Gravediggers: Mountain of Bones

by Christopher Krovatin

HarperCollins, 2012

323 Pages

Young Adult

With endorsements from R.L. Stine, Rick Yancey, Chris Grabenstein, and Michael Grant on the cover, how could I resist?

It’s a school wilderness camp. All three of the main characters lose themselves at the beginning of the adventure. That is, they all lose something that makes them who they are. PJ, a scaredy-cat, loses his camera, his way of gaining mastery over the world. Kendra, the nerd, has her internet access taken away; her resources, her friends. Ian too. But it hits him worse, because the thing this jock cares about most is the team he’s playing on. By a twist of fate, he ends up in the wrong group.

The plot is simple. The three have a fight and then get punished. They decide to follow a twelve point buck out into the sunset together, choosing kinship rather than anger, a rebellion against the true enemy: the authoritarians in charge of the flower-gathering camp. Then they realize they are lost.

Ian is looking for the bodies of the Pine City Dancers, campers who were lost in the woods last year and never found, an urban legend he takes seriously. The map and compass end up being useless, and there is a strange wall soaked in rum and scattered with coffee beans. Which, of course, they cross over. (Hey, at least they didn’t go into the basement.)

Suddenly we are in a cabin in the woods, in the depths of a rainstorm, and the fast paced thrills don’t stop. You’ll have to fight to not read it in one sitting. It’s really fun getting into Kendra’s analytical mind and her overuse of the word ‘puerile‘, and Krovatin does a great job getting us into the motivation of both nerds and jocks as they learn to negotiate their way through Hell together.

The three kids find a diary with the words “Read me to Live” scrawled on the front. Then they go into the basement. (Sigh.) A skull perched in the middle of a voodoo sigil greets them (along with a dead guy named Bill.) The cabin is soon surrounded by zombies (they call them revenants at the end, the re-animated dead,) and a shot to the head won’t stop them like it does in the movies.

When something that horrible happens somewhere, it seeps into the earth, affects the kharma of the place.

In the back of the diary is a rudimentary map. From the wall, to the cabin in the woods, to the dreamcatcher, to the witch. Did I mention the witch? It smells just like the Blair Witch, an old hag that raises zombies and leaves Russian writing and symbols everywhere. She steals PJ after he falls to the zombies, and Ian finally finds the Pine City Dancers, but not quite the way he expected.

You thought you were playing Nancy Drew, figurin’ out a secret code that O’Dea can’t understand, being some mountain witch. You know when people write backward? When they’re demonically possessed.

They find the path through the woods and the story seems cut and dry. Rescue PJ and head down the protected trail. But Ian does something dumb. “Every time Ian does something without thinking, it results in tragedy. Rational thought is essential here.” Yup, he removes the dreamcatcher from the ancient Indian burial ground. Bad move. The zombies are freed, not only to walk the path home, but the rest of the world, (bringing about the Zombie Apocalypse.) The revenants run –not shamble– straight for the camp where the kids’ school friends are sleeping.

This is Book One of the Gravediggers series. The book is marketed for mid-grade readers; probably right because it’s not too gory or scary, but there is enough fear-inducing imagery to keep you up at night if that’s what you are looking for, at any age.

The natural symbiotic partnership between the Gravediggers, who comprise the provisional branch, or the military “zombie hunter” class, and the more politically minded Wardens of cursed geographic regions who keep “the curse” under control with sigils and offerings, is mentioned only a couple times in this first book, almost as an afterthought. But that doesn’t matter, because it’s a great idea and a great story. It even has a hand-of-glory in the final scene!

INTERVIEW with Christopher Krovatin
Gravediggers: Entombed
Gravediggers: Terror Cove
Gravediggers: Mountain of Bones
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