Author: Chris Wooding
Publisher: Scholastic
Rating: WORTHY!
This is the sequel to the really excellent Malice which I read some time ago before I began reviewing books on this blog. That volume was a real treat with its mix of novel and comic book, so I bought volume two hoping I would enjoy it just as much.
In Malice Children are being abducted by 'Tall Jake' - a comic book character who seeks to expand his comic book world so much that it spills into the real world and he can dominate that one, too. His comic, "Malice" is given away free, but is in short supply. There's a rumor going around that anyone who gathers together certain ordinary objects, along with the comic book, and says a certain chant, will be whisked into this comic world. But the comics are heavily censored, so children don't know how awful things are inside Malice until they get there - and then they can't get out.
There is a means of getting out - a white train ticket (as opposed to a black ticket which will take you anywhere within Malice) will permit passage outside. Why Tall Jake would even permit escape is a mystery, but the problem with escaping is that you forget everything which happened to you in Malice. Seth escaped and was favored with remembering, and now he's trying to get back in. Apparently Tall Jake was co-ruler of Malice with several others, but in a dramatic coup, he took down the others, and now he rules despotically. Seth is carrying the Shard - an "egg" containing one of those co-rulers - and he must get it back into Malice if they are to have any hope of bringing down Tall Jake, because inside waiting on him are his friends Kady and Justin, and he cannot let them down.
To cut a great story short, once again Wooding nails it. Seth makes it back into Malice, but his problems aren't over. he has to track down one of the deposed rulers, the Queen of Cats, and deliver the Shard to her, whilst avoiding assorted guardians - evil guardians loyal to Tall Jake. meanwhile,. on the inside, Kady, Seth's friend, and Justin, her loyal friend, are trying to track down Havoc - the resistance organization fighting against Tall Jake. The problem is that they're not welcome there when they arrive, and are thrown in jail!
I am not going to spoil this with how things turn out, but they didn't turn out how I expected them! The ending was a bit of a downer, but it was okay, and it was a lot better than some sappy endings which might have come after this dilogy. The problem with including comic book pages in a book with a format as small as this is that they're not given their best exposure, and the artwork is rudimentary at best. Both these novels should have been printed in comic book format. That aside the story is great, it's original and its inventive. It's creepy and scary and big and bold and I recommend both these volumes.
