Book Review
of Riser
Book
Synopsis:
Black
swirling holes churning madly in the center of every corpse. This is how
eighteen-year-old Chelsan Derée sees the deceased. Her ability to connect to
the black spinning holes allows her to control every dead thing within a
four-mile radius.
But that's the least of her problems. It's 2320 and Chelsan Derée has to survive another year of high school, which for her is pure and utter torture, mainly due to the fact that her schoolmate Jill Forester's favorite activity is making Chelsan's life a living hell. If that isn't enough, Chelsan's impossible crush on Ryan Vaughn makes her brain do somersaults on a regular basis, especially since she is positive he doesn't know she exists. And being eighteen Chelsan has to deal with the pressure of whether or not she should take a little pill called Age-pro, which cures aging, making the world eighteen forever and highly over-populated.
When Chelsan's mother, Janet, is brutally killed, along with everyone else in her trailer park, Chelsan finds out that she was the intended target. Chelsan must use her power to raise and control the dead to save herself, protect her friends and take down the man responsible for murdering her mother.
But that's the least of her problems. It's 2320 and Chelsan Derée has to survive another year of high school, which for her is pure and utter torture, mainly due to the fact that her schoolmate Jill Forester's favorite activity is making Chelsan's life a living hell. If that isn't enough, Chelsan's impossible crush on Ryan Vaughn makes her brain do somersaults on a regular basis, especially since she is positive he doesn't know she exists. And being eighteen Chelsan has to deal with the pressure of whether or not she should take a little pill called Age-pro, which cures aging, making the world eighteen forever and highly over-populated.
When Chelsan's mother, Janet, is brutally killed, along with everyone else in her trailer park, Chelsan finds out that she was the intended target. Chelsan must use her power to raise and control the dead to save herself, protect her friends and take down the man responsible for murdering her mother.
Author
Information:
Becca C
Smith received her Film degree from Full Sail University and has worked in the
Film and Television industry for most of her adult life.
Becca is the author of the teen horror/sci-fi novel, Riser. She is also the co-author of the teen graphic novel Ghost Whisperer: The Haunted and also wrote and illustrated Little Family Secrets, a graphic novel based on the true story of her great aunt who was famous for murdering her husband.
She currently lives in Los Angeles, CA with her husband and two cats Jack and Duke.
Becca is the author of the teen horror/sci-fi novel, Riser. She is also the co-author of the teen graphic novel Ghost Whisperer: The Haunted and also wrote and illustrated Little Family Secrets, a graphic novel based on the true story of her great aunt who was famous for murdering her husband.
She currently lives in Los Angeles, CA with her husband and two cats Jack and Duke.
Chapter Zero excerpt
Year: 2320
Okay, let me explain.
My gift, or curse (I’ll let you decide for yourself) to
put it simply is I can raise the dead. I know, sounds cheesy, but fortunately,
or unfortunately it’s true, and I don’t mean just people. Basically, anything that
had any kind of life: plants, animals, insects, plankton, anything,
I can bring back.
The only catch is, they’re not really alive anymore
they’re just animated, like zombies I guess, but I control them. Plants are the
easiest. My mom’s garden is the prize of the trailer park, and she should take
no credit whatsoever. Animals and people
are more complicated, maybe because there are so many working parts. I’m really
not sure.
My ability is still kind of a mystery to me. I have no
clue why I have this power. It’s not like I’ve ever heard of anyone else having
this particular skill either, except in books and movies. I appear to be an
anomaly in this world. I was three-years-old when I knew I saw things
differently than everyone else. My pet goldfish, Larry, died and a black
spinning hole appeared in the center of his body. I thought it was just about
the coolest thing I had ever seen. When I told my mother about it, she gave me
a look that I’ll never forget. It was a mixture of confusion and horror. She simply
nodded and made me promise that I would never under any circumstances tell
anyone else about what I saw. I was instantly ashamed and scared at her
reaction, but something in the way that she said it made me keep my promise.
After that, I saw the black holes everywhere, from the
tiniest dead insects, to the neighbor’s dog when he was hit by a hover car
(don’t ask), to Ms. Thompkins when she died from a heart attack. The churning
black masses had become second nature to me by then. At that point, I still
didn’t know why I could see them and I was scared to death to talk to
anyone about it. I kept to myself mostly, afraid I would slip and say something
to a neighbor or friend.
It was a very lonely childhood.
It wasn’t until I killed my stepfather Bruce that I
figured out that I could raise the dead. I never wanted to take Bruce’s life:
hurt maybe, kill no. And that’s saying a lot seeing as he used to use my mom as
a punching bag. He’d make me sit in the corner of our beat up trailer and watch
him kick the living crap out of her. He’d laugh when I’d scream, he’d laugh
when she’d scream, he’d laugh when he’d scream on the few occasions my mom
fought back and actually inflicted pain on him. Bruce was a jerk, but he didn’t
deserve to die, not like he did, not like how I killed him.
I still can’t believe it had been eleven years since it
all happened. It felt like yesterday and forever ago all at once. It was a day
like any other day, Mom did some invisible transgression to piss Bruce off and
he took it as a cue for another beating. Mom was having one of her comatose
days, where I could tell she was just going to take it and hope that he got
bored quickly from her unresponsiveness.
Bruce slammed her against the flimsy trailer wall of the kitchen with
his beefy forearm. Tiny bits of ceiling floated down like snow on his greasy
balding scalp. He sneered at her with glee, but she wouldn’t give him the satisfaction
of eye contact. She just kept her eyes down, arms dropped harmlessly at her
side. Bruce went on a furious rampage. He punched her, pulled her hair, kicked
her stomach, tried anything to get a response out of her, but she just lay
there like a rag doll on the peeling linoleum floor.
Then he wheeled around to face me. “NO!” Finally, a reaction from my
mother. Bruce was in ecstasy. He stormed towards me like an enraged bull. I could
almost see steam coming out of his bulbous nose. Then WHACK! I could literally
feel every vertebra in my spine as all forty-five pounds of me slammed against
the wall from the impact of Bruce’s fist to my stomach. My world started to
spin; everything was in blurred double vision. My mother’s hysterical screams
echoed in my head like a horrific nightmare. I couldn’t focus
PUNCH!
CRACK!
I could feel my nose crunch when he hit me a second time.
It felt like it was really runny, but when I tried to wipe it clean my hands
came away covered in blood. The combination of Bruce’s frantic laughter and my mother’s
anguished screeches made it impossible to think clearly. I think I started to
whimper at this point. My ribs were so bruised it hurt to breathe let alone
move my chest to have a good cry like I wanted to. These are the moments in
life where you don’t think rationally. In fact, you don’t think at all, you
just let your survival instinct take over. It becomes about you or your killer.
And I was no martyr. I tried to blink fast enough to clear my vision.
THWACK!
My right eye started to swell from Bruce’s backhand
making it even more difficult to focus. At this point my mother, like a wailing
Banshee, propelled herself onto Bruce’s back and started pounding her fists
onto any piece of flesh she could find. I could hear Bruce’s low chuckle at my
mom’s feeble attempt to stop him. From the sound of his amusement I could tell
that today was the most fun he’d had in years.
Taking short controlled breaths I took this moment of
solace to re-gain my bearings. And that’s when I saw it: a blurred swirling
black hole in the corner of the trailer.
WHAM!
Bruce had thrown my mother clear across the room. Her
body collapsed into unconsciousness as her head punched a hole through the
trailer’s wall. I screamed a horrible, terrible scream: a scream that only a
child could make whose world had just been crushed, whose mommy had just been
smashed against a wall, leaving her daughter
alone, defenseless, a scream that would make any human who possessed an ounce
of parenting instincts come running, without thinking, without rational thought.
And I couldn’t stop.
Even Bruce had to cover his ears from the onslaught of shrieking.
But Bruce’s instincts weren’t to mother, they were to destroy and he started
towards me. And seeing him, fists raised, plowing forward, I suddenly felt
inexplicably tied to that black swirling chasm across the room. I was a part of
it. It was almost as if strings connected us together. And I did the only thing
I could. I made it attack Bruce.
At first I didn’t know what I was doing, but I suddenly
understood that I physically controlled the black holes. I was connected to
them like they were an extension of my own body, like they were my own limbs. Bruce
bellowed in pain as we both realized at the same time what I had brought back
to life. A black widow spider, full of venom and ready to attack. Over and over I made the spider tear its
fangs into Bruce’s body: his neck, his arms, his legs, his chest. Bruce swatted
the spider, squished the spider, tore it in two, but nothing he did could stop
it. It was mine. It was already dead. He couldn’t kill it again.
He fell to his knees. The poison was flowing through his
body now. I could see a small black tornado forming in Bruce’s chest. Fear
overtook every fiber of my soul as I realized what I had just done, what I was
still doing. I dropped my connection to the spider instantly. It fell lifeless
to the floor once more, the black void churning madly in its
center. I crawled over to Bruce’s body, leaving a trail
of blood from my broken nose. He was convulsing on the ground, his body seizing
from the poison coursing through his veins. He was dying and there was nothing
I could do about it.
“What did you do?” my mother’s voice cut through the near
silent grunting and gagging of Bruce’s dying moments. She had seen the whole
thing.
“I…” I couldn’t think of what to say.
My mother looked relieved, guilty and horrified all in
one condemning expression. I wasn’t sure if she was upset about losing Bruce or
that her seven-year-old child had just become a murderer. Bruce’s eyes rolled
back in his head. His last breath was rattling and eerily hushed. It seemed to
last an eternity. As if the oxygen in his lungs didn’t want to leave his body
and clung to whatever life it could hold on to.
I stared into my mother’s eyes. She couldn’t speak. She
couldn’t move. A small line of blood trickled into her eye from a gash on her
forehead, but she didn’t flinch. She just looked into my eyes with a blankness
more terrifying than any emotion could be. “Chelsan…” she finally croaked. Her
voice was gravelly from screaming. That was all she could say.
It was agony to see her so dead in the eyes, face, body…
just staring. I would have given anything I had just to stop her from looking
at me with those empty eyes. Her vacant stare felt like a howl of pain so
excruciating I almost covered my ears from the silence. At least then I would
have been able to hear my own muffled heartbeat. Any noise would have been
better than the oppressive judging stillness.
And that was when I realized what I had to do. To break
her out of this coma she was encasing herself into. I turned to Bruce. To his
raging black abyss spiraling like a whirlpool deep inside his chest. And I
switched him on. Just like the spider. He was a bit clumsy at first. I had to
concentrate as hard as my seven-year-old brain would let me just to get him in
a sitting position. But after a moment or two it became easier and easier and
he began to feel like an extension of me. It was an eerie sensation as my
thoughts mirrored Bruce’s movements. I would think of his arm moving and it
would move. I would think of him speaking and…
“Janet?” I made Bruce call to my mother. His voice
snapped her completely out of her stupor. She watched him in shock and
overwhelming relief.
“Bruce?” And then I made him cry. Cry like he never
could do when he was alive. I made him cry until his face and clothes were drenched
with his tears. “I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry,” I made him repeat over and over
as he sobbed in the aftermath of the day’s destruction.
Mom crawled over to the two of us, renewed hope in her
eyes. Whether she knew what I was doing or not, she didn’t say. All that
mattered was that she wanted to believe it. She needed to believe it. I could
see it in her face. I made Bruce embrace
the two of us with a tenderness he was never capable of before. I was doing
this for me as much as for my mother at this point. Feeling his strong arms
around me, holding me close, affectionate, loving. It was the first time in my
life I felt like I had a father: a real dad. I nestled in closer. When my mom
saw this she did the same. We both had contented expressions on our bloody
bruised faces.
I let Bruce sputter and jabber about how much he loved
the two of us, how he would never hurt us again, how he was a changed man…And
he was. After that day he became the best father anyone could ever ask for. I
still find it funny in a strange and disturbing way, that Bruce is a better
father dead than he ever was alive. He’s the easiest for me to control now
because he was my first, and I’ve had a lot of practice since. It’s almost as
if he’s really alive sometimes. But every time I watch his face go slack when
he’s watching his holo-tv or he stinks so bad I have to puppeteer him in the
shower, I remember.
He’s dead.
Truly dead.
And it’s my fault.
Book Review:
Ohmygosh, can you imagine having to
live with having killed and then revived that same person at the age of 7? Most 7 year olds have difficulty grasping the
concept of death and often refuse to go to funerals because it freaks them
out. But then Chelsan isn’t home one day
and the unthinkable happens and everyone at the trailer park exterminated. Then she is hounded by her grandfather who is
trying to kill her. Talk about your
messed up family.
This is
a clever premise. I loved the whole idea
of someone having these powers. Humorous,
thought provoking, thought book you go from exhilaration to wanting to weep as
you root for, fear for, and rejoice for the heroine. I can’t wait to share with my kids. I can’t wait to have my teens read this. They will love it.
I give
this book 4.5 out of 5 clouds.
This
product or book may have been distributed for review; this in no way affects my
opinions or reviews.
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