I am still going to keep my five star rating.
Time has still been kind to this one.
In early 1996, The Fear Street Sagas series began with this one, A New Fear. It continues right where The Burning in the Fear Street Saga Trilogy left off so you know spoilers for anyone who has not read that yet. Obviously.
Though Stine is credited as this book's author here on Goodreads, it was written by Brandon Alexander. All of these Sagas are ghost-written so these were like almost Fear Street fan fiction.
That's not a bad thing but some of the books occur in such random times that do not fit with the family tree each Fear Street Saga Trilogy book featured. Family trees are not actually simple they can be very detailed and confusing but a few of the books are in line with the tree presented for the Fear family.
Nora Goode only got to be Nora Fear for one day until her whole world went up in flames. The families had been feuding since the colonial days and the curse on the Fear family could end if a Goode and Fear married. Daniel Fear was innocent to all the evil his grandparents, Simon and Angelica, had done but it didn't save him in the end.
Nora watched the Fear Mansion burn to the ground but not before seeing the faces of victims of the curse laughing at her in the flames as she escaped with only herself and the amulet her beloved Daniel had given her in place of a wedding ring of their eloped marriage. Simon's rage at their union in his old age caused the fire but no one will believe Nora's story.
No one believes that the two were married, no one believes that Simon Fear was able to stand even for a moment from his wheelchair to topple over the cake with its 75 candles into the curtains...no one believes Nora that the street they are building past the burnt remains of the mansion will be cursed for years to come.
Locked away in an asylum for the insane, Nora gives birth to her and Daniel's child. A son she names Nicholas. The nurse says this is no place to raise a child and he will be taken away from Nora until she...recovers. Nora doesn't believe her but still plans to escape with her son even when her doctor comes to sell the child to a wealthy family.
The Fear Amulet about Nora's throat can feel her fury and even when she goes almost feral to protect Nicholas, the pendant does all of the horrible work in destroying the doctor and his attendants by way of bringing Daniel Fear back from the grave through the fire in Nora's room.
He spares his wife and child and they escape from the asylum to board a ship for far away but the evils of the amulet almost leave Nora and nicholas drowned as a woman aboard is bad luck...especially when rats spare her and clean a crewman to the bone.
They manage to reach a place called Shadow Cove and Nora throws the amulet into the sea to spare her son from its curse. They take the surname of Storm and Nicholas grows up to be a fisherman on the boats when his mother becomes unable to work anymore. He hates everything about his life except for his mother and the beautiful Rosalyn, a young woman from Spain with a father who forbids her to be seen with someone beneath her.
At nineteen, Nicholas loses his mother but not before she says something about how his father left him a legacy yet too ill to finish just what that legacy is. Nicholas believes it may have to do with an inheritance and that night after her funeral, Nicholas encounters his own face and body telling him to journey to a place...called Shadyside.
Nicholas finds the town is real and he plans to go off and seek his destiny...perhaps a fortune that is enough for Rosalyn's father to end her arranged marriage to another man. Rosalyn sneaks to see Nicholas before he leaves and she gives him her most prized possession: the amulet with blue stones she found as a child upon the beach.
We already know who Nicholas is, what the amulet is and all of that but he finds those details out eventually. Nicholas looks so much like his father Daniel that he gets some pretty strong reactions, from calm to terrified in fact, from those who knew of him. He finds a boarding house and the woman who owns it has a teenage daughter named Betsy who is such a gossip but just too sweet to hate.
Learning that Andrew Manning is the richest man in town, Nicholas pays him a visit and is soon informed that any money he might have inherited is all in back taxes on the land on which the road called Fear Street is now located but most of the work undone because of...strange and even gruesome incidents.
The older man gives Nicholas a job working at his saw mill so he can pay off the taxes with his earnings and learn a trade to start a new life. It wasn't what Nicholas was hoping for but he accepts and he makes friends with two young men who work there named Ike and Jason. Nicholas also ends up meeting Manning's daughter Ruth and he treats her respectfully but he has no interest in her with her shyness and her almost lifeless, black eyes.
Nicholas is in love with Rosalyn, already accepting she will be his fiancee, but who could notice drab Ruth next to blonde, bubbly Betsy who brings Nicholas his lunch every day? She even draws hearts, arrows and roses on the lunchbag.
Ike finds it hilarious but Jason doesn't seem too thrilled.
Nicholas thinks it is just jealousy over Betsy but pretty soon, everything that seems to be going smoothly enough for Nicholas...takes a turn.
A dark turn involving death, hatred, suspicion and evil. It's Nicholas' legacy coming to pass just like he wanted but nothing he expected...
I don't want to spoil too much more but this book does eventually tie into the Fear Park trilogy that Stine actually did write.
There are some intense supernaturally driven deaths in the story but a few that are not in any way paranormal but...equally as graphic and terrifying. The saw mill is the backdrop for one incident that I don't actually think killed anyone but was still traumatic and bloody.
We have fire poker death and rat poison death and you also won't ever be able to look at that jar of yeast or flour on your mother's baking shelf the same way ever again...
It's still kind of sad how you think some of these Fear men just may be different but then the curse just grabs hold. Nicholas is just the next example tainted by the evil of the curse and he won't be the last unfortunately...
For the first entry, A New Fear is pretty good start. I didn't see any continuity errors and it is a cubic zirconia polished up so much you would think it is a diamond; you can not deny it has that Stine style.
I consider A New Fear a high recommendation to read if you have yet to discover it and a good follow up to the original Fear Street trilogy if you have ever had any doubts that this would be drivel compared to that.