Skip to main content

Ghoulish Song

By
 

Ghoulish Song
by William Alexander
Simon & Schuster, 2013.  166 pgs.  Fiction

     Ghoulish Song is a companion volume to Alexander's National Book Award winning Goblin Secrets, and takes place in the same odd community of Zombay, with the poor Southern section and the rich Northern section, and a flooding river that threatens them both. Kaile is a baker's daughter. Her mother bakes bread and pastries, and brews ale. The family's public house is due for inspection on the day our story begins.  Everything must be perfect, or the baker will be placed in an iron cage and dunked in the river for three straight days. But when a troupe of goblins asks to perform for the customers, Kaile agrees, thinking the Inspector will have come before they arrive.  He doesn't.  Her parents kick the goblins out and they start raining curses down on the household. She gives them the best bread so they will lift the curse, and the public house fails inspection. But worse than that, when the goblins give Kaile a flute and she plays it, she loses her shadow and becomes dead to her family and her community. In the company of her unattached shadow, she wanders here and there trying to discover the secrets of her flute which only plays one song, with mysterious consequences. Will Kaile be able to master her flute in time to save her city? will she and her shadow ever be reunited and she accepted into her family again?  These questions are answered in Alexander's rich narrative, a welcome addition to the literature of Zombay.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Review: Alice with a Why

By
Alice with a Why By Anna James New York: Penguin, 2026. Fiction. 240 pgs. In 1919, in the aftermath of the first World War, Alyce is living with her grandmother in the English countryside. Her grandmother, also named Alice, tells Alyce (with a y) stories from her childhood adventures in a wonderful land filled with white rabbits and mad hatters. Alyce doesn't really believe the silly stories, she just misses her father who was killed in the war. One day, Alyce receives a mysterious invitation to tea, and subsequently falls into a pond where she is transported to Wonderland. Her grandmother, of course, is that Alice. Alyce is prompted by the Mad Hatter, Dormouse, and March Hare to seek out the Time Being and put an end to the war between the Sun King and the Queen of the Moon. Thus begins Alyce's adventure through Wonderland. I have a certain soft spot for the original story of Alice in Wonderland. It is one of my particular favorites and I often have a hard time reading new int...
Post a Comment
Read more

Review: A Strange Thing Happened in Cherry Hall

By
A Strange Thing Happened in Cherry Hall By Jasmine Warga New York: Harper, 2024. Fiction. 211 pages. A painting has been stolen from the Penelope L. Brooks Museum and sixth-grader Rami Ahmed is worried he's the main suspect. His mother works at the museum as the lead custodian and Rami spends a lot of time hanging out at the museum while she works. On the day the painting went missing, the only people there were the security guard Ed, the cleaning crew, and Rami. Then, a mysterious girl appears in the museum. She floats around from room to room and only Rami can see her -- and she looks exactly like the girl from the missing painting. To prove his innocence and help figure out who the floating girl is, Rami partners up with an aspiring sleuth at school named Veda and the two dive into unexpected situations as they try to solve the mystery. This is a cozy mystery that is focused mostly on characters and ambiance and only a little on the mystery itself. Don't read this book if yo...
Post a Comment
Read more

Review: The Factory

By
The Factory By Catherine Egan New York, NY : Scholastic Inc., 2025. Fiction. 306 pages.  Thirteen-year-old Asher Doyle has been invited to join the Factory, a secretive research facility in the desert which ostensibly extracts renewable energy from the electromagnetic fields of its young recruits. But Asher soon realizes something sinister is going on. Kids are getting sick. The adults who run the Factory seem to be keeping secrets. And the extraction process is not only painful and exhausting, but existentially troubling. Asher makes a handful of new friends who help him with an investigation that turns into a resistance, which turns into...a cliffhanger! The Factory is a page-turning sci-fi with multidimensional characters, an intriguing plot, and refreshingly straight-forward writing. Egan weaves in detail about climate crises and social unrest, making the story's dystopian setting feel rich and plausible. With its sophisticated themes and accessible storytelling, I would recomm...
Post a Comment
Read more