John Clewarth - Firestorm Rising - Book Review - Mr Ripley's Enchanted Books

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. . .

When I was a child, I loved being scared. I'm not quite sure why? But I did. I loved to watch old creepy movies late at night and hide behind my pillows. One of my favourite places to go was the local graveyard. I pretended that there were monsters, ghosts and zombies roaming about in the dark, ready to jump out and grab me! Reading 'Firestorm Rising' by John Clewarth definitely took me back to my childhood. The atmospheric tale kept me reading late into the night and searching for a secure cover. 

The book has an interesting and intriguing open sentence "The meteor sizzles through the vastness of space like a giant, blazing phoenix". This certainly grabs and pulls you into a dark vortex of mystery. The story captures your imaganation but without revealing too much in the way of infomation. It helps each fantasy brain to fill in the gaps and provides every reader with their own interpretation and perspective of the story. Nevertheless, you'll find yourself hurtling along a roller-coaster of an adventure into a plot of spookiness, friendship and a terrifying monster. The story gains power and momentum, feeding off the fear from the characters and readers alike. 

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. If this sounds like your type of book then you might want to read an extract of the book or visit the author's website to buy a copy now. Equally, I understand you can purchase this from Silver Quill Publishing/Amazon very shortly. In the meantime, why not pop over and say hello at http://www.johnclewarth.com