Queen of the Dead

May 15, 2011

Former cheerleader, fashionista and "mean girl supreme" and current spirit guide Alona Dare and social recluse and ghost-talker Will Killian trade their flirtatious banter for a more serious dilemma in this sequel to The Ghost and the Goth (2010).

Alona's only been dead two months, and already her recovering alcoholic mother is throwing out her prized mementos and her absent father and his ex-wife (a.k.a. Step-Mothra) are having a baby. Now could Will be interested in fellow ghost-talker Mina Blackwell and her Ghostbuster-like boxes meant to capture spirits? When Alona enters a comatose body, she only hopes to communicate with her selfish parents and teach Will a lesson, but she ends up getting stuck in the process. Once again the teens' alternating voices give differing perspectives. Will learns about the Order of the Guardians, a secret society of ghost-talkers bent on ridding the world of unsafe spirits, as well as his dead father's role in it, and selfish, immobile Alona contemplates her own karma and why she was left on Earth. The tension mounts when the Order comes to consider Alona dangerous. While this sequel lacks some of the amusement provided by the first book, plenty of back story keeps readers engaged in the continuing story line.

(COPYRIGHT (2011) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

November 1, 2011

Gr 8-11-As this sequel to The Ghost and the Goth (Hyperion, 2010) opens, Alona and Will are waiting for the ghost of Mrs. Ruiz so they can help send her into the light. However, Mina Blackwell is trying to earn her full membership in the Order, and containment of Mrs. Ruiz was to be her final test. She has a plan, though: if Will helps her, she'll share information about what he is and the shadowy Order. The idea that he's not the only ghost-talker staggers Will, and he agrees to help her. Meanwhile, it seems that Alona's mother is moving on just two months after her daughter's death; she is throwing away all of Alona's memorabilia. Distraught, the teen flees to her father's house, where she witnesses him and his new wife rejoicing over the upcoming birth of a new baby girl. Alona decides that the only way to stop her parents from forgetting about her is to send them a message they can't ignore, but her scheme backfires and she is sucked into the body of a coma patient and can't get out. Kade has created interesting and engaging characters in the ghost-talker and his spirit guide. They handle the drama in their lives in a believable fashion, and the well-paced plot pulls readers into a novel in which the dead are still capable of surprising the living. This excellent novel stands alone, but readers will want to read the first book to find out more about the characters.-Heather Miller Cover, Homewood Public Library, AL

Copyright 2011 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

July 1, 2011
Grades 8-12 Will and Alona know their purposeworking together to help ghosts get closure and move on. Will still has many unanswered questions, and newcomer Mina apparently knows the answers. Alona is distraught to find her family moving onher mother is cleaning out her room, and her father's new wife is expecting. This sequel to The Ghost and the Goth(2010) has exchanged some of the lighter humor for a more complex story line. Characters are more fully developed, and the momentum is stronger, propelling the narrative forward even as Will and Alona take divergent paths in this fine choice for reluctant readers.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)