Book Review,  Reviews

The Spook’s Mistake (Wardstone Chronicles #5) – Joseph Delaney

September 10, 2013
“Carrying my staff, I went into the kitchen and picked up the empty sack. It would be dark in less than an hour but I’d just enough time to walk down to the village and collect the week’s provisions. All we had left was a few eggs and a small wedge of County cheese.
Two days earlier The Spook had gone south to deal with a boggart. Annoyingly, this was the second time in a month that my master had gone off on a job without me.”

Following the escape from The Fiend, Tom’s master had become very protective, taking to going out on jobs alone rather than taking his apprentice along with him and even stopping Tom from going into the village for provisions alone. Tom wasn’t stupid, he knew the dangers that surrounded the Fiend, but the cabin fever set in and Tom wanted out. On the way back from collecting provisions Tom is foiled into accepting a Kings coin and is drafted into the army by a press gang. Thankfully Alice helps him out of the situation but so begins their time apart. Tom must go north and train with a younger, fitter spook by the name of Bill Arkwright, one of his masters past apprentices. However things in the north aren’t any safer and it soon becomes apparent that there are dangers lurking everywhere for young Tom and any of his companions. 

*** 

The fifth book in the Wardstone Chronicles series delivers just as much as its predecessors, with magic, mayhem and horror at every turn. Once again I was captured by the book and couldn’t put it down, finishing a 450 page book in just a few sittings and loving it all.

The story was different because of the teachings, Bill Arkwright is completely different from Toms master and I liked that this book gives you an idea of how different each spook can be, even if ‘normal’ people view them as all alike. There were other demons introduced and I don’t just mean the water witches by that, these demons were more human and can be present in our everyday lives, not just in fiction.

There’s something about this series that really grips me. I think it is because it takes me back to my pre-teen years when I frequented myself with the Cirque Du Freak books by Darren Shan and Goosebumps. There ius nothing I used to love more than reading scary books late at night when I should have been reading and this book gives me that feeling back.

I would honestly recommend this series to any youngster who loves a good scary story. The things encountered are not that scary because no matter how much danger there is, its quite obvious that good will always defeat evil. I like the ongoing storyline between Alice and Tom too and even though I worked out one of the ‘reveals’ in this book very early on I still enjoyed the characters finding out about it and I doubt I would have picked it up as a younger reader.

The Spook’s Mistake is the fifth book in the Wardstone Chronicles series, and was published by Red Fox, a Random House imprint, in 2009. My copy was sent from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

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