Girl of Nightmares
by Kendare Blake
Tom Daugherty Associates, 2012
(Tor Teen)
Young Adult
332 Pages
Cas is back! In Anna Dressed in Blood, We meet Cassio Lowood, a boy who travels the country sending ghosts to the other side. He falls in love with a spirit named Anna, who has just finished mopping the floor with his body, a vengeful spirit cursed by her own mother, an evil witch. On the way, Cas is joined by Thomas, a witch, and Carmel, a cheerleader.
As the next chapter opens, Cas, Thomas, and Carmel tag-team a haunted barn, but the exercise is thrown when Cas hears Anna’s voice. Why would the voice of a girl he loved upset him so much? Anna is dead. Not just ‘she’s-a-ghost’ dead, but a ghost who finally departed our realm of existence when she opened a door to Hell and dove in, taking an evil Obeahman with her. She saved the lives of Cas and his friends, but her crossing left Cas troubled over its implications. At the barn, Carmel is also shaken as she is almost impaled on a pitchfork. Shaken enough to call it quits on hanging with the ghost-hunting team… and her relationship with Thomas.
The next ghost Cas tackles by himself, almost to test whether he really heard the voice or not, but Anna materializes in full and appears to climb into an old factory’s boiler right before Cas while oblivious to his presence.
When she looks at me again, her eyes are red with blood. A ripple of pain passes through her jaw as phantom cuts open and close across her chest, grotesque flowers of red, blooming and disappearing down her arms… I keep my eyes open for as long as I can stand to, because she wants me to see.
“Let it go!” Is the refrain Cas hears from all his friends and advisors from Gideon to Thomas’ grandfather Morfran, (whose support he never does fully gain,) when he tells people what he has seen. She’s nothing but trouble. In fact, a summary of the first third of the book would be: “Don’t do it cas!”
Now, I’ve seen way too many evil sorcerers bite-it in horror movies and comic books, so I know what Cas is really facing here, and it’s just not taken seriously by his family and friends. A nominal “Don’t do it, Cas! …but I know you will anyway… because you love her.” just isn’t realistic. No, in real life, you have to sacrifice an innocent, the stars have to be just right, and the incantation must be perfect in order to open the gate to Hell. Otherwise demons devour your soul. Forever. If I were his mom, I’d hit him in the head and lock Cas in the closet to save him from himself. In fact, a lot of the banter at this point in the story is downright silly, but the story itself is solid and driving, making us want to see what happens when Cas faces off against the Obeah with Anna by his side.
Cas and Thomas begin solving the mystery of how to re-open The Gate by visiting Thomas’ aunt at Morfran’s suggestion… She’s been dead for years, but she gives some sage advice. Turns out, Anna is being tortured in a self-contained world, maybe not the true Hell, but a hell carved out of the Dark by the Obeahman.
He’s not a ghost anymore?
In Chapter 14, we learn that Thomas smokes. It seems strange that this critical piece of characterization took a book and a half to be laid on us, so it seems odd and contrived.
Next, Cas and Thomas go to London to visit Gideon after they anonymously receive a photograph of people in robes each holding blades that are exact replicas of Cas’ own ghost slayer. There they meet Jestine, a woman trained trained to be Cas’ replacement as “The Warrior” by The Order of the Black Dagger, those descended from the magicians who created the original blade and bound it to the other side. Cas believes that his athame hovers between the worlds, travelling back and forth between here and the afterlife, and is itself a door that is always open. It just needs to be forced a little wider in order to allow him in to save Anna. (You know… the most powerful supernatural entity Cas had ever encountered before the Obeahman who this young, flesh-bound teenager is just going to bop into hell and rescue.)
Leithlisigh!
The Order has done it before, Jess says, but there’s a price. (There’s always a price.)
The Order is made to seem like a bunch of stuffy, arrogant rich guys who deserve a slap; they are bad guys, and their leader Colin wants Cas dead and his blood line ended so a new blade can be forged from the melted silver of the original and tied to a new bloodline, that of Jestine.
They believe that all ghosts are trapped here un-naturally and should be sent to the other side, having faith that the spirits will be delivered to the place where they belong. The ethic Cas has been taught is to only send spirits that kill living innocents.
Cas never tells The Order about the Obeahman, which is mind-boggling; he never explains how the obeah sucked in all the energy from the souls he sent since he inherited the athame from his father. Yet, somehow they know. Maybe Gideon filled them in.
Likewise, The Order never actually explain their morality outright to convince Cas of their side of the debate. Do you think a spirit trapped in this world, if offered to spend eternity alive, but in a suspended ghostly state, perhaps with a severed head balanced atop their shoulders, would have said “sign me up?” This big question is never explored.
A shame, because that’s the real crux of the story.
If there is a way to separate them, will you pull her back, or send her on?
The gate is opened and Jestine and Cas step through The Gate, expecting that only one of them will return to take up the mantle of the warrior. Thomas and Colin anchor their spirits.
…he could incapacitate us, pull our spines out like he was deboning a fish. And that’d be enough. We’d lie here until our bodies bled out onto the floor of the deep well. Then he’d have us.
There the obeahman is waiting, and it’s going to take the full power of Anna, Cas and Jestine to defeat him, if it can be done at all.
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Anna Dressed in Blood
Girl of Nightmares
Anna Dressed in Blood – Reviews by Kids!