Book Review 17: The White Gates by Bonnie Ramthun

From the cover I first thought it was a skateboard, but turns out it was a snowboard. Tor is the main character, and the book begins with his mother waking him up late at night because she is the town doctor and she has an emergency to go take care of and doesn't want to leave him alone. It's Tor's first night in Colorado. The emergency is a local snowboard team member. Tor being a new kid in town gets picked on. Supposedly the town is also "cursed" and all doctors who come are never going to stay.

One thing I didn't like is that it alluded a lot to Tor's life with his father, but takes a long time to tell us why he's with his mom now instead of his dad. I almost wondered if something bad had happened to his dad and stepmom from the way it kind of sounded. But no, just his dad having twins cut into his life, and now with his mom he's getting attention. He makes friends, a Ute girl and a boy who is the son of a famous snowboarder, both kind of outcasts/loner, but everyone seems to like them. The girl is the great, great, great grandaughter of the woman who cursed the town. Tor learns to snowboard and gets picked on all throughout the book, and of course solves the mystery of the boy at the beginning's strange death before his mom gets blamed for it, and also takes care of the curse.

It wasn't too bad actually.

I'm now onto Gone by Michael Grant, which is a book I'd actually been interested in for awhile. And it has started with a bang, or you might say a poof.

Book Review 16: Jack: Secret Histories by F. Paul Wilson

So, I've always thought about reading the Repairman Jack novels by F. Paul Wilson, but never got around to it. I'm pretty sure this is supposed to be about his main character growing up. Which means to be accurate to the adult novels that it takes place in the 1980's. While I enjoyed the references to the time period since I am a child of the 80's, I somewhat wonder if kids today will get the references, or even care. At least, that was my first thought. But as I got to thinking about it, at this point, isn't it like me reading about the 60's or even 50's during the 80's? Kids may enjoy it. There is one part where the main characters, Jack and Weezy, are talking about how they wish there was a two-way tv, where you could send questions to all the world's libraries to get answers. Hmm, sounds strangely like the Internet, doesn't it? I wonder if kids would pick up on that, or if it would go over their heads? Basically Jack, Weezy, and Weezy's brother Eddie are out in the woods and they find a mound, like an old Indian burial mound. Weezy is really into conspiracy theories, or as she calls it, the secret histories of the Earth. So she is digging around, and next thing you know they find a mysterious box and a dead body. They tell the cops about the body, but keep the box for themselves to study. Jack is the only one to be able to open it, and inside is a pyramid. There is Sumerian or some other ancient language inscribed on the box and pyramid.

Soon, there are more people dying, of strange ways, heart attacks out of nowhere. And in the town there is a secret Lodge that the men of the town belong to, and it is men from here that are dying. They try to get the pyramid and box dated by experts at a college, and both end up disappearing. One night there are helicopters that show up at the mound site, and when the 3 ride out to see, they are not sure if the guys there are really state patrol cops like the uniforms they are wearing.

There is some side story about a friend of Jack's that he is building a computer with, who is drinking. Not sure if this is necessary, but it does play into the solution of this particular mystery. I can tell this has left off for another one, and they even tell about it at the end of this one. Good story, just not sure what middle school kids will make of the 80's references.

Today I started The White Gates by Bonnie Ramthun.