Gustav Gloom and the Inn of Shadows #5 - Hardcover

Castro, Adam-Troy

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0448464586 ISBN 13: 9780448464589

Verlag: Grosset & Dunlap, 2015

Inhaltsangabe

Gustav and Fernie continue their journey through Dark Country!
 

Gustav and Fernie’s adventures in the Dark Country continue as they search for their families. But as they get closer to discovering their families’ fates, their mission is once again threatened by old foes—as well as some new, even more treacherous, ones. Will Gustav and Fernie be able to battle their way through and rescue their families before it’s too late?

Featuring a unique paper-over-board cover with beautifully dark full-page illustrations by Kristen Margiotta.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Adam-Troy Castro has said in interviews that he likes to jump genres and styles and has therefore refused to ever stay in place long enough to permit the unwanted existence of a creature that could be called a “typical” Adam-Troy Castro story. As a result, his short works range from the wild farce of his Vossoff and Nimmitz tales to the grim Nebula nominee “Of a Sweet Slow Dance in the Wake of Temporary Dogs.” His twenty prior books include a nonfiction analysis of the Harry Potter phenomenon, four Spider-Man adventures, and three novels about his interstellar murder investigator, Andrea Cort (including a winner of the Philip K. Dick Award, Emissaries from the Dead). Adam’s other award nominations include eight Nebulas, two Hugos, and three Stokers. Adam lives in Miami with his wife, Judi, and three insane cats named Uma Furman, Meow Farrow, and Harley Quinn.

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Chapter One: The Girl Who Looked a Lot Like Fernie What But Who Still Wasn’t Fernie What
 
 
Despite what we’re so frequently shown in movies, not all of life’s worst news arrives on a dark and stormy night, with thunder and lightning for company.
 
Some terrible news arrives on glorious sunny days, sometimes even in the well-lit kitchens of Fluorescent Salmon houses.
 
For instance, outside the home of the What family, the light was bright and golden, the grass lush and green. The air rang with the joyful melodies of birdsong and the distant laughter of neighborhood children. All was right with the world.
 
Inside the house, the famous world adventurer Nora What stood reading a very strange and frightening letter from her missing ten-year-old daughter, Fernie.
 
Mrs. What had just returned from one of her frequent televised expeditions and was still dressed in a safari jacket, jodhpurs, and a pith helmet. She wore a necklace of lions’ teeth she’d been given by local tribesmen impressed by her skill at evading crocodiles in a swim across a river most sensible people avoided because it almost had more crocodiles than water. (The local tribesmen generally resisted engaging in such pointlessly risky activities themselves and considered Nora What insane and stupid for doing what they quite sensibly would not. But they’d learned from past exposures to self-proclaimed adventurers that the best way to get rid of a crazy person in a pith helmet was to praise her for her bravery and give her a ceremonial necklace of some kind and thus some reason to think she’d accomplished something of note.)
 
On her return home, Mrs. What had expected to be met at the airport by her husband and her daughters, ten-year-old Fernie and twelve-year-old Pearlie. She’d made this arrangement with her husband just three weeks earlier. The trip to pick her up was going to be a surprise for the girls. But her family hadn’t been at the airport when she got off the plane. They hadn’t answered the phone, nor had they been at home when Mrs. What arrived in front of the new house in a taxi.
 
Mrs. What supposed that they might have had car trouble, forgotten the date, or gone out on some unexpected errand, but the family cat, Harrington, was missing, too, and it was difficult for her to imagine an unexpected errand that could possibly require the participation of a cat.
 
All of this had been extremely disturbing to Mrs. What, who despite her frequent and lengthy professional absences loved her family and liked being able to come home to them.
 
Still, it had not been anywhere near as disturbing as the letter Mrs. What had just read, not once but five times.
 
Mrs. What wasn’t sure that she was supposed to believe what she read.
 
Fernie had written that the spooky house across the street was inhabited by shadows that walked and talked and had lives of their own.
 
She went on to explain that it also contained the Pit, a gateway to a strange otherworldly realm called the Dark Country. The homeland of all shadows, it was at war with an evil conqueror named Lord Obsidian, which was admittedly exactly the kind of name Mrs. What supposed was appropriate for the kind of person who made war with dark countries.
 
Mrs. What’s husband and her older daughter, Pearlie, had somehow fallen into the Pit and would never be seen again unless rescued. Fernie’s letter concluded with the news that she’d taken Harrington the cat and joined the house’s one somewhat human resident, a strange boy named Gustav Gloom, on an expedition with exactly that purpose in mind.
 
Fernie had written all of this in just a couple of pages, rushing through a complicated story that probably would have required three full-length illustrated books to tell and still left a lot unexplained.
 
Mrs. What wasn’t sure that further details would have rendered the story any more comprehensible, but they might have helped.
 
When there’s a pile of questions fighting to be asked, the first one to escape is sometimes the best.
 
Mrs. What wondered out loud, “Exactly how old is this letter, anyway?”
 
A voice that sounded just like Fernie’s replied, “Fernie wrote it about eight days ago.”
 
While it struck Mrs. What as distinctly odd that Fernie would refer to herself using her own name, the relief she felt that this nonsense about shadow houses and dark countries was all over and done with was overwhelming. She spun in her chair, a big broad smile on her face.
 
Then she faltered.
 
The room was inhabited by shadows. Not the kind of shadows that were normally present in the corners of rooms, but actual active presences who had been standing around behind Mrs. What, waiting for her to finish reading Fernie’s letter.
 
One was a hulking figure in a tuxedo, another a lanky man wearing a striped suit and a flat straw hat, and a third looked enough like Fernie to make Mrs. What’s heart ache. She had Fernie’s eyes and Fernie’s nose and Fernie’s chin and pretty much everything else Fernie had except for the bright red hair—which wasn’t to say that this girl was bald, only that her hair looked more like what red hair looks like in black-and-white photographs.
 
It would have been all too tempting for Mrs. What to still believe that this actually was Fernie in some way . . . but Mrs. What was an attentive and loving mother in between her frequent expeditions, and she could tell from the way the little girl carried herself that she was not Fernie at all, but a different person who just happened to look like her.
 
Mrs. What could only say so. “You’re not Fernie.”
 
“I didn’t say I was,” the little girl shadow replied.
 
“But you talk like her. You have her voice.”
 
“I’m her shadow. How else would you expect me to sound?”
 
Mrs. What, who had seen her share of astonishing sights, had not seen anything quite this astonishing for as far back as she could remember. “I didn’t expect you to have a voice at all.”
 
The shadow girl sniffed. “All shadows have voices. But we just don’t speak that much around people from the world of light.”
 
Mrs. What didn’t know what to say. “Ummm. I’m sorry?”
 
The hulking figure rolled his eyes. “That’s exactly the kind of answer that makes flesh-and-blood people so often not worth my valuable time.”
 
“You’ll have to forgive Hives,” said the shadow of the man in the striped suit and straw hat. “He’s the Gloom house’s terrible butler. It’s his job to always be rude to the people who need his help.”
 
“He seems to be awfully good at it,” Mrs. What noted.
 
“I’m a professional,” sniffed Hives.
 
“As for me,” said the man in the straw hat, “I’m the shadow of a fellow named Mr. Notes, who last I checked wasn’t a very nice man at all, but I don’t follow him around anymore and I’m trying to be a much more pleasant person. I hope we’ll be good friends.”
 
One of the many pressing questions piling up in Mrs. What’s head, so deep by now that it was a wonder she had room to think at all, squirmed out from underneath. She addressed it to the shadow girl. “If...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Grosset & Dunlap
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2015
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0448464586
• ISBN 13: 9780448464589
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Zeichner: Margiotta Kristen
• Anzahl der Seiten: 248
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar