strange and random happenstance: The Whispering Skull

The Creeping Shadow by Jonathan Stroud
Published by: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
Publication Date: September 13th, 2016
Format: Paperback, 435 Pages
Rating: ★★★★
To Buy

After the events at Aickmere's Department Store Lucy has left Lockwood and Co. She and the skull have gone freelance. Which has it's ups and downs. Her home isn't really a home and she misses 35 Portland Row and Lockwood in particular but she's not about to go crawling back begging for her old job. One day, after a long night, there he is, Anthony Lockwood, at her door. She knew they'd eventually see each other but she didn't think he'd seek her out. He's not asking her to come back just asking for her help. Penelope Fittes has asked the Lockwood and Co. complement to look into the case of Solomon Guppy, otherwise known as the Brixton Cannibal. He killed and ate his victims and it seems his ghost has returned to his old home. The source must be found and destroyed. Lockwood and Co. with Lucy and Quill Kipps in tow successfully find the source but Lockwood is reckless and Lucy is worried. She left in order to protect him and it seems that this has had the opposite effect. Though with the life Lucy leads she doesn't have time to dwell on this revelation as the very next day the skull is stolen from her apartment. There's only one person who knew about the skull other than her friends and that's a worker at the Fittes Furnaces where sources are destroyed. Lucy reaches out to him but it doesn't end well, he's murdered and she's on the run. The only place she can go is Portland Row. After a failed attempt to rescue the skull they decide that perhaps being in London isn't that safe at the moment and they accept a job they had previously turned down. The village of Aldbury Castle is swarming with spirits. What's more, Aldbury Castle is near a research facility run by the Rotwell Agency who it appears has been behind the purchase of artifacts that should have been thrown in the furnace. What they find inside the facility will change the very underpinnings of how society views The Problem. Their problem is staying alive long enough to let the world know.

While this series has always had Lucy at it's heart, with her moving out on her own she becomes even more important. This isn't about Lockwood and Co. anymore, this is about Lucy's relationship to Lockwood and Co. It's an interesting shift. Because partly it's like the first book with Lucy being the outsider, but at the same time we've spent three books with her building a relationship with Anthony and George and we have insider knowledge. It's an interesting liminal space to be in and ties in perfectly with the reveal at the end. Because Fittes and Rotwell, instead of actually fighting The Problem, they have been creating it by using sources to power a portal to the Other Side, which itself is a liminal space between life and death. This grey and lifeless mirror world isn't meant for the living and their intrusion is causing chaos. There is no balance between life and death anymore. The natural order of things has been damaged, perhaps beyond repair. This is the heart of the matter, humans mucking about can make everything worse. And unlike Penelope Fittes, Lucy, Anthony, and George, don't strive for power they strive for survival and normalcy. That's what these kids have all been fighting for, a world in which they can be kids. Though of course I would love to follow them forever and see there adventures as adults, I know there's only one book left to wrap it all up. Which I'm sad and also grateful for. Because while I love this world there are some quirks of Stroud's that really get on my nerves. Yes, I'm back to his body shaming yet again. Here it reaches a new level of unacceptable with the cannibal and his capacious corpse leaving belly streaks on the walls of his home. Firstly, how many people was Solomon Guppy eating? Because it sounds more of the gorging than of the eating to survive variety of killing. But more importantly, just no. I do not want to read about an obese Jeffrey Dahmer thank you very much. Really though, the belly streaks on the wall were the tipping point for me. Just so much no.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments

Labels: Anthony Lockwood, Body Shaming, Brixton Cannibal, Jonathan Stroud, Liminal Spaces, Lockwood & Co., London Calling, Lucy Carlyle, Marissa Frittes, The Creeping Shadow, The Problem, The Whispering Skull

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.