like the young women in Overton who, according to the killer, are “tramps.”

Snuffy thinks “musk ox headed” would be better (the musk ox is her sister animal).

 

Who’re you calling a tramp? Snuffy as a very normal guinea pig student.

Death to false metal

38. Tower of Evil – Mary Main

Tory has had to move in with her aunt after her parents are tragically killed. Her aunt is some big time architect and she lives on a beach which is protected through the efforts of one of the other residents, Dag, who is slowly taking over the band he’s in so he can better express his ego as the singer. Dag has a daughter and is a single parent and is also quite the sleazeball and worships Moloch, who is a Canaanite bull that likes child sacrifices. For some reason, Dag does not make this front and center in his records despite being some sort of rock musician. Tory wants to hang out with his daughter, who has also lost a parent, and Dag is all like no, she is silent and has a destiny and aren’t you interested in my hideous mask collection and music? Tory isn’t and frankly, I don’t think Dag was ready for the rejection. He thought he was a cool guy who could easily manipulate teenagers and push them into occult worship. Not so much.

Hen Wen’s withering skeptical glare – Dag didn’t even have any purple blankets, how could anyone be tempted without the coveted purple blankets?

 

Hen Wen knows her weirdo occult metal films, she can be trusted when it comes to advising on whether or not you should hang out with that sleazebag.

And I thought all touring productions were like Vampire Circus.

10. The Stalker – Carol Ellis

Janna…apparently is very good looking. Good looking enough that some random dude knows her name even though she’s just dancing in the chorus of a touring production of Grease.

She also has a shitty, controlling ex-boyfriend. Don’t we all? And she has a maybe love interest in the touring company who has already dated the Debbie Downer that is her roommate Liz! Oh no!

Ellis sets up all the red herrings for who sends Janna creepy rose messages and creepy other things like a break your leg literally message and a vivisected teddy bear with blood all over it pretty well. This one was short, compact, and consistent. I’m actually surprised.

Belvedere used to like to sneak up on me and sit right in my blindspot partially behind my head; it was not because I was in a touring production of Grease though.

 

Sometimes you want to get a Tab from the fridge and find yourself being watched by giant vegetables, like Ozma. All she wanted was a Tab. Just a Tab.

 

“She doesn’t even go here.”

42. Dig Me Up – Suzanne Chance

Burial sites aren’t always controversial to dig up, like when someone finally admits that missing person didn’t “leave them for some other guy” and points the site out after 30 years to the police. But, when they’re burial sites that are being considered as archaeological finds, there is a lot of controversy and even if one is planning to be reverent with any found remains and not just Poltergeist over them to build a subdivision, it’s still controversial. If in Poltergeist they put all the remains on display in a museum instead of pretending to move the cemetery, it would have been weird, to put a suburban point on it.

Callie, a high schooler who audits a field school-level collegiate dig into a Caddo mound somehow, ends up finding the less-controversial kind of burial site masquerading as a Caddo burial. Her pit is on the weird, rocky side of the mound, so of course that’s what she found. No sherds for her. She has been getting more than her fair share of the death threats about the dig, while most of the work to prevent the dig went through protests and normal legal channels. Who dresses up and tries to stab the high schooler when they could just petition the court? The answer is a very sweaty and dramatic man, but, that’s usually who it is.

Horace is unimpressed with this anthropology department’s recruitment methods.

 

Speaking of burial grounds, Horace is waving from one right now! He’s right there!

 

Psychic betrayal in a van.

19. The Possessed – L.J. Smith

After a dream tells the teens they should find a white house where they might be able to get help with their fight against Mr. Zetes and his bogus institute, they find help with Marisol’s, their now in a coma former houseminder, family. Tony, her brother, gives them a van and now they’re runaway teens with a van! Also, Gabriel the angry loner is now also an energy vampire, which, yeah, dudes like that usually are… On the road, they are attacked psychically by other psychics on their way to find the helpful psychics, who also have a big crystal like Mr. Zetes and there’s like much power enhancing with crystals and of course someone…named Gabriel…participates in a betrayal and he just can’t be good and stay that way, no matter how much Kait tries to help him and, really, the moral of the story is that until someone is ready for help, especially that kind of dude, you can’t help them. They must choose. Wisely. For themselves.

Finny wisely chose to be friends with Ozma from the beginning of his tenure.

 

Finny knows the joy of a good road trip, in a convertible, with Mose driving, away from an apocalypse, and with sunglasses in place. Totally Hades.

 

Titus and Molly save the world at the concrete park next to the “Slayer Rules!” graffiti.

41. Dark Charm – Don Whittington

Old timey powers run through this family like a crick through the backyard of a homestead. And then, like what happens normally when the county is taking the land or your mentor in old timey magic dies in a swamp and isn’t Yoda, the chosen one must leave and move to the suburbs to fight Old Scratch at the mall or a concrete tunnel which is a smidge reminiscent of one location in Day of the Beast, but with no goats. Well, okay, so Old Scratch does not go to the mall, but nerds turned demons Floyd and Lloyd do on a recruiting trip for the one goth teen girl to truly take up Old Scratch’s side in exchange for the ability to cause quite the pestilence. When I bring up this much stuff happening, it might seem like this is a longer book. It’s super short, but it didn’t read like a bunch of pages were missing, which is nice when you have a bunch of psychic magic running around the ‘burbs.

Peregrine’s more of a grumpy charm, but she totally had psychic powers which she directed mostly towards the fridge opening.

 

“And when the rain comes down…” But, this time it’s a fire she may have caused with her mind…Pere would choose to walk, Pere walks away.

Vengeance in motion

71. The Train – Diane Hoh

There are some things that have been left to the past that might not necessarily be a bad thing when it comes to school – like a field trip on a train that’s carrying the corpse of a student who was bullied and an outcast from Chicago to San Francisco. If anyone wanted to bring back cross country trips with gobs of teens and little supervision, just read The Train to reinforce the “Noooo!” instinct that should be fermenting. Granted, a lot of how the trip goes is remarkably unrealistic, but who doesn’t want to put on their detective hat and sleuth instead of stop the train for the police to process as a crime scene once the first juvenile turns up mostly dead? Or when some go missing? I mean, it’s not like evidence deteriorates or anything. And Frog (the nickname of the dead teen) must have his revenge! Posthumous vengeance is always a choice, it just seems to work best if your name is Jason Vorhees.

Danger Crumples says, “Why wait? Seize the vengeance.”

 

Hello Danger

Blecch.

49. Denise – John Benton

Things move quickly for Denise from abused middle child to a pizza date with a drug dealer to “saving” the drug dealer, Frank, and taking him home to nearly be statutorily raped by her mom and try to get in Denise’s pants. Yikes. Next, she’s running away from home with Frank and being convinced to become an embezzling grocery store employee and try heroin. Even though she keeps telling him she’s “not that kind of girl.” Whatever kind of girl she is, Denise throws her own moral code out the window for Frank pretty easily.

Then she’s on the run from her sketchy grocery store boss and the police with Frank, who she tells people is her husband even though she’s 16… And once they’re on the run he really just becomes her pimp since they have no money for the hotel and he “did a deal.” As long as there is heroin, Denise can ignore her johns just like the story does. She keeps trying half-heartedly to oppose this trajectory, but, once heroin is involved, she can’t.

It’s not until she gets sent to Bellevue in NYC after being raped while trying to get her heroin herself on the Lower East Side because Frank used all theirs and she was in withdrawal that she can kick the drug and then is taken right in by the religious house advertised at the back of the book. It took seconds for her to accept this was the place she should go from the nice ladies who admitted they had basically done the same things she had. Seconds. Denise is then well on her way to becoming the next Jerri Blank, but with less experience and more Jesus.

Thorfy is my 1980s drifter pig. I let him have a Walkman and a jean jacket, and yet…

He chattered his teeth at me during the portrait with painting process. His predecessor Finny did the same thing after being painted as the antichrist in Prince of Darkness, so, it’s one more thing they have in common.

 

Walkman – on, jean jacket – on, time to blow this popsicle stand.

“Keller could distinguish Coke from Pepsi from across a room”

43. Night World: Witchlight – L.J. Smith

This is the “last” book in the Night World series, which as far as I can tell will never be finished, even though I have found some nice cover art in the old style (my preferred) and the new style of vacant looking young woman staring while in the void cover art. Since Witchlight is the theoretically penultimate book, there’s a lot of set up for something big to happen. Circle Daybreak is trying to get to the “witch child,” who is one of the Wild Powers, not to be confused with Wyld Stallyns, who also have the power to save the world (although the newest film sort of undercut that Wyld Stallyns specifically would do that, damn the passage of time!). And Keller, the shapeshifter who turns into a panther, is charged with protecting the witch child, essentially, and she meets Galen, who is also destined for the witch child…and then they fall in love. World ended. Okay, not really, but it’s a teen romance, so they always think the world is ending and this time – this time – it just might.

If the world is ending in the next book, Thaddeus and Pammy will get their treats in first. Soulmate priorities.

 

Soulmates ghost hunting.