Blink of the Mind (Twilight: Where Darkness Begins # 5), by Dorothy Brenner Francis
When I was in junior high and high school in the 80s, two ridiculous horror series populated the paperback spinning racks at my library.
Twilight: Where Darkness Begins were trashy light supernatural horror reads (nothing too dark or gruesome) for kids too old for Goosebumps.
Dark Forces were trashy light supernatural horror reads (nothing too dark or gruesome) for kids too old for Goosebumps, but with added SATAN.
I didn't much care about SATAN so I preferred Twilight. Did any of you ever read these?
Both these series are now spectacularly out of print, except for Bruce Coville's books to which he retained the rights and has now reprinted in ebook, and are now quite hard to find and many titles are absurdly expensive. This is very annoying as I really wanted to read The Haunted Dollhouse and some others I missed the first time around, like the one about SATAN's 80s video game, but not enough to pay $30-$200 for them.
I decided I deserved a treat after the last fucking Horrible History week, so I ordered the three cheapest, Blink of the Mind, Vicious Circle, and Deadly Sleep.
Blink of the Mind is 154 pages long and involves...
1. An airplane exploding in midair to the sound of crazy laughter.
2. The heroine and her sister repeatedly doing singalongs on a cruise ship.
3. Precognition.
4. Ghost visitations.
5. An evil doctor with red eyes.
6. An evil country club.
7. History lessons on slave rebellions in the Caribbean.
The book has more incident than sense, so I will summarize rather than explain:
High school junior Kelly Chapman's parents have taken off on an unexplained plane trip when she has a vision of a plane exploding to the sound of maniacal laughter:
"Mom! Dad!" the blond teenager cried from the depths of her soul.
She is with her best friend Bonnie at the time and tells her about it; minutes later, she gets a phone call that her parents have been killed in a plane crash. When Kelly is still haunted by this months later, her aunt who I guess got custody of Kelly and her younger sister Lisa consults the family doctor, Dr. Dougal, who advises packing them off on a Caribbean cruise.
The book picks up on the cruise with Kelly and Lisa, who are traveling alone with no adult in charge of them. Kelly is 16 and Lisa is about 14 and I feel like even in the eighties, this is odd.
Lisa enjoys leading singalongs among the cruise passengers and roping Kelly into doing it with her. This takes up quite a lot of the book's page length as there are multiple singalongs. This has nothing to do with anything, other than that Kelly is always reluctant as she's busy having visions and passing out.
Kelly's first vision aboard the cruise ship is of the ghost of her friend Bonnie, who wants to inform Kelly that she hasn't run away, she's been murdered. Kelly grabs Bonnie's shoulder, and wakes up from a "coma" with Bonnie's silver pin and a scrap of her bloodstained blouse in her hand. (This is extremely confusingly explained, as we never get the moment where Kelly registers that she has them, we just see that she does after the fact.)
Spoilers! ( Read more... )
This was not in any way a good book, but I definitely enjoyed reading it and look forward to reading more of this ridiculous series and its SATANic companion.
Blink of the Mind (Twilight Series No 5)[image error]
[image error] [image error]
comments
Twilight: Where Darkness Begins were trashy light supernatural horror reads (nothing too dark or gruesome) for kids too old for Goosebumps.
Dark Forces were trashy light supernatural horror reads (nothing too dark or gruesome) for kids too old for Goosebumps, but with added SATAN.
I didn't much care about SATAN so I preferred Twilight. Did any of you ever read these?
Both these series are now spectacularly out of print, except for Bruce Coville's books to which he retained the rights and has now reprinted in ebook, and are now quite hard to find and many titles are absurdly expensive. This is very annoying as I really wanted to read The Haunted Dollhouse and some others I missed the first time around, like the one about SATAN's 80s video game, but not enough to pay $30-$200 for them.
I decided I deserved a treat after the last fucking Horrible History week, so I ordered the three cheapest, Blink of the Mind, Vicious Circle, and Deadly Sleep.
Blink of the Mind is 154 pages long and involves...
1. An airplane exploding in midair to the sound of crazy laughter.
2. The heroine and her sister repeatedly doing singalongs on a cruise ship.
3. Precognition.
4. Ghost visitations.
5. An evil doctor with red eyes.
6. An evil country club.
7. History lessons on slave rebellions in the Caribbean.
The book has more incident than sense, so I will summarize rather than explain:
High school junior Kelly Chapman's parents have taken off on an unexplained plane trip when she has a vision of a plane exploding to the sound of maniacal laughter:
"Mom! Dad!" the blond teenager cried from the depths of her soul.
She is with her best friend Bonnie at the time and tells her about it; minutes later, she gets a phone call that her parents have been killed in a plane crash. When Kelly is still haunted by this months later, her aunt who I guess got custody of Kelly and her younger sister Lisa consults the family doctor, Dr. Dougal, who advises packing them off on a Caribbean cruise.
The book picks up on the cruise with Kelly and Lisa, who are traveling alone with no adult in charge of them. Kelly is 16 and Lisa is about 14 and I feel like even in the eighties, this is odd.
Lisa enjoys leading singalongs among the cruise passengers and roping Kelly into doing it with her. This takes up quite a lot of the book's page length as there are multiple singalongs. This has nothing to do with anything, other than that Kelly is always reluctant as she's busy having visions and passing out.
Kelly's first vision aboard the cruise ship is of the ghost of her friend Bonnie, who wants to inform Kelly that she hasn't run away, she's been murdered. Kelly grabs Bonnie's shoulder, and wakes up from a "coma" with Bonnie's silver pin and a scrap of her bloodstained blouse in her hand. (This is extremely confusingly explained, as we never get the moment where Kelly registers that she has them, we just see that she does after the fact.)
Spoilers! ( Read more... )
This was not in any way a good book, but I definitely enjoyed reading it and look forward to reading more of this ridiculous series and its SATANic companion.
Blink of the Mind (Twilight Series No 5)[image error]
[image error] [image error]
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