Soulstice by Simon Holt

Pub date - September 1, 2009

Six months . . .

Since Reggie first discovered the existence of the Vours in a tattered journal. Since her little brother, Henry, began to mutilate animals and turn against her. Since she learned to devour her fear and destroyed a Vour to save Henry.

The Vours still haunt Reggie, but only in her dreams - until one horrifying night, when an unexpected visitor turns her nightmares into reality. (book back blurb)

You know, it's books like this that make me want to haul ass to my local used book store and scour the shelves of YA horror of the days of yore (which I'll be doing on Saturday, thanks). The Devouring series is proof positive that you can have kick ass YA reading material without some derivative love triangle (or romance in general) mucking things up.

Steph from Reviewer X and I talked about this when we were at BEA. How many YA books out there do you know of that don't involve some kind of romance? Ding ding ding! I have one right here! But there are so many counting fingers left over . . .

Yes, Reggie has a crush but what fifteen-ear-old doesn't? The difference here is that that's as far as it went before Vour!Quinn was sunk into a frozen lake. No pining, no losing a sense of self, no moping. Just a crush before the shit hit the fan.

And then we get Soulstice which just takes the fucked-upedness to a whole new level. The mystery behind Eb is finally revealed and Reggie has to compromise the very thing she believes in in order to get the help she so desperately needs to fight the Vours. I can't talk about it without actually spoiling these little tidbits of information but damn, I loved them. And I just can't get enough of the fearscapes that Reggie makes her way into. They're just . . . things of nightmares. Not "OMG what am I going to do without my boyfriend?" nightmares but true-on Nightmare on Elm Street, you wake up and check to make sure your arms are still attached, nightmares. God I love it.

And the characters. If the fearscapes aren't enough, the characters and whole loads of love. Henry is one of the most multi-dimensional characters I've ever read. Reggie . . . I just like Reggie. She's a good, solid, well-rounded character that, despite the circumstances, comes off as real. You can actually believe that she could be a real chick. She's just normal. And Aaron is Reggie's Ducky but he's so much more than that. The kid takes a beating and just keeps on kicking. It shows just how strong the friendship is between those two. The father is a little cardboard but he barely plays a role so I can easily overlook that. And don't forget Eben. That guy is just love right there. The persistence he has with what he does would make any teenager envious. And it does in the book.

I have to say, this one didn't penetrate my defenses like it did in the first one but here, we know what the Vours are. To me, the mystery is what's the scariest. The unknown. We know what they are now and we know they're bastards so the fear is kind of gone. Well, at least the boogidy-boogidy fear, anyway. There are still many things left in this book to creep a person out, that's for damn sure.

So while the actual 'freaked out in the dark' horror element of the first book is gone, Soulstice escalated the series just to the other side of that. Now you know what these things are and you know exactly what they can do to you . . . right? When you think you have the dark all figured out, it throws you a blood-covered curve ball.

An excellent sequel and what a smarmy place to end it! Now I have to wait until the third comes out! Damn you, publishing schedules! Gah!

The Devouring by Simon Holt

First published in 2008.

When Reggie reads about the Vours in a mysterious old journal, she assumes they are just the musings of an anonymous lunatic. But when her little brother, Henry, begins to act strangely, it's clear that these creatures exist beyond a madwoman's imagination, and Reggie finds out what happens when fears come to life.

To save people she loves, Reggie must learn to survive in a world of nightmares. Can she devour her own fears before they devour her? (book flap blurb)

There's nothing like a good spooking to fall asleep too. Yeah, this one wigged me out a little bit, especially since I found myself reading it right before I went to sleep. Let me tell you, what an awesome departure this book is from all the other so-called "horror" novels in the YA section now. Gone, it seems, are the days of Christopher Pike and RL Stine's Fear Street and in are the days of sparkling vampire boyfriends and prep schools with fangs. What happened to the horror?

Holt definitely brought it back with this book. The transformation of an eight-year-old boy into this stone-cold sociopath was just downright creepy. He wasn't a little boy anymore. You could tell just by the way he talked. He didn't give a shit about anything except making other people suffer. And when the woman Reggie found in her house was described, the image that sank into my head was tough to get out. This face that was just pure terror, with a jaw gaping open as if she died as she was screaming. *shudder*

And the description of the Vours, as this black mist. You see it a lot in movies now, as if it's turned into this universal signifier of a malignant entity. But how it writhed about when it was trapped, how it possessed Henry, what it looked like when Reggie was able to overcome it. Blech!

The fearscape was a pretty gruesome place. Holt definitely did not tread lightly in that department. With the kids at the carnival trying to burst open the heads of other children in that water pistol/balloon popping game, the hall of mirrors, that psychotic clown . . . gah! I fucking hate clowns. Saw Killer Klowns from Outter Space when I was about 7 or 8. Yeah, the movie's cheese, but not where you're that young. Destroyed clowns for me. That psycho clown so would not have survived that fearscape if I were in it. I would have become his nightmare and would have killed him with his own hatchet hand. *shudder*

The feeling of not being able to escape that fearscape was in and of itself frightening. It's like a dream you can't wake up from. You know it's not real but no matter how many times you blink your eyes, you're still in that dream when all you want to do is come out of it. If that doesn't get your heart beating faster, I don't know what will.

The reason why I do Freaky Fridays is because I miss YA horror like this. It's just not around anymore because the market isn't calling for it right now. If I could write it, I would and do my damndest to get it published just to add to the something different as opposed to just adding to the pile. I love horror. I love being scared and tweaking myself out. I don't know why. The adrenaline, I guess. I think that's one of the reasons why I loved this book. There's no romance, no glittering, no high school drama, no bratty rich kids with fangs. It's just straight horror, as it should be. God I love it.