Firestorm Rising

Firestorm Rising is John Clewarth's debut novel, for children aged 9 to 12+ years - and reached the finals of The People's Book Prize in 2013. Raingate Cemetery is the spooky playground of Tom Allerton, Daniel 'Doc' Studd and Jasmine 'Jazz' Baxter, and provides a great opportunity for them to play a practical Halloween joke on their schoolmates. Events take an unexpected turn when a freak storm occurs and lightning strikes an ancient and crumbling tomb. The children flee in terror, all except for Jazz who decides to investigate. Peering into the smoking rubble of the sepulchre, she is strangely drawn towards a weird pendant which unleashes a chain of terrifying and supernatural events. As the unearthly owner of the pendant endeavours to get it back, the friendship of the central characters is put to the toughest test, and they discover the true meanings of friendship, loyalty, truthfulness and fear. The children learn that there are far more things in the universe than they ever learned at school, as a terrifying monster is awakened from a long hot sleep...

This is a great story for the Halloween-period as it is fast-paced, easy to read and very relatable. The author has written a great story distilling the dark elements of the story and contrasting these with the friendships and playfulness in which the story is told. The individual character personalities shine through and enable the reader to develop an emotional attachment with at least one or more of the characters.

A great recommended read that has its feet set in reality. It slowly sucks the reading into an unconventional and absorbing spooky fantasy that you will want to read quickly. This should be a great hit with every age - young and old, but especially reluctant readers. (Mr Ripley's Enhanted books - April 29th 2018)