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Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice-for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker.
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Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense.
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Throughout, Dugger includes welcome moments of comic relief, as when the medium wearily muses, “Why don’t these kids ever ask for money up front?” The mystery is fully revealed by the start of the final act, at which point the possibility of a trip to the UnderWorld to assist a friend will hold readers’ attention.Ī delightful installment in a series that promises more fun and otherworldly miscreants to come.Īre we not men? We are-well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z (2006).Ī zombie apocalypse is one thing. Periodic instances from Monsento’s perspective, meanwhile, address other, more adult issues, such as when he’s clearly hesitant to visit a pub for the first time in a year. In this witty sequel, Abby’s first-person narration includes frequent, rather charming reminders of her age: sure, she and the others could be facing black magic in one of their investigations, but she also has math homework to do. But this turns out to be just the beginning of an increasingly complicated and dangerous case that involves the possibility of demonic retribution. Sadly, this may be less dicey than their next case, in which UnderWorld realm walker/bounty hunter Zeaflin (from Dugger’s previous series installment) asks them to find a spirit named Nathan, a fugitive from an UnderWorld detention center. But it’s not as easy as it sounds: they’ll need help from Kayla, a talking ghost dog, which necessitates recovering her stolen amulet from a spooky, possibly haunted house. Joined by an adult medium named Arthur Monsento, the trio’s newest assignment is to retrieve a ghost cat named Fluffy from a pet cemetery. Their clients, however, are ghosts, sent to them from the OtherWorld StopOver, a temporary residence for spirits on the way to their final resting place. In many ways, Abby Grant, Billy Miller, and Toby Moore are typical teenagers, with their fledgling detective agency headquartered in a treehouse. Ghost-tracking teenage gumshoes and their medium colleague take on new cases in Dugger’s ( The Fantastic Phantasmic Detective Agency and the Rebel Realm, 2016) YA supernatural-mystery sequel.
