Good Night, Mummy!

Shadow Zone #6

by J.R. Black

Blaise Malone thinks her new hometown is totally Dullsville, U.S.A. But that's before a rotting mummy lands in her living room. The mummy needs to find his long-lost coffin and missing book of charms to protect himself from the dreaded Eater of the Dead. Should Blaise prepare to meet her tomb?

Genres: Horror, Fiction

128 pages, Paperback

First published April 12, 1994

Reviews

[Josiah]

No series of juvenile horror novels is complete without a mummy story, and Shadow Zone fills that obligation in this book. Sixth-grader Blaise Kessel isn't impressed after moving from San Francisco to the small town of Tuttle, Texas. She's not an outcast, but the other kids are less worldly than in California. Then one night her mother, a botany teacher and scholar, brings home a book she found with an orange eye painted on the cover, an item she estimates is 2,500 years old. It's probably a misplaced piece from the Tuttle collection, a group of Ancient Egyptian artifacts brought to the U.S. in the 1940s, but Blaise has the feeling the book is dangerous. That night, when she's awoken by an orange-eyed ibis bird tapping at her bedroom window, she grows even more uneasy. Blaise doesn't realize the trouble her mother has gotten them into.

An aficionado of horror entertainment, Blaise is less thrilled with a real monster breaks into her house. A mummy named Horemheb, priest in the Temple of Thoth at Hermopolis in Egypt 3,000 years ago, has tracked down his book of spells and is intent on taking it back from Blaise. Terrified by the half-rotting mummy lumbering across her living room, she gladly returns Horemheb's book, but her problems are only beginning. The mummy is being pursued by Anubis, Egyptian god of the dead, who seeks revenge for a theft Horemheb committed before he died and was mummified. Accompanied by his vicious enforcer, called the "Eater of the Dead", Anubis stalks Horemheb to exact extreme punishment for the priest's sins. The only way Horemheb can escape is to find his own coffin in the Tuttle collection and resume his eternal slumber. Locating it won't be easy, but at least Blaise isn't alone with Horemheb on this quest: Luann Ryder, a girl from Blaise's class at school, also gets pulled into the situation. Staying one step ahead of Anubis and his ravenous Eater of the Dead, the two girls and Horemheb must find the Tuttle collection—now owned by Gaylord "King" Tuttle, son of the original excavator—and return the mummy to his final resting place before all is lost. Can such a plan be carried out in defiance of the legendary Anubis?

Good Night, Mummy! is flightier and less plausible than most Shadow Zone books, which is why I'm only rating it one and a half stars. However, there are things to like. Blaise has no luck making friends in Texas until she and Luann are knee deep in disaster; at that point, their negative preconceptions about each other melt away and a strong, attractive bond is forged. It can take a shared crisis for two people to realize they're suited to be friends. Good Night, Mummy! isn't one of the higher quality Shadow Zone novels—there's even a typo on the back cover, referring to the main character as Blaise Malone instead of Kessel—but the overall theme isn't bad, and the end offers a mild emotional connection. If the plot were tighter, this would be a pretty good book, and I hope the lapses in logic don't prevent kids from enjoying it.

[Alex Joseph]

Venturing back into the Shadow Zone series, this entry confirmed a pattern for these books: there’s usually a central character who is, indeed, a monster or some kind of creature. This one happened to be the mummy as advertised. Speaking of which—the mummy. Mr. Whatever his name was a dope inclusion to this tale; he added some levity and hilarity to the story and served as a unique and interesting character. The other characters are really good too, and have a clear growth in the story’s progression, becoming legitimate friends. The book is fun, has a really engaging plot, and literal gods as the actual threat, which is supremely good. However, there’s some flaws to it, like King Tuttle. His character comes into play far later and is really just underwhelming. He didn’t do anything for the story, and he felt crammed in for no real reason apart from—here we go—plot convenience. There’s an instance in here where the characters locate a plot m’guffin via INSANE COINCIDENCE, and I can’t help be annoyed at that. It’s way too much of a coinkydink for me to write it off. The story also feels a bit slow and the climax could’ve been a lot better than what we got, and definitely could’ve given the villains more to do even if they are neat af. Overall, 8/10. It’s no spectacle but a really fun read for sure. This is the only other book of the series I own, so… finna be a while.

[Summer]

Sam pomysł na historię: super, gorzej z wykonaniem, momentami historia bardzo mi się dłużyła.

[Cws]

JM-Bla

[Kaya]

I've read this series when I was a kid and I loved it.