Review: Zom-B Baby by Darren Shan

How do you know if you're working for a lunatic? Where do you go when you've run out of people to trust? Have you ever heard an undead baby scream? B Smith is out of her comfort zone ...

*** Warning: contains spoilers for previous books in the series ***

Just as B thought she had found somewhere she felt comfortable, with Revitaliseds of the same age, and someone who could mentor her, said mentor, Dr Oystein, dropped that pretty huge bombshell at the end of Zom-B Angels that has left B feeling confused and concerned that she may just have allied herself with a complete nutjob who believes he is God's chosen one. So begins an instalment of this brilliant series that is more about soul-searching than it is about horror and gore. B must decide whether County Hall really is the place for her, but to do so she may have to experience even more of the horrors that exist in this deadly new world.

First off, lets get any discussion of the cover of this book out of the way. I know that some people have found it pretty grim, even by this series' standards, but I personally find it is fitting for both within the series as a whole and this particular instalment. 

Now onto the story itself. We are incredibly fortunate to be welcoming Darren Shan to school next week for an event, and I know loads of the students are getting excited about this. In promoting the event to the staff at the school I have mentioned many times that the horror and zombie aspect of the story is really just a vehicle for a story that covers a huge variety of different themes. As I have mentioned many times before, in my reviews for the first four books in this series, the author covers such themes as racism and bigotry, corruption, genetic engineering, and now religion and belief. However, one element I have not dwelt on enough in my reviews is that of B herself. Maybe that's because the first three books were about setting the scene, world building and establishing B as a character, and the fourth was about really driving the plot forward. 

Now, in Zom-B Baby, B is given the chance to really reflect on what has happened to her and society, with Oystein's epic pronouncement being the catalyst for this period of deep introspection. She has to decide whether Oystein is mad, and in doing so she has to take a look back at her life before the 'apocalypse', and especially her father's racism. This is not something she feels able to do at County Hall, surrounded by Oystein's crowd of sycophants, and so B takes herself off back into the revived-infested streets of London, hoping to find some kind of answers to set her make what is a huge decision. On her journeys she stumbles across and old acquaintance, and I don't think it is creating spoilers to say that she also comes face to face with something that could even rival Mr Dowling as Shan's most repulsive creation to date (the clue is in the book's title).

Zom-B Baby is yet another brilliant episode in a series I have loved from the very first chapter of Zom-B. It arrived yesterday and we had visitors so I didn't get a chance to pick it up until late, but there was no way that I was going to bed before reading it, and so it became another single-sitting read Zom-B book. For anyone out there who thinks that the zombie genre has become tired and generic in recent years, I say get your hands on these books and prepare to have your love of the genre rekindled.

My thanks go to the rather mashing people at Simon and Schuster for sending me a copy to read.

Review: The Fabulous Four Fish Fingers by Jason Beresford

KangaRuby bounced, Nightingale soared and The Chimp swung with Slug Boy gripped in his fingers. The scene that greeted them was truly terrible… 

After an encounter with a crisp-loving elf, best friends Gary, Bel, Ruby and Morris are given superpowers. In their new identities, The Chimp, Nightingale, KangaRuby and Slug Boy must stop super-scary (and super-hairy) villains Jumper Jack Flash and The Panteater from stealing all the sweets (and pants) in Tumchester. But first the Fabulous Four Fish Fingers need to learn to work as a team (and remember not to step on Slug Boy).

Four friends following their escapee pet parrot into a derelict house accidentally summon a crisp-loving, purple tracksuit-wearing elf named Cyril. Cyril grants the foursome one wish and after a little dithering they ask to be turned into superheroes and within minutes a brand new team of superheroes is born, each one in possession of the powers of a different animal: Gary becomes The Chimp, Ruby is Kangaruby, Bel becomes Nightingale and Morris (poor Morris) ends up as Slug Boy. 

For their hometown of Tumchester these newly acquired powers could not be more timely as two particularly nasty criminals are on the loose, their goal to steal all the sweets in town. The Panteater (an anteater who is allergic to ants) shows no mercy to anyone who gets in his way, using his super-long tongue to whisk away the pants of his victims, and now he has teamed up with a man-rabbit-pirate thing,Jumper Jack Flash, so-called because he ties people up with their own jumpers. Can the Fabulous Four Fish Fingers learn to use their new powers, and work together as a team without squabbling, in time to stop the crime wave and unmask the evil genius behind them?

 

This book is bonkers and 7+ kids will love it. Aimed at children who love the likes of Roald Dahl, David Walliams and Andy Stanton, it is a very funny, entertaining story that will have young readers giggling away incessantly. The book's author, Jason Beresford, does not yet have the writing skills to match these three kings of children's literature, but it is still a cracking read, and an impressive debut.

There are two key elements to this book's appeal. The first is the off-the-wall humour that runs throughout the whole story. I'm not just talking about the occasional funny moment, kids will find a laugh-out-loud moment on nearly every page. For me, as an adult reader, I found some this humour to be a little forced in places, as if the author was trying a little too hard to be funny, (something I never felt when reading Dahl, Walliams, etc), but I would doubt that many young readers would agree with me. The Panteater and Jumper Jack Flash are like something you might find in a Monty Python sketch, and I would not be surprised if Jason Beresford grew up on a TV diet of the best of British comedy like Python, Black Adder and Red Dwarf.

However, although the humour is what will keep kids totally engrossed in the story, the real heart and soul of the book are the characters of the Fabulous Four Fish Fingers themselves. These are a group of unremarkable children who have been friends for as long as they can remember. They are not the kind of kids who stand out at school (except for Morris, who seems to be the preferred target of his school's resident bully), and so when they acquire powers that could make them stand out from the rest it takes some time for them to come to terms with this monumental change in their lives, a change that could tear their friendship apart. Morris, in particular, feels excluded from the group because of his seemingly rubbish superhero identity and power (would you want to turn into a slug and be known as Slug Boy, but every one of the Four has to deal with their own insecurities and failings before they can gel toegterh as a team of superheros rather than just as group of friends.

As with most books if this ilk there are many accompanying illustrations, perfectly produced by Vicky Barker. Ms Barker's images not only complement the text well, they also add brilliantly to the humour, by giving readers a visual reference for the characters (and especially the wacky villains) created from Beresford's insane imagination.

The Fabulous Four Fish Fingers was published on 1 August and my thanks go to the lovely people at Catnip for sending me a copy to read. Why not head on over to the Fabulous Four Fish Fingers website at http://www.thefabulousfourfishfingers.com/ to read the first chapter and find out more about the characters.

Review: Stay Where You Are And Then Leave by John Boyne

The day the First World War broke out, Alfie Summerfield's father promised he wouldn't go away to fight - but he broke that promise the following day. Four years later, Alfie doesn't know where his father might be, other than that he's away on a special, secret mission.

Then, while shining shoes at King's Cross Station, Alfie unexpectedly sees his father's name - on a sheaf of papers belonging to a military doctor. Bewildered and confused, Alfie realises his father is in a hospital close by - a hospital treating soldiers with an unusual condition. Alfie is determined to rescue his father from this strange, unnerving place . . .

Stay Where You Are And Then Leave tells the story of Alfie, a boy whose fifth birthday coincided with the announcement of Britain going to war with Germany in July 1914. That night Alfie's dad makes a promise to his mother than he will not go away to fight, a promise that last less than 24 hours. Four years on and people are still saying the war will be over by Christmas, exactly as they have been stating in each of the previous years. The letters from his father have stopped arriving and Alfie's mother has told him that his father is not able to write as he is on a top secret mission. Alfie fears the worst and wishes that his mother or grandmother or someone would be honest with him.

Unbeknownst to his mother Alfie has taken to skipping school several days a week in order to help supplement her meagre earnings by shining shoes at King's Cross Station. One day, whilst shining the shoes of a doctor, said doctor's papers go flying and as Alfie aids in their retrieval he spots his father's name and serial number on one of the sheets, with the name of a Suffolk hospital inscribed at the top. So sets in motion a series of events that sees Alfie heading off to Sussex in the hope of finding his father and bringing him home, whatever the consequences.

I read a lot of books. I always have, but since I started blogging I must read more than ever. Due to the volume I read some books are read, enjoyed and quickly forgotten (I also have a terrible memory). Some books linger in the memory for a little longer, for whatever reason. And then there are a small minority of books that take hold of your mind or your heart (or both) and simply refuse to let go. I read Stay Where You Are And Then Leave a month ago and even now it is still pops into my thoughts at least once a day, and John Boyne is another on the list of auto-reads.

After a couple of rather brilliant forays into the world of fantasy (Noah Barleywater Runs Away and The Terrible Thing That Happened To Barnaby Brocket), John Boyne has returned to the historical children's novel, the genre that pretty much made him a global name following the publication of The Boy In The Striped Pyjamas. Much as I loved The Boy... the next two books really struck a chord with me and now Stay Where You Are has done exactly the same. I can't ell you how much I loved this book, and it is certainly a(nother) contender for my Book of the Year. 

Next year is the centennial anniversary of the start of The Great War and so this is a timely release for a book that deals with one of the less spoken about horrors of that tragic time: shell shock. At the time, the condition was not at all understood and sadly many men were branded as cowards for their reaction to the horrors they experienced in the trenches, and in some case soldiers were executed for desertion that is these days thought to have been caused by shell shock. John Boyne writes about this mental illness incredibly well: he refuses to shy away from descriptions that might unnerve some readers, but he somehow also manages to add a tenderness to these scenes that will bring tears to the eyes of many readers, and his use of Alfie as his main character is the key to this.

This book is much more than just a story about a victim of shell shock though. I'm not expert historian, but for me John Boyne really brought alive the everyday travails of the people left at home. There is the conscientious objector who lives across the road from Alfie, and the abuse he experiences from people he had thought were friends for his supposed cowardice (and done so in a much better way than the truly atrocious Chickens that is on Sky One at the moment). There is also a glimpse at the way certain foreign nationals were treated as war broke out: Alfie's best friend Kalena Janáček, a girl born in the very street where the two kids live, and her Czech father are branded as spies by ignorant neighbours and then labelled Persons of special interest by the powers that be, shoved in the back of a van and taken away into custody.

As with all of his previous books for children John Boyne also manages to imbue this one with subtle humour, although he never makes light of the seriousness of the book's main themes. There is one scene in particular which really made me chuckle, as Alfie finds himself shining the shoes of the British Prime Minister, David Lloyd George, chatting away to him with no clue at all as to who he is talking to. As readers we are also only able to guess as to who the man might be, our suspicions only confirmed when an unexpected person arrives on the scene.

As with many historical books, part of the real power of this story is in the subtly-included detail of the everyday lives of the characters and readers will find it very easy to empathise with all of them. There are many elements that make perfect discussion material for both English and History lessons. At school some of our Year 8s have just started studying The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas in their English lessons, and I would not be surprised if this book became a study text for schools in the future. In fact, this is the kind of book that I think will grow to be loved by millions, and will one day deservedly surpass the huge success of The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas. 

Stay Where You Are And Then Leave is scheduled to be published on 26th September, and is a perfect read for children as young as 9/10, teens and right up to adults (okay... pretty much everyone, but do be prepared to find it lingering in your thoughts for weeks afterwards). My thanks go to the lovely people at Random House for sending me a copy to read.