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INTERMEDIATE FICTION
Mann, Michael

Ghostcloud

320 pp. | Peachtree | September, 2022 | Trade ISBN 978-1-68263-518-6 $17.99 | Ebook ISBN 978-1-68263-519-3 $10.99
(2) 4-6 In a post-apocalyptic alternate London, twelve-year-old Luke Smith-Sharma is one of the kidnapped children enslaved as a coal shoveler under the Battersea Power Station. When Luke and new-girl Jess accidentally drop coal dust on their cruel supervisor, Tabatha, they are locked up in an experimental incinerator room. There Luke makes an odd discovery: a girl he rescues from the incinerator turns out to be a "ghostcloud" who can take him riding through the sky on water vapor and who shows him some exterior vents on the power station they can use to escape. Luke and Jess begin secretly exploring the vents and uncover Tabatha's unsavory experiments in her hidden lab--experiments that tie together ghosts, electricity, and the smog that shows up when children are kidnapped. The Dickensian hardships endured by the protagonists of this mystery-adventure will appeal to young readers who enjoy a little ostentatious exaggerated suffering in their fiction; so, too, will the characters' resourcefulness as they follow the clues and form alliances to combat the evil they uncover. The mild supernatural elements integrate smoothly into the alternate setting, while the idea of "halves" (Luke is "Half-Indian. Half-detective. Half-ghost") adds a somewhat wistful theme of identity to the rollicking action.
Reviewer: Anita L. Burkam | Horn Book Magazine Issue: September, 2022

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