Through the Nethergate by Roberta Eaton CheadleMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
I enjoyed the story and the setting for Through the Nethergate as it had the intriguing plot of a teenage girl, Margaret, who has the ability to see supernatural beings and even imbue them with the properties of living beings through her presence. We are in an ancient haunted inn where the ghosts take on a certain amount of physicality and seem able to retain their sense of good or evil from their past experiences when they lived. The author has obviously researched in depth some of the historical events and incidents that befell the ghosts that Margaret meets and who are trapped between the Underworld and the Overworld. This was completely fascinating for me, although I wondered how many of the young readers targeted would find this amount of detail a little too much sometimes. Many of these characters and events had me reaching for history and reference books to discover more than my shady recollections told me; in particular about the Chartists of 1839. But this is a tale of good versus evil after all and so there are dastardly villains in the form of Lucifer and Hugh Bigod, each with designs upon world domination. I enjoyed Margaret’s interactions with her Grandfather and the various spirits and incarnates along the way, and we even have a little gentle romance hinted at with Henry. However, I have no wish to spoil the plot and young readers can find out more when they read this historical fantasy adventure themselves. While the story does romp along at a good pace most of the way I found the ending a little too slow at unfolding. It needed more of a sense of urgency with less detail from history and more description of sounds and smells, and maybe traumatic sights for the young fans of a historical novel that combines fantasy with horror.
View all my reviews
RSS Feed
