A book reading lull is a strange phenomenon. One that's even stranger than a writers block. At least in the writers block, you know it's a blocking of your creative streams/rays/ink (whatever y'all authors imagine your creative flow to be). Regardless you know this is why the words aren't flowing to you like before.
Yet for a book lull, it just comes up so fast and suddenly you're repulsed by the stories you've been waiting for more than 5 months for and you shudder at the thought of opening that new story.
This is the situation I found myself since 6th of December last year. Coincidentally, that's when the 5th book of the Storm light Archives came out.
Imagine my horror when I downloaded the book and found out that my brain tunes out and I look at the pages lazily, missing some words and getting frustrated with the whole process scrapping the book and reading in general till whenever.
As though in response to my mental cry for help. A friend informed me about a new and budding book club at our school and immediately I signed up and download the book we were to read.
The Screaming Staircase
Plot
The world has been overrun by ghosts. The spirits of the dead coming back to haunt with the living.
With the fact that children sense these apparitions more clearly they are made to be ghost hunters and war against the dead.
Lucy Carlyle a talented hearer joins Lockwood And Co. The only agency ran purely by children. The take up a case of a dangerous Type 2 haunting and discover that this ghost has much more to say about the living.
Now normally I'm not a fan of horror, so I was a little bit skeptical about the book.
Yet after a few pages I realized that this was more of a detective than a horror movie.
The idea was fresh and the writing was new. A new genre from an entirely new author. I forgot my reading lull as I read page after page.
I loved the characters too. Anthony Lockwood with his cool head, impeccable rapier skills and lovely sense of humor.
George Cubbins, the brains to Lockwood's brawn, providing a lovely air of comedic relief due to his amazing sarcastic nature and his numerous humorous banter sessions with Lucy
Then Lucy Carlyle herself, a girl in tune with spirits and finding a way to be in tune with herself.
Jonathan Stroud creates characters that we're sure to fall in love with, he creates a story one would remember and he used the simplest of plots to do it.
It's an understatement to say that when I finished the book I was stunned.
Stunned by just how simple and good it was. If there was ever a minimalistic writer then this was him.
I give him a 5 stars for this. Apparently it's part of a series so I know what I'm going to be reading next week 🌚
