By: Sean Cummings
Whoever said being a teenage witch would be easy? For fifteen-year-old Julie Richardson and the city’s resident protector from supernatural evil, the Left Hand Path doesn't give a damn if you've found true love for the first time in your life. There’s someone lurking the halls of Crescent Ridge High School with enough malice to unleash an epidemic of Soul Worms – supernatural larvae that feed on the very fabric of a victim’s humanity.
After witnessing the death of one of the most popular kids at school, Julie and über genius boyfriend Marcus are in a race against time to find out who is behind the attacks. All the evidence points to a horrifying plot at the City Weir during the Winter Solstice; the place where icy waters of the Bow River and a thunderous spillway will mean the deaths of more than a hundred of Julie’s classmates.
If she has any hope of saving their lives, she’ll need a little help from a coven of white witches and an Aboriginal mage whose snarky attitude is matched only by her magical prowess.
I want start out with how much I adore the covers of both Poltergeeks books! Okay, moving on...
There are very few young adult books out there getting a lot of attention that don’t dwell on angsty romance. Sean Cummings is providing a different option for those who like mystery, action and teenager/parent angst that most of us deal with. This is a series boys and girls can enjoy. One problem parents face with the whole young adult genre is which ones are appropriate for 13ish teens vs the 16ish teens. I feel like the writing in this series is geared for the 13ish crowd, but there is some language like the F-bomb. In reality this is exactly how this age group talks with each other (I would know, I have two of them <G>).
Student Bodies is a darker book than the first one Poltergeeks, but with more fast paced page turning action. It deals heavily with the topic of bullying and there is a lot of magical violence against the students. I think it got a little preachy about bullying, but this is an emotional issue that so many young adults deal with and the author did a great job with it.
Cumming’s has done a lot of research into magic of all types and it shows. Julie teams up with a young girl who uses a different kind of magic than her and her mother. One tied to the earth and very old. This makes Julie’s world bigger and she grows from the experience.
The book focuses on relationships: mother/daughter, classmates, boyfriend/girlfriend. Julie, like most teens, is dealing with all these at once and sometimes she makes the wrong decisions, but she learns from her mistakes and tries to make things right.
There was an unexpected turn of events I didn't see coming in Julie and Marcus’s relationship at the end of the book. I am looking forward to finding out how she deals with it.
4 “Grizzly Bear” Sheep
Sharon Stogner
*Author Links*
Sean Cummings is a fantasy author with a penchant for writing quirky, humorous and dark novels featuring characters that are larger than life. His debut was the gritty urban fantasy SHADE FRIGHT published in 2010. He followed up later in the year with the sequel FUNERAL PALLOR. His urban fantasy/superhero thriller UNSEEN WORLD was published in 2011.
2012 saw the publication of Sean’s first urban fantasy for young adults. POLTERGEEKS is a rollicking story about teen witch Julie Richards, her dorky boyfriend and race against time to save her mother’s life. The first sequel, STUDENT BODIES is due for publication in September 2013.
Sean Cummings lives in Saskatoon Canada.
