The Haunting of Alaizabel Cray By Chris Wooding

This is the first book I've picked up in a long time purely on the basis of it looked interesting to me.

I would describe it as Victorian Horror set in an alternate dimension London. This London seems frozen in time as all scientific progress seems to have stopped based on a dire problem London, and as we learn all major cities, are facing: the appearance of the wych-kin. We don't really know what the wych-kin are or why they are here. All we know, at the beginning of the book atleast, is that they are nasty demony critters that seem loosely based on european folklore (mostly nursery boggles) with a light sprinkling of Lovecraftian lore. Wych hunters have risen to combat these creatures and to keep them from spreading further into London. The story centers upon basically one wych hunter, Thaniel, when he happens upon a girl, Alaizabel, wandering the wych claimed parts of London apparently crazy. The story unfolds as we learn that Alaizabel is actually possessed and Thaniel tries to help her. All kinds of other stuff happens, which I'm not going to go into, because half the fun of reading this book was learning what the hell was going on at the same rate the characters were.

There are several reasons why this was a good read.

First, the wych hunters were not all powerful all knowing slayers of beasties. Everything they did was based on theory and superstition. There were no hard and fast rules when dealing with the wych-kin. What worked on one was not guaranteed to work on another. There were also no pools of research. Defeating a wych-kin was often trial and error, if you didn't die it was a good night. Everytime a wych hunter went out there was an expectation of death if they ran into something they weren't familiar with. I liked this aspect, you don't see it often.

Second, I think this is the first what I would consider true horror books I've read in an age. And it has NOTHING to do with vampires! Yay!

Third, while it felt like the critters were based upon something familair, it wasn't blatant. You weren't sitting there thinking my God this is all stollen from X. I was an impressive balance of making things feel familiar yet like nothing you've ever read about.

I've read the reviews on amazon and I can't tell if I'm desensitized or if some of the reviews are being just a little silly. There are many claims that this book was gory. I didn't think so. No worse than Dracula in my opinion. Yes, main characters die and the wych-kin are REALLY unpleasant and satisfyingly creepy. It's part of the story telling. There were complaints that is was fast paced like a movie or a video game and would only appeal to teens with corresponding attention spans. I couldn't disagree more. You don't get a solid sense of what the mystery is, or the big picture until over halfway through the book. The author is very miserly about details and the history of what has been going on in London, almost to a frustrating degree, but I also really appreciated that he(?) didn't feel the need to spell everything out to his audience like so many authors do. I feel like the, mainly adult, reviewers were confusing a fast READ with a fast PACED read. Of course it's a fast read, it's a teen book, and not an incredibly long one at that. It becomes more fast paced when the characters find out what's going on and have to attempt to stop it. The change in pace reflects the urgency felt by the characters and the fact that they have very little time in which to act. I think it works well with the story telling.

I still can't decide how I felt about the ending. I enjoyed the rest of the book, but the ending may have been a bit of a cop out.

It's not a fabulous read, but it's original and interesting. A nice change from the onsalught of vamp books.