Bloody Books Reviews - The Young Horrors Season - The Spook's Apprentice by Joseph Delaney

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 continue with a trip to Lancashire

We continue to examine the finest in YA genre fiction with a tale of Boggarts, witches and child sacrifices. You know. Proper fiction for the younger amongst us. As always, this series is looking only at the first book with gestures towards the rest of the instalments in order to portray, I hope, how good YA fiction is, has always been out there and is worth reading.

The Wardstone Chronicles kick things off by setting the scene beautifully. The tale is told in first person, taken in the form of memories being told by Thomas Ward about his younger days as an apprentice to the local "Spook" by the name of John Gregory. The role is somewhere between exorcist, monster hunter and witch-finder, a handymen for occult happenings to be called on at all hours to deal with the strange and supernatural all lumped under the term "The Dark". Tom is the seventh son of a seventh son and as these things go, is naturally attuned to supernatural experiences. However, the job, though it pays well, has already seen off multiple previous apprentices in a collection of ghastly ways, and the first year is a lot of memorising, reading and studying. Not long after though, he is tricked by an evil far beyond his reckoning when he releases Mother Malkin, and now time is running out

It may not sound it from the synopsis above but this book is brutal, with scenes involving everything from cannibalism to being buried alive, and whilst the descriptions are truly gruesome, there's a off-handed casual tone, as these are tales being told by a much older man who has seen more horror than any one person should. It's an interesting way for the narrative to move forward as the repulsion and terror is there, front and centre, but the tone sits with you as the unseen listener to Tom's life. It adds so much of who and what Tom is and was, forming a connection with the reader. It's something I don't think I've come across before, and it's an excellent trick.

The book casts Lancashire with as much character as John or Tom. It is very much a love letter to the bleak yet inviting land as it is a horror book, and setting during the time of the Witch Trials adds a thick atmosphere to the proceedings. With that atmosphere comes some heady themes that thread through the narrative. The hard choices of morality, and how that morality can bump heads with religion as written. Once more, like Lockwood and Co, this is not a book that talks down to the readers, but seeks to challenge and widen the experience. YA fiction is always at it's best when it understands it's audience, and The Spooks Apprentice takes that as fact..

The story is incredibly accessible, balancing wonderfully between the horror, action and exposition. None of the elements sit for longer than they should, and often come at you from an angle you may not expect. Delany's prose manages to convey a lot of character and repulsion from his characters, and John Gregory, the Spook himself, is an oak of a character. Old, gnarled and yet still has a lot of fight in him. the fact that the Spook's life is a lonely one is mirrored by the secondary characters. That is to say, they are few and held at arms length a lot of the time. Once again, the thought that's gone into the the structure of the book is genuinely impressive. The only other die characters we spend any time with as a whole are Alice, and the Kitchen Boggart. As the second cooks bacon invisibly and sometimes pretends to be a cat, he is my favourite, but Alice Deane (one time Witch's Apprentice under the wonderfully named Bony Lizzie)

Once again, don't sleep on this one, the series carries on into some dark and unsettling places and is well worth your time.