Will Peterson

Posted to my Livejournal in January 2009:

The book jacket caught me on this one, both the cover and the description of the plot. And I liked the book, though I'm not exactly sure what the hell happened at every turn. I don't think authors should hit their readers over the head with What It All Means, but in this case, I needed the various mysteries to be tied together a little bit more. Twins Rachel and Adam are sent to stay in a tiny village in England with their grandmother while their parents divorce, and this village has a disturbing past which Rachel and Adam, because of their birth, seem destined to uncover for all to see. A preternatural young boy named Gabriel makes friends with the twins, but he has an agenda that is opposite of the villagers -- he wants to uncover the truth, they want to hide it. There's a three-sided blade called the triskellion, a chalk circle on a hill under which something important is buried, a TV crew angling to film an archeological dig of this hill, and villagers meeting in secret in the woods to do terrible things. Oh, and there are bees -- lots of bees. Sometimes, this really reminded me of The Wicker Man, but in a good way, not in a "Nicolas Cage running through through the woods like an idiot and falling into one incomprehensible plot hole after another" way. There's the whole bee thing, and the close-mouthed small town villagers with a dark secret, and the pagan rituals, and wow, this really is like The Wicker Man. Except this has an alien. I think. Like I said, I'm not sure what happened at the end. I wouldn't say this is an excellent read, because the writing was a little flat, but I did really find the mystery intriguing, and I liked the heavy, atmospheric mood, so if there is a second book like Amazon says there is, I'll read it .… (mere)