strange and random happenstance: The Screaming Staircase

The Whispering Skull by Jonathan Stroud
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.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments

Labels: Anthony Lockwood, Christmas, Edmund Bickerstaff, George Cubbins, Gothic, Jonathan Stroud, Lockwood & Co., London Calling, Lucy Carlyle, Paranormal, Quill Kipps, The Screaming Staircase, The Whispering Skull

The Screaming Staircase by Jonathan Stroud
Published by: Disney-Hyperion
Publication Date: August 29th, 2013
Format: Kindle, 400 Pages
Rating: ★★★★
To Buy (different edition than on reviewed)

The Problem started about the middle of the last century. The dead no longer stayed dead. They roamed the street at night and were deadly to the living. Cemeteries were exhumed and the dead burned. Marissa Fittes and Tom Rotwell are credited with discovering the Problem and through their methods teaching others how to subdue paranormal phenomena by locating it's Source, the epicenter of it's haunting. Marissa set up the Fittes Agency and soon Tom set up the Rotwell Agency. And other psychic investigations agencies sprang up like mushrooms from corpses after that, one of them being Lockwood and Co. But the peculiarity of the Problem is that it is only children who can see and therefore destroy ghosts. The only adults on hand are those who were legends in their day but can no longer see ghosts and therefore have to pass on their knowledge to the younger generations now wielding psychic abilities. But not all children can see these supernatural foes. Some are blind to it, others are just slightly touched and aren't agency material, but some have special skills, from hearing, to touch, to smell. Lucy Carlyle is very talented. Any agency would kill to have her on their team. The problem is she left her last job under a bit of a cloud so she doesn't have the bona fides needed to secure a job at one of the prestige agencies, so instead she gets a job at Lockwood and Co. Before her job interview the "Lockwood" was young and dashing Anthony Lockwood and the "Co." was George Cubbins, the master of research if nothing else. They don't have uniforms, they don't have many jobs, but they have a nice headquarters at 35 Portland Row. After Lucy's job interview the "Co." increases by one. One night they are tackling what should be a simple case for their client, a Mrs. Hope, when things go pear-shaped. As in, they burn her house to the ground. With legal action being threatened they need a big case to pay off their client and keep the agency open. Which is why they accept a job at Combe Carey Hall. The estate is notorious. So many people have died there. So many investigators, even top trained Fittes investigators, have been victims to the house and the infamous Red Room. But as Lockwood says, they are desperate so they might as well go out with a bang. And if they succeed? Well, their name will be made and the agency secured.

If there's one thing I'm always looking for it's something spooky and Gothic to read. It's my comfort food. It's my jam. Ironically jam isn't my comfort food but that is a story for another time. Therefore when I was recommended the Lockwood and Co. series by someone whose opinion I trust I didn't really read anything about the series other than to get their elevator pitch of British teens dealing with paranormal phenomena. That right there was enough for me, Ghostbusters with a YA bent. But perhaps I wouldn't have had such a disconnect with the book for a long while if I had read a tad more about the series. Because everything I'd read made it sound very Dickensian. And the thing is that it is. It is very Dickensian. But set in modern day. Or a decade ago now because it was current day or near enough when it was written. I could not wrap my head around this for the longest time. They have swords and gas lights and then there was a television set, I was so confused. It almost took literally the whole book for me to make sense of this society that was trapped in a different time because all technological advances went to figuring out and fighting the Problem. But still, the start of the Problem was about the middle of the previous century, so shouldn't the tech have been more mid-century than this mishmash of what it is? Maybe what I'm trying to inarticulately say is that instead of jumping so headlong into the action I needed a little more explanation than the stumbling around in the dark until it clicked. In fact just a date would have been helpful. But on the bright side, when it clicked, it clicked. So what did it take? It took taking our three leads and dropping them in the middle of a classic haunted house story. They were just dropped in it at Combe Carey Hall. I mean, just that name sends a chill down my spine! It was just riddled with tropes from rooms filled with blood to ghostly monks to secret passageways, and of course a sinister staircase! Yet through it all Lucy, Lockwood, and George made it their own special story. It might have resembled everything from The Haunting of Hill House to The Legend of Hell House, which are personal favorites I might add, but it was it's own thing, which is a major feat given the preponderance of stories out there in the haunted house genre. More haunted houses less televisions please!