The Color of Darkness

May 15, 2016
Book 2 in the middle-grade Book of Storms trilogy.Twelve-year-old Danny O'Neill's life is miserable. His horrific nightmares have left him skittish, fearful, and without friends. That is, until he meets the tough, unswerving Cath Carrera, a girl who has known no kindness and expects none. Running away from her abusive father, Cath encounters a hare named Barshin who tells her that she is a tela: a being who can talk to other creatures. Barshin then briefly takes her to Chromos, a world created by dreams and imagination. Once home in England, Cath is desperate to return to Chromos, the only world of beauty that she has known, but Barshin tells her that he will only lead her back again if she gets the message to Danny--a schoolmate--that Danny's cousin Tom is in great danger of being swallowed up by Sammael, the dark entity in Book 1 who trades wishes for souls. Cath delivers the message, but Danny wants none of it, scarred as he is by his last encounter with Sammael. Pitting Danny's fear against Cath's fearlessness, Hatfield once again spins a complex, action-filled story that is buoyed with mythology and keenly observed depictions of the natural world. Danny is a middle-class white boy; Cath is a lower-class girl who endures taunts that her mother is a "Gypsy."While the subject matter is dark and at times raw, the message of the strength of the human spirit is ultimately uplifting. (Fantasy. 11-14)

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