Being quite a different book from what I thought I would usually choose, this one has changed my mind. I’m not saying it was revolutionary or anything extreme, but it did change my mind and help me to realise the types of books I enjoy reading.
Charlie is a 16 year old boy, who after suffering from meningitis and dying, returns to life with the ability to see ghosts. This obviously alters his life completely and he struggles a lot with this. Two ghosts befriend him and they become a trio of sorts, which enables Charlie to feel slightly less uncomfortable with the whole ordeal. He ends up meeting Sam, who is another seer living in York, and this is when the story starts to begin, I would say.
I liked the characters more than the plot. At times, I couldn’t keep track on what was happening and was quite confused towards the end of the book when trying to figure out what the big revelation was. To be completely honest, I’m still not entirely sure what it was.
I really enjoyed the representation for all types of communities in this one. Charlie is disabled, having lost his legs due to suffering from meningitis, so uses protheses or a wheelchair. This is not something I have often seen in books and I think needs to be seen more widely, so I liked this aspect. He is also gay, which although is beginning to be seen more and more in more modern literature is still seen as a sort of taboo topic to write about. Sam is a transgender character F to M, which I don’t think I have ever seen in a book like this before. Also, I think some scenes when Charlie was being forced to look back on the memories from the deathloops he entered, was a way for Talbot to show that it is not only adults that can experience PTSD, but so can younger people and it shouldn’t be dismissed as silly teenage antics.
Charlie was a good character. His backstory was interesting and I enjoyed learning about it, although he did annoy me a little bit when he was trying as hard as possible to dislike Sam, even though he had not done anything to cause that.
Sam I thought was a slightly better and more intriguing character than Charlie. I thought that him already knowing basics about magic before even becoming a seer was quite interesting and his character seemed a lot less pessimistic.
Heather and Ollie (possibly Villiers too) were my favourite characters. They just wanted to help the others, not only for their own gain but for the safety of an entire city of ghosts. I thought the way that the ghosts were described, as looking like the rest of society, was quite disturbing as it can kind of be seen as the hidden in plain sight scaremonger.
Although I did admittedly find that part slightly off-putting, I wouldn’t say I was as scared by this book as the author intended. I understand why some would find it scary, but I just read through it, and was sometimes a little bored, without feeling that way. I think this may have been due to the fast pace of the book, and although this is often done well, I feel that in this story, the fast movement through the plot meant many details were missed out, making the book less engaging.
Overall, I did enjoy reading this and it got me out of a reading slump, but I wouldn’t read it again or necessarily recommend it to someone, unless they asked for a very specific niche ghost book. It did however, make me realise that I enjoy fantasy and sci-fi books more than I thought, so it wasn’t all that bad.
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