Book Review
Title: Tunnel of Bones (Cassidy Blake #2)
Author: V. E. Schwab
Genre: Middle Grade/Paranormal
Rating: *****
Review: After finishing City of Bones, I couldn’t wait to jump into Tunnel of Bones. In the opening of this book, Cassidy and her parents along with Jacob and Grim are heading to a new city. This book isn’t named after the city as it’s called the city of light but rather from one of the locations they will be visiting there; the tunnel of bones. If you hadn’t guessed the city they are in is Paris, and the tunnel of bones refers to the catacombs that run under Paris. Now, I have never been to Paris or France in general, but I can’t wait to see what this book has in store for Cassidy, especially since Jacob is stronger now as he seems more like a poltergeist who can interact with the physical world and she is keeping in touch with Lara. As Cassidy begins to explore Paris, it isn’t long before she feels the tug of the Veil but rather than ignoring it like she did before, she now travels there to free the ghosts trapped there but she is warier after her encounter with the Raven. The first ghost she sees is a man trying to help fight the blaze at the French Palace in 1871 and she does have to fight him as he tries to take her life like the Raven, but Jacob is there to help.
As the story gets going the first place they plan to visit is the catacombs. A maze of tunnels underneath the city of light that is home to six million bodies which according to the story is 3 times the living population of Paris. This is a nightmare for Cassidy as she is unsure she will be able to resist falling through the Veil, but she remains strong for her parents and Jacob is supporting her. However, when she touches one of the skulls she is sucked through the Veil and sees a red glowing shadow before Jacob quickly pulls the pair out as they don’t want to get stuck 5 stories underground with no way out. As Cassidy leaves the Veil and the catacombs behind she feels something is off. Almost like something or someone followed her out of the catacombs and when strange things begin to happen it doesn’t ease her suspicions. She begins to feel like she can sense the ghosts and Lara confirms this when she tells Cassidy in a text that some people who travel through the Veil often develop heightened senses for spirits.
Cassidy has definitely developed new senses as she can tell when the spirits are close to her and others around her and she begins having dreams that seem almost like visions of the future. The interesting thing here is that Cassidy or Jacob or both seem to have attracted the attention of a poltergeist, whose is bent on causing mischief, but this will escalate the longer it isn’t in the Veil or moved on. Lara tells Cassidy that poltergeists who are strong enough can kill humans and that’s something they both don’t want roaming around unchecked. So, when the family visits one of Paris’ biggest graveyards she decides to try and draw the poltergeist to her to move it on. Her plan works and she sees the poltergeist faces to face who turns out to be nothing more than a very young boy. However, when Cassidy tries to send him on using the same methods she has for all the other ghosts, it doesn’t work no matter how many times she tries and then the boy moves from mischief to menace as he shoves Cassidy off the roof of a crypt. Immediately after they return Cassidy calls Lara to tell her what happened with the little boy. She then goes to speak to her grandfather and says she will call back with more information. In the meantime, the poltergeist is insistent on causing problems for the Blake family although only Cassidy and Jacob know what is really going on. When Lara calls back she tells Cassidy that the mirrors only work on ghosts who remember their life before and it helps them accept the fact they are dead, poltergeist are different because they don’t remember their life before. Lara tells Cassidy she needs to find out who the boy is, remind him of life and death, once she’s done that she can move him on like any other ghost. The problem is Cassidy doesn’t know anything about the boy and the fact he speaks French and adds another problem. However, she does realise that the poltergeist is only a child and he is playing games with her, so she begins to play back in the hopes of drawing him out again and gaining more clues from his appearance.
The poltergeist runs circles around Cassidy and Jacob and is intent on not just putting Cassidy in harm’s way, but he also tries to force Jacob to look into a mirror but luckily Jacob has the will power to look away. Back at the hotel, Cassidy asks her parents for information on the catacombs in a last-ditch attempt to learn who the boy is. Her father has some information on the people who weren’t supposed to be buried in the catacombs but just got lost down there and one of them is a seven-year-old boy called Thomas Alain Laurent who was in the tombs with his brother. While she has no evidence Cassidy is sure that Thomas is the poltergeist. All she has to do now if figure out exactly how he died and remind him of it so she can move him on before things get any more dangerous not just for them but for everyone around them who has become a target of the poltergeist mischief. After finding out the boy’s name Lara gives Cassidy two huge pieces of information, the first is that salt and sage can temporarily ward off strong spirits, but this also applies to Jacob, so she makes sure to slip some in her mother’s purse and her father’s jacket to keep them safe from Thomas. The second is that Thomas’ brother Richard died 30 years ago but his granddaughter still lives in Paris and she might have more information. While Cassidy is eager to be rid of Thomas, she is also worried about Jacob because in her dreams he forgets his life before and becomes an extremely strong poltergeist tearing the hotel apart while Lara screams at her to send him on but she can’t bring herself to do it even when Jacob pleads with her because she thinks she can save him. While this is undeniably creepy it seems like a vision as we can see things starting to happen and I am wondering whether that will become a reality.
While the granddaughter doesn’t want to help Cassidy, her daughter Adele, Thomas’ great-granddaughter does. Cassidy tells her everything she knows about Thomas as a poltergeist and why she needs to set him free as soon as she can, especially since he is now playing with other people’s lives not just her own. Adele tells her the story of how Thomas’ brother Richard used to play in the catacombs with his friends and one night he agreed to take Thomas. Down in the dark the boys played hide and seek, Thomas was the youngest, so he was the seeker, but he was too good at finding the other boys, so they let him hide. Being small Thomas hid in an alcove which collapsed on top of him meaning he couldn’t be found. By the time Richard told his parents and a search was organised but by the time they found him it was too late for Thomas who had already died. Cassidy knows Thomas somehow remembers playing hide and seek which explains why he is counting all the time and the reason he can appear anywhere he likes is because the catacombs stretch for miles under Paris. She knows she has to return to the catacombs in order to remind Thomas of who he is and move him on, but her parents have finished filming for the day, and they are leaving Paris the next day, so she has to think of another way.
In the final section of the novel, Cassidy heads back down into the catacombs to deal with Thomas once and for all. However, it isn’t easy at all, they are only about to get through to Thomas when Jacob pretends to be Richard and get him to stop at which point Cassidy moves him on freeing Paris from Thomas. When she returns the photographs she lets Adele know that he has gone on now and it seems she has made a believer out of Adele. With her job done Cassidy relaxes as they prepare to go to their next location. However, something strange happens at the Metro station when Cassidy sees a man in a suit wearing a skull mask and when she tries to take a photo of him, he does something that causes her to faint. While it is odd she puts it out of her mind, especially she has much bigger things to think about since Jacob tells her how he died. It turns out he is Jacob Ellis Hale who died trying to retrieve an action figure his younger brother dropped in the river while they were swimming. Jacob’s story is sad and heartbreaking and everything else I thought about him during this novel is gone replaced only with sympathy and it explains why he saved Cassidy from drowning. Overall, I loved Tunnel of Bones, the start was a little slower than City of Ghosts but the emotional payoff at the end is 100x more than the first book and I can’t wait to get my hands on Bridge of Souls as soon as I can.
Buy it here:
Paperback/Hardcover: amazon.co.uk amazon.com
Kindle Edition: amazon.co.uk amazon.com
Comments