Slade House

by David Mitchell
238 pgs

I was surprised when I learned that David Mitchell had a new book coming out so soon after The Bone Clocks was published just last year. He’s not one of those a-book-a-year authors. It made more sense when I learned that it originated from a short story Mitchell was writing via Twitter, but which grew until it became more of a novella in length. It’s a one-night read and is a sequel of sorts to The Bone Clocks, although reading it is really not prerequisite in this case.

Slade House only exists in our world on the last Saturday of October, every nine years. It’s accessed through a small iron door in an alley, and is the home of Norah and Jonah Grayer, twin soul-vampires who must feed every nine years in order to maintain their, and Slade House’s existence. They need to feed on the souls of humans who possess a level of psychic ability. So they lure unwitting victims into the alley, through the iron door, and into Slade House, where they feed and restore their own psychic abilities and leave behind an empty husk of their victim.

The book is comprised of five separate stories, each one taking place at nine-year intervals, but even with the skipping forward in time, the stories remain interconnected. The first victim we learn of is a young boy and his mother, the second is a man investigating a lead in their disappearance. The next is a group of students from the Paranormal Society, who have heard rumors that Slade House exists. The next is the sister of one of those students, trying to follow a trail of breadcrumbs. The last is a key character from one of Mitchell’s earlier books, who ties Slade House into the ever-growing and interconnected mega-story that Mitchell appears to be writing.

At its core, Slade House is a haunted-house story. But the mood and feel for the story is atypical from what you’d expect from one. Mitchell doesn’t use mysterious noises or startling apparitions to generate fear in his readers. Instead he lets you watch as one by one the Grayers’ victims are subtly hooked and then slowly reeled in. You know, or you think you know, what’s going to happen to them, but the real enjoyment in the story is waiting for the moment when they each realize that something inexplicable is taking place. 

★ ★ ★ ★ ☆

The Bone Clocks

by David Mitchell
624 pgs

I'm somewhat ashamed to admit this, but it's been quite awhile since I read one of David Mitchell's books. I read Ghostwritten and Number9Dream, his first two novels, over a decade ago, and then I unfortunately let him fall off of my author radar. The Bone Clocks has definitely put him back on it, and now I have some books that I missed and need to go back and read.

The Bone Clocks contains six separate stories, spanning sixty-plus years of one woman's life. The first story takes place in 1984 and introduces Holly Sykes, a fifteen-year-old who runs away from home after falling in love with an older man and infuriating her mother. Towards the end of that story Holly encounters a strange woman on the shores of a lake, whom she has a short, cryptic conversation with, and who introduces a supernatural element into the book.

As the remaining stories unfold, the supernatural aspects of the book increase, and we learn that Holly has become a part of a war that has been fought for thousands of years between two small groups of beings known as "atemporals." One group of these beings prey on children, taking over their bodies and living out that person's life until the body dies and they enter another child's body. The other faction lives forever as well, but does so through a form of reincarnation. As these stories play out, we're taken all over the world, and into a dystopian future world of 2043 as Holly's life repeatedly crosses paths with these atemporals.

Oftentimes when a book is categorized as fantasy, it automatically becomes inferior in the minds of many. They consider it a baser form of literature, not worthy of the same section in the bookstore as the books that they read. The Bone Clocks shines a light on just how ignorant that mentality is. David Mitchell has shown that some fantasy should be categorized in the same group along with the best books in any genre.

★ ★ ★ ★ ★