Tom Ward is back!
For those of us who were heartbroken at the ending of the Wardstone Chronicles and felt that the Kobalos War of The Starblade Trilogy was too far removed from the world of The Spook’s Apprentice, Delaney has truly returned to Chippenden! He holds no punches here, recalling the worst of the County’s horrors from brain guzzlers, stone-chuckers, and severed-heads falling from the sky to Grecian goddesses who turn spooks into pigs.
Tom has been taken by a powerful new entity that has possessed witches and giants at her command. Alice has been rendered powerless since giving birth to her and Tom’s daughter Tilda, and must rely on fat, drunk Spook Johnson (“The Seventh Apprentice,”) and a novitiate monk named Brother Beowulf to rescue Tom.
When Spook Johnson is captured by the Dark, his scribe Brother Wulf, chooses that rather than hide back at the abbey, he will go to another spook to help with spook’s business. The real problem begins when the Quisitor sent by The Bishop of Blackburn arrives and promises to torture Wulf if he doesn’t give up all the infernal practices of the spooks he was sent to spy on. When he escapes, a savage band of killers and torturers sets out to find him, both spooks, and Alice… and burn them to death. Brother Wulf is caught between the forces of heaven and hell, with both trying to kill him. Luckily, when he offers prayers to the saints, they often answer his need.
Delaney doesn’t side-step theology. He asks the questions about whether his characters are walking the boundaries of the real Heaven and Hell; the answer leaving open the concepts of The Dark and Wulf’s Heaven while bringing human misinterpretation into the mix by lighting on the prejudice against spooks, their honest mistakes, and the hate that consumes some people no matter which “side” they are on.
Brother Wulf does have an additional problem. A demon visits his dream and tells him to do as he is told or he shall be in excruciating pain. Then gives him a back-arching dose of it! Oddly, Wulf doesn’t tell anyone about it.
The best part is Grimalkin’s cameo. She stalks straight up out of hell, razor-teeth gleaming in the firelight to give assistance… to a Deane.
The ending is left open, and though the immediate threat is averted, we are primed for a further adventure with Brother Wulf, Spook Johnson, Tom & Alice, and Circe. Hopefully this is enough for another 12 novels, (and if we’re lucky, maybe even a spin-off series of Grimalkin in Hell?)
For those of us in the US, I’ve had great luck using Book Depository. (As with Amazon, don’t expect it to arrive entirely undamaged.) If you want to get a signed edition, or just one that hasn’t been banged about loose in a box on the cargo hold of a ocean-liner, you can always contact Beyond Books, the bookshop just around the corner from Spook Delaney himself in The County.
Related Posts:The Starblade Chronicles The Wardstone Chronicles The Spook’s Bestiary By Joseph Delaney |