Book Review - Jonathan Stroud's The Whispering Skull
Published by: Disney-Hyperion
Publication Date: September 16th, 2014
Format: Kindle, 448 Pages
Rating: ★★
To Buy (different edition than on reviewed)
Lockwood and Co. are on a case. Only it's not going so well. Anthony, George, and Lucy are in serious peril when Fittes agents swarm in. I mean, they would have gotten it under control eventually.... But having Quill Kipps and his team come to the "rescue" is just degrading. And George did not like that slight against his research skills one bit. In a fit of pique Lockwood challenges Quill to a contest. The next time they are up for the same job whomever solves it first sees the loser place an ad in the paper declaring their inferiority. In other words, abject humiliation for the whole world to see. This opportunity comes sooner than expected. Paul Saunders is the "Municipal Excavator" of Sweet Dreams Excavation and Clearance. They are currently working in Kensal Green Cemetery where they have come upon an oddity, Edmund Bickerstaff, the notorious Victorian doctor's grave has been found. The fact that Edmund Bickerstaff was supposedly consumed by rats and never buried means a grave is indeed odd. This needs to be made safe ASAP and therefore Lockwood and Co. have been approached. After some problems at the site they secure it only to be informed that after they left the coffin was raided and now the Department of Psychical Research and Control (DEPRAC) is ordering Lockwood and Co. to clean up the mess with the help of Quill Kipps and his team. They didn't create the mess! And to have to work with Kipps!?! At least their contest can be settled. But the two teams trying to constantly one up each other is causing more harm than good. They aren't thinking straight or smart. They are endangering themselves and others. But at least Lockwood and Co. have one up on Kipps; Lucy. Lucy might be the first person ever since the legendary Marissa Fittes to be able to communicate with Type Three ghosts. And the ghost that is communicating with her is the creepy skull that George has been keeping around in a jar and experimenting on that he stole when he left the Fittes Agency. What's odd though is the skull claims to have known Edmund Bickerstaff. If this is indeed true will the skull help them or will it decide to lead them into danger?
The Whispering Skull was almost a non-starter for me. I dived into it immediately after finishing The Screaming Staircase and just wasn't feeling it. The first book took awhile to get going but I loved where it ended and while I finally had a firm grasp on the world of Lockwood and his cohorts when I started this second volume I just couldn't. The reason for this was twofold. The first was that I decided to pick this up as a quick read at the beginning of December before starting my holiday reading, and the sultry summer weather and lack of the Gothic goodness that The Screaming Staircase came to embrace wasn't there. So I was champing at the bit to read about some seasonally appropriate murders. And as for why I have now used two horse related metaphors in this review so far I honestly have no clue. Blame the skull? He is rather annoying so it could conceivably be his fault.... Needless to say, after I finished my holiday reading I returned to The Whispering Skull and re-encountered the second reason I had trouble getting into this book, the rivalries. So, all the agencies dealing with paranormal phenomena are rivals. Some, like that between the Fittes Agency and the Rotwell Agency, are not contentious. But Lockwood being Lockwood, this means that Lockwood and Co.'s interactions are always contentious. In particular with Quill Kipps and his team of Fittes agents. They are like oil and water, if they were somehow combustible. They are clashing continuously and at every chance they get, so much so that they endanger each other again and again. This just isn't my thing. I don't like confrontation in this petty bureaucratic way. It just gets under my skin. And seeing as this rivalry takes up more of the book than the actual mystery, which is pretty darn interesting when you're not trying to figure it out over conflicting agencies, this book just didn't do it for me. I just hope that the next volume remembers where it's strength lies, the creepy atmosphere, and not where it doesn't, in petty bureaucracy. I have a feeling though that we're going to get more bureaucracy because there's some big secret the agencies are hiding and I wouldn't be surprised if that's this series' big arc.
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