Review: Fire Girl by Matt Ralphs

Twelve-year-old Hazel Hooper has spent her whole life trapped in a magical Glade created by her mother, Hecate. She's desperate to meet new people and find out about the world. And, more than anything, she wants to be a witch. But when her mother is kidnapped by a demon - everything changes . . .

Suddenly Hazel is alone in the world. Well . . . not quite alone. For it turns out that Hazel does have magic - she's just not very good at controlling it. And she may have accidentally created a grumpy familiar in the form of a dormouse called Bramley.

Determined to rescue her mother, the young witch and her mouse set out to track down the demon and find Hecate. However, it turns out that life outside the Glade is far more dangerous than Hazel ever could have imagined. Witch Hunters are everywhere - and the witches are using demons to fight back!

Luckily for Hazel she manages to enlist the help of a handsome boy called David, and his drunken master, Titus White, who are expert demon hunters.

And witch finders . . .

At first glance, long time readers of The Book Zone may think that Fire Girl by Matt Ralphs might not be the kind of book that I would jump to read, especially given the size of my TBR pile. Seriously, most people who know me and my blog know that I am not a fan of talking animals! However, when said book arrives with a hand written note from a publicity manager who I trust to make excellent recommendations, describing the book as "so fantastic", then there was no way I was going to leave it unread. And I'm damn glad I didn't as Fire Girl has rocketed its way into my Top 10 books of the year, and Bramley the (talking) dormouse is now one of my all time favourite fictional animals. In fact, I can even identify the exact moment Bramley endeared himself to me: as fledgling witch Hazel endeavours to escape from the magical hedge that has kept her safe from the outside world he urges her "That's it, witch-child, burn it all down". The best one line of dialogue in any book of 2015!

Most writers will tell you that the question they ask themselves the most when starting to craft a story is "What if?". In the case of Fire Girl I can imagine the questions may have been something along the lines of:

What if there really had been witches in England back in the 17th Century?
What if the whole English Civil War had taken place because Charles I believed that "I know the dangers Wielders could pose if driven underground. I deem it wise to grant them protection - that way I can control them", whilst Oliver Cromwell proclaimed that "For a pure England, I'll burn every witch".
What if a vengeful witch who has seen his kind hunted and burned, were willing to do deals with Baal himself in order to destroy Cromwell and his forces?

In Fire Girl writer Matt Ralphs has used the answers to these questions as the starting point in the creation of a story that is a masterful blend of alternative English history and thrilling magical fantasy. It is a world of where witches have familiars, some of them animal and some of them nasty demons that belong in the depths of hell. A world where the majority of witches just want a peaceful life, but are hunted or denounced for being different. A world inhabited by a young girl who so wants to have magic like her mother, but when her powers emerge there is no longer anyone around to nurture and advise, except for a grump dormouse who would rather he hadn't been 'chosen' as a witch's familiar.

Everything about this book is great: the plot, the pace and above all the characters. Hazel is courageous yet lacks self-confidence, reckless yet trusting, even if those she has to trust may be the ones who end up calling for her to be burnt as a witch. Bramley the dormouse is grumpy and argumentative, but deep down feels a tight bond to Hazel and will go to great lengths to help her, even if she does occasionally drive him nuts with her impetuousness. Bramley also plays another important part as a character - this story gets very dark at times, and Bramley has the role of the jester, bringing comic relief to lighten the mood when required. As well as Hazel and Bramley there are a host of supporting characters, who aren't all exactly as they first appear, and the author uses these in ensuring that the plot has enough twists and turns to keep every reader clinging to the edge of their seat.

Fire Girl will be released on 13th August in the UK and my thanks go to the fabulous Catherine Alport at Macmillan for bringing this wonderful book to my attention and for sending me a copy to read.

Half Bad Chapter Reveal Blog Tour: Part One - The Trick Doesn't Work

I have to admit that I tend to take hype with a pinch of salt, be it for a film, an album or, in this case, a book. However, this didn't stop me from being more than a little intrigued when news of Half Bad selling for silly money all around the world began to hit the press towards the end of last year. 

I can still hear myself crying: "Witches? Has enough time really passed since Harry Potter for the publishing world to be going crazy about another YA witch story?". And despite the hype, there was a part of me feeling that for this to be the case this had to be something pretty special indeed. And it is, and I loved it.

I've just finished it this evening and I'm still trying to collect my thoughts for my review which will come next week, however in the meantime I am delighted to be taking part in the Half Bad blog tour, with an new extract from the opening chapters of the book being released each day over the past four days. This is the fifth extract and they are best read in order, so why not head on over to Wondrous Reads for the first part.

part one

the trick doesn’t work

She’s talking but you can’t make sense of it.

You’re back sitting at the kitchen table, sweating and shuddering a bit, and blood from your left ear is running down your neck. That ear won’t heal. You can’t hear at all on that side. And your nose is a mess. You must have landed on it when you fell. It’s broken, blocked up and bloodied, and it won’t heal either.

Your hand is resting on the table and it’s so swollen now that the fingers can’t move at all.

She’s sitting on the chair next to you and is spraying your wrist with the lotion again. It’s cooling. Numbing.

And it would be so good to be numb like that all over, numb to it all. But that won’t happen. What will happen is that she’ll lock you back up in the cage, chain you up, and it’ll go on and on and on . . .

And so the trick doesn’t work. It doesn’t work and you do mind; you mind about it all. You don’t want to be back in that cage and you don’t want the trick any more. You don’t want any of it any more.

The cut on her scalp is healed but there’s the wide ridge of a black-red scab underneath her blonde hair and there’s blood on her shoulder. She’s still talking about something, her fat slobbering lips working away.

You look around the room. The kitchen sink, the window that overlooks the vegetable garden and the cage, the range, the ironing board, the door to the pantry and back to the ugly woman with nicely pressed trousers. And clean boots. And in her boot is her little knife. She sometimes keeps it there. You saw it when you were on the floor.

You’re dizzy so it’s easy to swoon, sinking to your knees. She grabs you by your armpits but your left hand isn’t injured and it finds the handle and slides the knife out of her boot while she grapples with your dead weight and as you let your body sink further you bring the blade to your jugular. Fast and hard.

But she’s so bloody quick, and you kick and fight and fight and kick but she gets the knife off you and you’ve no kick and no fight left at all.

Back in the cage. Shackled. Kept waking up last night . . . sweating . . . ear still doesn’t work . . . you’re breathing through your mouth cos your nose is blocked. She’s even chained your bad wrist and your whole arm is so swollen that the shackle is tight.

It’s late morning but she still hasn’t come for you. She’s doing something in the cottage. Tapping. Smoke’s coming out of the chimney.

It’s warm today, a breeze from the south-west, clouds moving silently across the sky so the sun is managing a series of appearances, touching your cheek and casting shadows from the bars across your legs. But you’ve seen it all before, so you close your eyes and remember stuff. It’s OK to do that sometimes.

Want to read an interview with Sally Green? Go to: http://www.mrripleysenchantedbooks.com/ 
(from 1^st March)

Text copyright © Sally Green, 2014 published by Penguin Books

Review: Hollow Pike by James Dawson

When Lis London moves to Hollow Pike, she's looking forward to starting afresh in a new town, but when she sees the local forest she realizes that not everything here is new to her. She's seen the wood before - in a recurring nightmare where someone is trying to kill her! Lis tells herself there's nothing to her bad dreams, or to the legends of witchcraft and sinister rituals linked with Hollow Pike. She's settling in, making friends, and even falling in love - but then a girl is found murdered in the forest. Suddenly, Lis doesn't know who to trust anymore...

I first heard about Hollow Pike at a bloggers' event held by Indigo last year. At that event we were treated to an exclusive reveal of the cover to this book, and as someone who teaches design my attention was well and truly grabbed. Yes, I know you shouldn't judge a book by its cover, but there were invisible waves of excitement about this title emanating from the members of the Indigo team who had read it, and pretty much every blogger who attended that event has been whittering on about it ever since. I tried to keep a lid on my excitement for fear of being disappointed when I finally got the chance to read it, but somehow I still ended up dropping everything the moment it fell through my letterbox.

The first couple of chapters certainly hit the spot, establishing a spooky undercurrent to the story right from the beginning. And then my heart sank as I started to read chapter three. Suddenly I felt I was entering Mean Girls territory, and my interest began to wane. Now I can't say I am an expert on the film Mean Girls as I have never seen it all the way through. However, I did once have the misfortune of being in the school library when it was being shown as part of an English lesson and that thirty minutes was pretty damn painful. It has been added to my 'films that I have never seen and never will see in their entirety' list. It is testament to the quality of James Dawson's writing that I decided to stick with it for a few more chapters, as if I hadn't already been captivated by his stunning prose it would have ended up on my 'not suitable for The Book Zone (For Boys)' pile. And then very quickly he had me completely, totally, 100% hooked.

I normally try to read the books I get sent to review without my teacher hat on. These books are after all written for readers who are significantly younger than I am, and so I try to put myself in their place. However, James Dawson has nailed his teen characters so perfectly that the teacher part of me was associating them with students I have taught (and currently teach in some cases). Everything about the way he has written them is perfect - their voices, the slang they use, their attitudes to each other, the disdain the 'beautiful people' show towards those who are seen as being 'different'. Man, does James Dawson know the minds of British teenagers.

Hollow Pike tells the story of Lis London, a teen girl who has been forced to move from Bangor to go to live with her sister's family in a small town in the Yorkshire Dales, in order to escape the bullying she was experiencing at school. Recent months have been a strain on her emotionally, and Lis has started to have a recurring nightmare where she is chased through a mysterious forest, until she falls into a stream and her head is forced under water by some unknown person. However, come the move Lis has got used to them - after all, they are only dreams...... until on the way to her sister's place she gets out of the car to shoo a magpie out of the road and finds herself in a place that looks very much like the location in her dreams. And so the strangeness begins!

As she starts school Lis somehow finds herself accepted into a clique, a group of students whose lives revolve around keeping their 'leader' happy - Laura Rigg, the 'It girl' of Fulton High School. However, Lis also feels herself drawn towards three other students; three young people who couldn't be more different from Laura and her gang of sycophantic bitches. As Laura's bullying behaviour begins to make Lis more and more uncomfortable, especially given her own experiences, the company of this alternative trio - Kitty Monroe, Delilah Bloom and Jack Denton - becomes even more of an attractive option for Lis. And then the nastiness really begins, both natural (from Laura and her crew) and supernatural.

A significant part of the story revolves around the social interaction of teens, and more specifically bullying, including cyber bullying. Again with my teacher hat on, another big plus about Hollow Pike was how James Dawson did not allow his story to become an anti-bullying morality tale. I really hate it when that happens in stories, and some authors seem to go out of their way to patronise their readers by trying to hide the life-lesson within the story and failing dismally. James Dawson is certainly not one of these authors, and in fact Hollow Pike is less about bullies getting their comeuppance, and more about it being ok, or even great, to be different. And the way he writes it is, despite the seriousness of the subject and the pants-wettingly spooky nature of the story, at times laugh out loud funny. 

This is not a fast paced action horror story. James Dawson deliberately keeps the pace relatively slow in the first half of the book as he introduces us to his characters, and draws us hypnotically into their lives. He also uses this part of the story to start scratching away at the part of the reader's consciousness that keeps fear and nervous tension safely locked away. The more the story slowly progresses, the more that barrier gets worn thinner and thinner, so that by the time the horror really begins to kick in our defences are low and we too get pulled into the nastiness. At this point the pace picks up and we are carried kicking and screaming on a frantic ride to the end of the story. And this leads me to my only criticism of the book - it all seems to be brought to a conclusion far too quickly for my liking. It really did feel like a book of two halves - both of them brilliant individually, but together in my opinion they just didn't gel completely perfectly. I can't really expand on this, as it would certainly create a spoiler or two.

Just the one small gripe, and perhaps I am being overly picky as a reaction to the hype this book has had. I have no doubt in my mind at all that James Dawson will become a best-selling author if his future works are as good as Hollow Pike, and in the future his name will be mentioned in the same breath as current masters of YA contemporary and dark fiction such as Marcus Sedgwick, Melvin Burgess and Robin Jarvis, and also that great master from the past, Christopher Pike. I wish this book had been around when I was younger - despite my early 'Mean Girls' misgivings Hollow Pike is the perfect book for teens who love spooky stories or just great literature, and especially those who, like I did at that age, feel like they don't quite fit in with the majority of their peers.