The Wrath of the Grinning Ghost
By John Bellairs and Brad Strickland
4/5
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About this ebook
The sea is calm, the air is fresh, and the bobbing boat feels like a living creature underneath Johnny Dixon’s feet. Johnny hardly ever sees his father, who trains Air Force pilots in Colorado, and their annual Florida fishing trip is the highlight of his year. They’re on their way back to Duston Heights, Massachusetts, where Johnny lives with his grandparents, when a visit to a fortune-teller puts a terrible fright into Johnny. Inside the seer’s crystal ball, he sees a grinning ghost who cackles out a fearsome message: “The universe shall be mine!”
Johnny tries to forget what he saw, but when he and his father return to Duston Heights, his dad falls into a coma, and Johnny is certain that the ghost is to blame. With the help of his old friend Professor Childermass, Johnny will defeat the smirking ghoul—or never see his father again.
The Johnny Dixon series, from the author of The House with a Clock in Its Walls, is full of fun, adventure, and supernatural chills, along with “believable and likable characters” who are a delight to spend time with (The New York Times).
John Bellairs
John Bellairs is beloved as a master of Gothic young adult novels and fantasies. His series about the adventures of Lewis Barnavelt and his uncle Jonathan, which includes The House with a Clock in Its Walls, is a classic. He also wrote a series of novels featuring the character Johnny Dixon. Among the titles in that series are The Curse of the Blue Figurine; The Mummy, the Will, and the Crypt; and The Spell of the Sorcerer’s Skull. His stand-alone novel The Face in the Frost is also regarded as a fantasy classic, and among his earlier works are St. Fidgeta and Other Parodies and The Pedant and the Shuffly. Bellairs was a prolific writer, publishing more than a dozen novels before his untimely death in 1991.
Read more from John Bellairs
The Face in the Frost Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Gargoyle in the Dump Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
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Titles in the series (12)
The Curse of the Blue Figurine Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Spell of the Sorcerer's Skull Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Eyes of the Killer Robot Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Revenge of the Wizard's Ghost Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Mummy, the Will, and the Crypt Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Chessmen of Doom Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Trolley to Yesterday Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Secret of the Underground Room Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Drum, the Doll, and the Zombie Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Bell, the Book, and the Spellbinder Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Hand of the Necromancer Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Wrath of the Grinning Ghost Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
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Reviews for The Wrath of the Grinning Ghost
2 ratings1 review
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5After John Bellairs died, Brad Strickland took up the task of continuing the Johnny Dixon/Professor Childermass series of stories (and the Lewis Barnaveldt series as well, but that's neither here nor there). The Wrath of the Grinning Ghost is a workmanlike but ultimately unsatisfying installment to the series. Even though the all of the elements of a Johnny Dixon adventure are present in the book, somehow the parts don't add up to as effective a story as prior books.In a sense, the book feels almost like Strickland is going through the motions, checking in each box neede to make sure that the reader knows that this is a Johnny Dixon book: the Professor makes a "gooey" chocolate cake, the Professor's nose is described as resembling an overripe strawberry, Brewster, a supernatural character impersonating an ancient Egyptian deity not seen since The Trolley to Yesterday makes a reappearance, and so on. To a certain extent, it seems as though Strickland felt that he needed to make sure each of these signature elements was included for the reader to think that this was a "real" Johnny Dixon adventure. I almost got the feeling that I was reading the literary equivalent of a "paint-by-numbers" picture.This wouldn't be so disappointing if the story itself was better. The story centers on Johnny's father, whose spirit is abducted by an evil spirit bent on taking control of his body (transforming Johnny's father from a mostly absentee Air Force officer father to a completely absentee father). With the help of Professor Childermass, Fergie, and Brewster (impersonating a Thunderbird), Johnny travels into the spirit realm to defeat the evil villain and bring his father back. One of the primary weaknesses in the story is that the question as to why the evil villain chose Johnny's father in particular is never explained, even though Johnny, with the experience he and Professor Childermass have amassed dealing with supernatural threats, is one of the worst possible choices for a being from beyond to mess with. Form a storytelling standpoint, it is obvious that if the villain picked someone Johnny didn't know, the story wouldn't work, but by having this unexplained choice as the centerpiece of the book, the contrived nature of the plot becomes glaring. The villain is also fairly bland and poorly defined: he is evil simply because he is evil. His minions are his minions simply because they are his minions. There is no background to the villain that gives him any kind of goal or reason for being other than to simply spread nastiness about.Overall, if one were a huge fan of the Johnny Dixon series and really wanted to read more adventures featuring Johnny, Professor Childermass, and Fergie, then this might be worth picking up. On the other hand, a fan would probably get more enjoyment out of going back and reading the earlier books again instead.