Substitute Creature (Tales from Lovecraft Middle 4) by Charles Gilman

Substitute Creature (Tales from Lovecraft Middle 4) by Charles Gilman
Buy Substitute Creature (Tales from Lovecraft Middle 4) by Charles Gilman at Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.com
Category: Confident Readers
Reviewer: John Lloyd
Summary: It might have taken four attempts, but at last we see just how great this series can get. Good, brisk and creepy fun.
Buy? Yes	Borrow? Yes
Pages: 176	Date: November 2013
Publisher: Quirk Books
External links: [www.lovecraftmiddleschool.com Author's website]
ISBN: 9781594746406
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I've never been to an American middle school, so I didn't realise people held Valentine's balls at them in the middle of the morning, with classes to be had afterwards. But Robert and Glenn didn't realise they would spend the duration of the Valentine's ball balanced on a thin ledge of stonework four floors above a concrete ground, outside their school. They have had a head start, of course, with three books' adventures for them, as they discovered the truth of the singular world of Lovecraft Middle – and the demonic worlds it holds portals to. Once inside, however, things don't get any better – a nightmarish snowstorm strands Robert at the school, along with the caretaker of dubious repute, his school nurse mother, the ghost of a girl thirty years gone – and the substitute librarian, fresh from said demonic worlds. And all the while, the Old Ones are waiting underground for the time to be right…

And the time is right, for this is the best of the series. Whereas it might seem a little off-kilter for the book to concentrate on the invasion of cold as opposed to some kind of creature as before, the (ten-year-old-friendly) claustrophobia of the school campus at night, in a white-out and with no power, at the behest of the evil characters of the series, really does work. And the book turns out to be even more off-kilter than that, with tricks up its sleeve that really did quite surprise me.

Before now the series has struggled to maintain both plot and mood, but here it succeeds fully. What's more it adds an intelligence, and a character to the surprises in the plotting. It manages to supersede its genre trappings, and among the things I didn't expect it to do was to succeed so well in being fresh, surprising and clever. Don't get me wrong, none of the books before now have been poor. They are all brisk – ninety minutes perhaps – and they've all had an inventiveness, and a sense of purpose that perhaps the author hasn't always been up to the mark with.

Here, however, is full vindication of me recommending and championing this series throughout. I started the first without thinking it would be a series, ended the first three knowing we would expand beyond the original trilogy, and happily rejoined here for episode four – of, well, at least one or two more. They've always had the intention, if not the ability, of combining the arcane (this is called Lovecraft school, in about the bluntest clue to us that strange things are afoot) with the everyday year seven lives of its heroes Robert and Glenn. Last time we had the arcane but not such a strong plot throughout. This is great throughout. It matches the brilliance with which Quirk Books present these editions – with really fun 3D lenticular covers, and excellent illustrations (I loved the Old Ones when caught in images here at last). Roll on the rest of the series, and my thanks for my continued receipt of review copies.

The series started here. It's a different beast but we think the readers of this might enjoy A Slightly Jones Mystery: The Case of the Hidden City by Joan Lennon too.

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