Bloody Books Reviews - The Young Horrors Season - Lockwood and Co by Jonathan Stroud
I didn't mean to start another themed collection of reviews, but it felt like now was a good time to cast an eye on some of the best YA fiction with a strong fantasy / horror flavour by authors with a lot of passion. This is a series I've often wondered about starting, and whilst not Warhammer, it's all in the collective wheelhouse of genre that fits the Fluffenhammer ethos.
We begin with the first Lockwood and Co novel: The Screaming Staircase.
When a book begins deep into the after effects and sociological change that takes place after decades of national nightly spectral attackers you know you are starting a journey that's going to go to some very interesting places. Set in a Great Britain where the dead return nightly to haunt and harm the living, it falls to the Agencies to combat the ghosts, Each agency is staffed by children overseen by an adult, as only the young are able to see the apparitions. Between the larger Agencies lies the ramshackle and rambunctious Lockwood and Co, ran only by the charismatic Anthony Lockwood with no adult in charge. We follow the point of view of Lucy Carlyle as she arrives in London after a cataclysmic event as an Investigator in her home town. However, a series of undesirable events bring her to Lockwood and Co just as things go horribly wrong for the scrappy agency, and Lucy, Lockwood and the wonderfully slobby George Cubbins have one chance to save themselves from ruin with the help of the most deadly haunted house in the country.
Stroud is the master of balancing wry humour with just enough horror to keep younger readers (and me, a man in my 40s) glued to the page. The horror within the tale is an impressive feat, never being too much for the age group, but also never speaking down to the audience. Stroud knows where the line is, and he works alongside it, trusting his audience to understand and fully engage with the fiction. Trust me, elements like the Red Room are a masterclass in subverting expectations with a deft hand and some genuinely impressive creative twists. The other side of the coin is no less finely nuanced, with some dark stabs of humour peppered throughout the story.
YA fiction, especially in this genre is a melting pot of heady concepts and wish fulfilment, with Lockwood and Co coming out strong in that regard. The fact that adults are powerless in this ghost-filled world, where the young are armed with silver rapier and a collection of ghost hunting equipment (I adore the bombs they use) without the need for the usual routine of schools and homework is that perfect sort of power fantasy. The children are indeed the future as they battle the restless past as adults look on helplessly trying to have a say and a place. The Screaming Staircase introduces that world wonderfully, trapping that timeless childish quality of being scared just enough. The fact that the world of the novel takes place in a United Kingdom where technology stopped somewhere in the 1980s, creating an alternative modern day of no internet of phones speaks volumes to the older reader who enjoys looks back on those days as well as making it truly different world than the one that children inhabit now.
The first person perspective told from Lucy's narrative is a difficult but rewarding choice. It's through her eyes we see everything unfold throughout the series, as mysteries begin to unravel on both personal and national scales, with a sense of mounting tension and unease. The series does go on to some truly impressive heights but within this first book, the larger answers are reassuringly rare. We are set the questions only in passing, which is not a bad way to start a series.
As it will be with most of the books in this series, I cannot recommend highly enough. Pick it up, and sink into the best the genre has to offer.