Gods of the Nowhere: A Novel of Halloween
Written by: James Tripper Book Review by: Miranda Moses (Fraser) ISBN: 978-0-9882433-1-6 My fellow Halloween addicts I present to you this year's Halloween Day Bonus Book Review! I think I literally found a book that is perfect for this occasion! Gods of the Nowhere: A Novel of Halloween. How perfect is this? AND it's a fictional novel so it's not just a book on the history of Halloween, because that's a little too on the nose for me. I'm not saying it won't ever happen, but I much prefer the excitement of a book like this. The story revolves around Sam McGarth, a flaming haired teen just shy of his 18th birthday. A birthday that happens to fall on Halloween. He has always felt like something was very different about him. He sees things, hears things, and is convinced that animals follow him. But this only happens during the month of October. The time of the year that is referred to as the Thinning. When the veil between the world of the living and the dead thins down until Halloween night when it is at it's absolute thinnest. His guardian Father Doctor, a catholic priest, does his best to assure Sam that all of these things are coincidences and that he is as normal as any other child. But Sam is not so sure and neither is his best friend Lucia Winters. While her experiences have been different then Sam's she too has seen plenty to convince her that another world surrounds theirs. Sam's destiny lies in the Nowhere. A place closest to purgatory in definition. It is a place filled with the souls of those that God would not take and the Devil does not want. But Sam must venture this land to to save our world from an attack from The Nowhere. In this journey we have a classic set up of hero and heroine. We also have the three "stops" before the final boss. I can't seem to find the words for what stories like this are called, but it's a pretty common set up for plays. AND while we're on the topic of plays, the novel is also written with scene breaks in-between every so many paragraphs. Which I found to be a very interesting choice of set up. In these three stops we meet people of both mythology and reality and Tipper does a WONDERFUL job of bringing those into this story. It was truly flawless. And when we're about to meet the final boss... he throws in more information that just made my head spin. He somehow managed to use facts, biblical references, and mythology and create a world/characters that so perfectly fit that I found myself getting more and more excited. I LOVE stories like that. My problem now is that I want to share with you the fun facts and the educational nuggets strewn about the story... but I also don't want to reveal too much. This story involves Celtic myths, religious figures, magic, word play, and an interesting tale of good verses evil. It had some juvenile writing points, don't get me wrong, but he was writing a story involving teens. I think sometimes we forget that the style may be very fitting to the characters and their personalities. The beginning was very slow to me. And it honestly dragged until about page 25. But then you meet the main characters and jump right into things. It really is worth the read and I for sure am going to look into the author's other stories to see how his writing style has changed through the years. It's been a while since he's published a new book so I hope he's not done with the writing game! Read on my fellow book worms! May we one day have Belle's library. And as always links to the author's pages can be found down below!
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