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The dead ways #1
The Dead Ways
Ghostly apparitions on abandoned motorways... Corpses escaping from hospital morgues... Skeletons clawing their way out of their graves... THE DEAD WAYS ARE OPENING. The Government has a plan to clean up the environment - closing down motorways and returning the roads to nature. When Scott Williams' father is found dead in his government office, Scott resolves to find out the truth behind his death. What he uncovers is a far-reaching and sinister conspiracy to open ancient lines of power sealing this world from the next. As the roads close, the dead will wake. Soon Scott is thrust headlong into a deadly race against time. It'll be the end of the world if he loses. A fast-paced supernatural thriller from a powerful new voice.
191 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2011
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
January 29, 2020
epic!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
!) :)
!) :)
Want to read
April 29, 2020good book although I hate the fact that it ends in a cliffhanger
also its Jason not James
also its Jason not James
January 18, 2022
Not really my kind of thing, but teaching it to Year 8, a great page turner for my 12 & 13 year olds though!
Read
June 18, 2023I really enjoy this thriller novel. The details of the scenes creates a perfect picture in mind. You can complete it in one sitting. Don't know it has book 2 also. After readings this, I urgr to buy Army of the deads.
January 7, 2012
My mother always used to tell me that the best things came in small packages. If that is true then The Dead Ways by Christopher Edge is a perfect example of this maxim. At a mere 208 pages it weighs in way below most horror stories for the 11+ age group, but even so it still packs quite a punch.
Main character Scott is the son of a civil servant who is very much involved in a project known as the Greening of the Roads, whereby the government plans to close down a number of the country’s motorways and replace them with environmentally railways. However, there is much more to this new initiative than meets the eye and Scott soon finds his life changing in ways he never would have predicted, first through a failed kidnap attempt and then when his father is discovered dead, apparently having committed suicide.
Alongside Scott’s story is that of Jason, a Detective Inspector in the police force. Whilst travelling home one night Jason encounters what can only be described as a ghostly apparition; a dark hooded figure that passes through the metal walls of his car and attacks him so that "the breath was crushed from his body as a soul-searing agony rushed through his veins". Unfortunately he calls for back-up and from that moment on his career would appear to be on something of a decline.
Eventually the paths of these two main characters cross and they find themselves up to their necks in a conspiracy that stretches right to the roots of the government, with a super-creepy cult trying to open the Dead Ways of the book’s title – an event that would have disastrous consequences for everyone.
This is not your everyday zombie book (of which there are many on the market at the moment). In fact, although the dead do rise I did not associate them at all with the zombies that seem to be flavour of the month in kids’ and YA books at the moment. I think in my mind I had them down as more ghostly than zombie-like, but they are none the less scary for it. There is also not a great deal of gore within the story, and again I think this adds to the creep factor of the book. Unlike most zombie books though it is not the zombies themselves that are the most creepy – this honour must go to the cult members. And believe me, they are nasty.
This is the first book in a series and as such although the initial storyline is concluded to a degree there are a lot of questions left unanswered. I guess you could liken it to Darren Shan’s Cirque Du Freak in this respect – a short first book to set up the characters and story, with (hopefully) many more books to follow. I am definitely keen to see how Christopher Edge develops his story in the sequel, although I do not yet have any information on when this might be published.
Main character Scott is the son of a civil servant who is very much involved in a project known as the Greening of the Roads, whereby the government plans to close down a number of the country’s motorways and replace them with environmentally railways. However, there is much more to this new initiative than meets the eye and Scott soon finds his life changing in ways he never would have predicted, first through a failed kidnap attempt and then when his father is discovered dead, apparently having committed suicide.
Alongside Scott’s story is that of Jason, a Detective Inspector in the police force. Whilst travelling home one night Jason encounters what can only be described as a ghostly apparition; a dark hooded figure that passes through the metal walls of his car and attacks him so that "the breath was crushed from his body as a soul-searing agony rushed through his veins". Unfortunately he calls for back-up and from that moment on his career would appear to be on something of a decline.
Eventually the paths of these two main characters cross and they find themselves up to their necks in a conspiracy that stretches right to the roots of the government, with a super-creepy cult trying to open the Dead Ways of the book’s title – an event that would have disastrous consequences for everyone.
This is not your everyday zombie book (of which there are many on the market at the moment). In fact, although the dead do rise I did not associate them at all with the zombies that seem to be flavour of the month in kids’ and YA books at the moment. I think in my mind I had them down as more ghostly than zombie-like, but they are none the less scary for it. There is also not a great deal of gore within the story, and again I think this adds to the creep factor of the book. Unlike most zombie books though it is not the zombies themselves that are the most creepy – this honour must go to the cult members. And believe me, they are nasty.
This is the first book in a series and as such although the initial storyline is concluded to a degree there are a lot of questions left unanswered. I guess you could liken it to Darren Shan’s Cirque Du Freak in this respect – a short first book to set up the characters and story, with (hopefully) many more books to follow. I am definitely keen to see how Christopher Edge develops his story in the sequel, although I do not yet have any information on when this might be published.
April 1, 2013
Hmmm Zombies...like Vampires and Werewolves...like teenagers with smartphones...they're every bloody where. I therefore wasn't completely convinced when picking up this book that I would enjoy it as I thought it was more of 'that sort of thing' and not really sure if it would be mine.The good news is that I enjoyed it more than I thought I would. The bad news is that I don't think I care enough to bother with reading any more in the series.I picked this book up from my wonderful fiance's reading shelves because (a) I needed something to read on the train and (b) because the cover looked quite cool.Scott Williams is the son of a civil servant. His Dad is seemingly involved in a Government Green scheme to help the environment by replacing motorways with efficient high speed trains (this is in England - how far fetched is this?!) to allow nature to reclaim the land that we have built roads on. Of course it's a front for something more sinister...namely the opening of The Dead Ways - ancient lines in the Earth that keep our world apart from the next...queue creepy ghosts, the recently dead rising, skeltons crawling out of their graves...all that good stuff.The pace is blistering from the first page to the last. The prologue kicks it all off and it is pretty unrelenting all the way through. Some of the creepy scenes are a little creepy but there is no intestine eating going on here - probably because of the target audience - shame.I enjoyed Scott as a character. He is courageous, rebellious, resourceful. He is likeable and easy to root for as he tries to find out exactly what his Dad was involved in and why he died...often dealing with threats to his own life and hardly anyone to turn to for help. Detective Jason becomes involved, a cynical sort, unwilling to believe the evidence of his own eyes but driven to do the right thing, especially by Scott. They make a good team.I did enjoy it from start to finish but I'm not sure I care enough about what happens next - at least not enough to actively seek the next one when it comes out. If someone hands it to me and I have a few hours to spare I'd probably read it (and probably enjoy it) but I won't go looking for it otherwise.
November 21, 2011
Review Taken From The Pewter Wolf
The UK government have a plan to benefit future generation of pollution and stop congestion on the UK busiest motorways. The Greening of the Roads scheme is the removal of these roads and replaced by fast-speed train. But since the project started, stranger things have begin to happen. Mist and ghostly apparitions appear out of the nowhere and effect only the motorway.
So, when Scott Williams, son of Alex Williams, civil servant to the Department of Transport, is nearly kidnapped and, six months later, discovered his father dead, he knows something is terrible wrong. And when Detective Inspector Jason Dyer is assigned to the case, both slowly discover that there's a conspiracy going on. But what on earth is the Dead Ways? And how is that connected to the Greening of the Roads scheme?
The Dead Ways is a fast read because it is so short compared to other books I read (and I was reading Clockwork Angel by Cassandra Clare at the same time) as this was under 200 pages long. And it was fast-paced and, seeing as I do like crime thrillers, this suits me to the ground as, most of the story, there was a dark thriller edge to the story so when things did begin to happen, it was a creepy moments in the story (let's not talk about what happened at the Royal Alexandra Hospital's Mortuary as that one scene really creeped me out and I would LOVE to see on TV - Oh yes, I think this would be a brilliant BBC One family show on Saturdays at the Doctor Who & Merlin timeslot!) and they fit the story.
There was one or two things that bothered me about The Dead Ways. The first is that, there were times that I felt that the story lacked substance. And there was times that I put the book down, I had to make myself pick the book up (but as I was reading Clockwork Angel at the same time [part of a Read-A-Long I'm taking part in], this could be the reason).
But The Dead Ways is an interesting supernatural thriller and I will be intrigued on what will happen next in this trilogy. And I might not be able to look at flowers on the side of the roads in the same way again...
The UK government have a plan to benefit future generation of pollution and stop congestion on the UK busiest motorways. The Greening of the Roads scheme is the removal of these roads and replaced by fast-speed train. But since the project started, stranger things have begin to happen. Mist and ghostly apparitions appear out of the nowhere and effect only the motorway.
So, when Scott Williams, son of Alex Williams, civil servant to the Department of Transport, is nearly kidnapped and, six months later, discovered his father dead, he knows something is terrible wrong. And when Detective Inspector Jason Dyer is assigned to the case, both slowly discover that there's a conspiracy going on. But what on earth is the Dead Ways? And how is that connected to the Greening of the Roads scheme?
The Dead Ways is a fast read because it is so short compared to other books I read (and I was reading Clockwork Angel by Cassandra Clare at the same time) as this was under 200 pages long. And it was fast-paced and, seeing as I do like crime thrillers, this suits me to the ground as, most of the story, there was a dark thriller edge to the story so when things did begin to happen, it was a creepy moments in the story (let's not talk about what happened at the Royal Alexandra Hospital's Mortuary as that one scene really creeped me out and I would LOVE to see on TV - Oh yes, I think this would be a brilliant BBC One family show on Saturdays at the Doctor Who & Merlin timeslot!) and they fit the story.
There was one or two things that bothered me about The Dead Ways. The first is that, there were times that I felt that the story lacked substance. And there was times that I put the book down, I had to make myself pick the book up (but as I was reading Clockwork Angel at the same time [part of a Read-A-Long I'm taking part in], this could be the reason).
But The Dead Ways is an interesting supernatural thriller and I will be intrigued on what will happen next in this trilogy. And I might not be able to look at flowers on the side of the roads in the same way again...
April 5, 2012
Originally posted on Once Upon A Time.
I will admit to being a little unreasonably wary of The Dead Ways before picking it up because I was worried that it might have been a little young for me as I have a history with not enjoying middle grade books because I often find the writing and story style too simplistic. However, I was not to worry. The Dead Ways is a great piece of fiction for young adults and adults alike. Okay, so there were quite a few convenient near misses throughout the novel but that's something I just associate with middle grade fiction and thus it bothers me a lot less than when it occurs in adult fiction.
As for the writing style itself I was gripped from the very first page. The Dead Ways begins with Scott being kidnapped from outside of his school and so straight away we have a fast paced scene and questions to be answered. Why kidnap Scott? Who are the kidnappers? What is so important about Scott's father? And though it's a very short novel at just under 200 pages, it feels just right. The story doesn't drag and it manages to fit everything in pretty perfectly.
I particularly enjoyed Tom's character. There's something about a gruff, almost-hippyish, Celtic loving, hairy middle-aged man that just makes that kind of character ultimately loveable (see: Hagrid). He was a caring father character with a few quirks and it was so easy to become attached to him.
Honestly, I think it was inevitable that I would love The Dead Ways considering how much ancient British legend and lost Celtic history was a part of the story. I'm a bit of a sucker for ancient Britain and legend. If you're looking for a quick but highly interesting and exciting read, do give The Dead Ways a try. And follow Christopher Edge on Twitter while you're at it!
I will admit to being a little unreasonably wary of The Dead Ways before picking it up because I was worried that it might have been a little young for me as I have a history with not enjoying middle grade books because I often find the writing and story style too simplistic. However, I was not to worry. The Dead Ways is a great piece of fiction for young adults and adults alike. Okay, so there were quite a few convenient near misses throughout the novel but that's something I just associate with middle grade fiction and thus it bothers me a lot less than when it occurs in adult fiction.
As for the writing style itself I was gripped from the very first page. The Dead Ways begins with Scott being kidnapped from outside of his school and so straight away we have a fast paced scene and questions to be answered. Why kidnap Scott? Who are the kidnappers? What is so important about Scott's father? And though it's a very short novel at just under 200 pages, it feels just right. The story doesn't drag and it manages to fit everything in pretty perfectly.
I particularly enjoyed Tom's character. There's something about a gruff, almost-hippyish, Celtic loving, hairy middle-aged man that just makes that kind of character ultimately loveable (see: Hagrid). He was a caring father character with a few quirks and it was so easy to become attached to him.
Honestly, I think it was inevitable that I would love The Dead Ways considering how much ancient British legend and lost Celtic history was a part of the story. I'm a bit of a sucker for ancient Britain and legend. If you're looking for a quick but highly interesting and exciting read, do give The Dead Ways a try. And follow Christopher Edge on Twitter while you're at it!
January 27, 2015
I started The Dead Ways a little bit apprehensively as I am not the type of person that usually enjoys zombie books. There has been so many Zombie titles dropping through my door of late that I have quite honestly got fed up with them. However in this case I was pleasantly surprised and pleased that I decided to give this one a go as it is very different from other Zombie novels I have had come my way.
The book itself starts with a prologue which goes along at break neck pace and this doesn't let up throughout the entire story making you want to read and read and read until you can read no more. From the outset as a reader you are thrown quite literally into the thick of it alongside the main character Scott and find yourself being dragged along this fast paced and creepy ride.
What I liked about this book was that it wasn't your average zombie story. In much of the book the zombies themselves are just a suggestion or an idea which no one quite believes in but I think this makes them all the more creepier. I also liked that there was some kind of explanation with its own history about where they came froma and how they came into being. I also enjoyed that there was a creepy conspiracy story added in with a super creepy masonic cult thrown in. I actually think those dudes were far more creepy that anything zombieish. I also liked how it was set in a future world which was slighly different from our own albeit in subtle ways and seeing how that world changed the world view of some of the characters from our own.
This book being book one in a series sets up loads of thread that I can't wait to see explored in future books. I am definitely looking forward to seeing how it plays out.
The book itself starts with a prologue which goes along at break neck pace and this doesn't let up throughout the entire story making you want to read and read and read until you can read no more. From the outset as a reader you are thrown quite literally into the thick of it alongside the main character Scott and find yourself being dragged along this fast paced and creepy ride.
What I liked about this book was that it wasn't your average zombie story. In much of the book the zombies themselves are just a suggestion or an idea which no one quite believes in but I think this makes them all the more creepier. I also liked that there was some kind of explanation with its own history about where they came froma and how they came into being. I also enjoyed that there was a creepy conspiracy story added in with a super creepy masonic cult thrown in. I actually think those dudes were far more creepy that anything zombieish. I also liked how it was set in a future world which was slighly different from our own albeit in subtle ways and seeing how that world changed the world view of some of the characters from our own.
This book being book one in a series sets up loads of thread that I can't wait to see explored in future books. I am definitely looking forward to seeing how it plays out.
June 8, 2012
This book just didn't captivate me enough. It was predictable, the plot was cliche, and the characters were outright flat.
I'm quite disappointed.
The Story:
The authorities were planning to remove the roads in Britain permanently and replace them with an electric train, claiming that it would be more environmentally friendly and ease the traffic at the same time. Little did everyone know that what the Transport Minister had in mind was something of the supernatural, and the train project was just a cover-up.
Around Britain, odd things were happening. Ghostly apparitions, the walking dead... Everything was pointing to an event linked to the train project.
It was up to Scott, a thirteen-year-old; James, a detective; Tom, owner of a bookshop and Avalon, Tom's daughter, to prevent a catastrophic event from happening. They needed to stop the Dead Ways from opening.
What I Liked About the Book:
1. The author wasted no time delving into the action.
2. There were zombies! Though it's only a minor role they were playing.
3. I liked that small 'dementor-esque' part in the beginning -- it reminded me of Harry Potter!
What I Didn't:
1. The writing wasn't bad, but it failed to capture my attention.
2. Despite the story having numerous chase scenes, I felt it was too rushed and there was no breather.
3. The plot was not good enough. It didn't stand out for me.
4. The characters were all sub-par and flat. No depth, no development, not a single ounce of personality!!! Outrageous.
5. It was too short. The author could have lengthened it and inject some life into the book!
Verdict:
I wouldn't recommend it to anyone. It's kind of blah for me.
I'm quite disappointed.
The Story:
The authorities were planning to remove the roads in Britain permanently and replace them with an electric train, claiming that it would be more environmentally friendly and ease the traffic at the same time. Little did everyone know that what the Transport Minister had in mind was something of the supernatural, and the train project was just a cover-up.
Around Britain, odd things were happening. Ghostly apparitions, the walking dead... Everything was pointing to an event linked to the train project.
It was up to Scott, a thirteen-year-old; James, a detective; Tom, owner of a bookshop and Avalon, Tom's daughter, to prevent a catastrophic event from happening. They needed to stop the Dead Ways from opening.
What I Liked About the Book:
1. The author wasted no time delving into the action.
2. There were zombies! Though it's only a minor role they were playing.
3. I liked that small 'dementor-esque' part in the beginning -- it reminded me of Harry Potter!
What I Didn't:
1. The writing wasn't bad, but it failed to capture my attention.
2. Despite the story having numerous chase scenes, I felt it was too rushed and there was no breather.
3. The plot was not good enough. It didn't stand out for me.
4. The characters were all sub-par and flat. No depth, no development, not a single ounce of personality!!! Outrageous.
5. It was too short. The author could have lengthened it and inject some life into the book!
Verdict:
I wouldn't recommend it to anyone. It's kind of blah for me.
May 3, 2013
it's very attractive!
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