Black Bones by EE Richardson

8/10

Black Bones, a book written by former cybernetics graduate EE Richardson, is an urban fantasy published by Barrington Stoke, who specialise in books for reluctant, struggling and dyslexic readers.

Tony works in a magic shop - a real one. He must stop a cult summoning a demon before the blood moon rises. If only he knew when that was...

From the author of Devil for Sale, E.E.Richardson terrifies his readers once again with his new offering, Black Bones where Tony Kim. A kid who works at a magic shop spots a skull on his desk one morning - it looks human but its curved horns and sharp teeth proved different to him. At first he thinks it's a present left to him by one of his ex-girlfriends, but when Jazz the girl he works with tells him a woman left it for him with a card, he wonders why someone he doesn't know would leave it there for him. He phones the woman on the card and gets someone on the other line who didn't expect to be talking to him - it was her dad she wanted to talk to about the skull and the strange cloaked men who have stood around it chanting at her school. The strange aspects of the story range from skulls to cloaked monks and a guy called Max who's a werewolf by night and an ordinary kid by day - he just needs a certain kind of spell from the shop every full-moon.

When Tony tries to find out more about the creepy skull, he discovers more than he bargained for - as the skull has a mind of its own, with a trapped spirit inside who has awoken from a deep sleep, vowing to take over the world. Tony has to stop it, but how?

Black Bones has all the scares, thrills and chills E.E.Richardson is known for. His style of writing is distinctive and readers will enjoy what he has to offer. Tony Kim and Robin are interesting characters who are thrown in at the deep end as far as discovery is concerned. It's like finding a bomb and needing to know how to detonate it without causing any harm. If the skull's spirit is allowed to unleash itself on the world, then all manner of death and destruction will follow in its wake. E.E.Richardson has had many of his novels published by both Barrington Stoke and others such as Grave Dirt and Devil for Sale to name a couple, but Black Bones is surely his best work to date.

Black Bones contains all the scares, thrills and chills for which EE Richardson has become renowned. Her style of writing is distinctive and readers will greatly enjoy what she has offered up here.

Tony and Robin are interesting characters who find themselves thrown in at the deep end. Their situation is similar to finding a bomb and needing to find out how to detonate it without causing any harm. But if they fail, and the skull's spirit is allowed to unleash itself on the world, then all manner of death and destruction will follow in its wake.

EE Richardson has had many of her novels published by both Barrington Stoke but Black Bones is surely her best work to date.