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Ghost World #4
Ghost Spell
All life is sorrowful, but very, very sweet.
Ice apples and firelight.
Wolves, darkness and the road to the Ghost World.
Ghost Spell, the fourth haunting book in the Ghost World Sequence.
Under a freezing arctic sky, a wolf carries a dying baby to a village door.
The villagers adopt him, naming him Vulchanok, 'Little Wolf.'
He grows to be a happy child but, by night, the wolf enters his dreams. She leads him to the Ghost World and makes him a shaman. The villagers begin to fear him.
Vulchanok becomes a lonely man. By night he looks for visions in a spinning ice-apple. He sees a beautiful, red-headed girl who is also alone. Taking up his goshawk skin, he flies to her window.
Hundreds of miles away, the penniless orphans, Glev and Kristiana, live in the Czar's palace. Every day Glev searches for a nobleman to marry his sister and make them both rich while Kristiana remains alone in their room. A noblewoman must not be seen in public.
Kristiana comes to love Vulchanok but to be with him she must shame and dishonour both herself and her brother. She must learn to work, though she has never lifted anything heavier than the page of a book.
Can the love between Kristiana and Vulchanok survive Glev's anger and Vulchanok's enemies?
If you enjoyed the Carnegie medal winning The Ghost Drum, then you'll enjoy this story of ice, firelight, love and revenge.
Ice apples and firelight.
Wolves, darkness and the road to the Ghost World.
Ghost Spell, the fourth haunting book in the Ghost World Sequence.
Under a freezing arctic sky, a wolf carries a dying baby to a village door.
The villagers adopt him, naming him Vulchanok, 'Little Wolf.'
He grows to be a happy child but, by night, the wolf enters his dreams. She leads him to the Ghost World and makes him a shaman. The villagers begin to fear him.
Vulchanok becomes a lonely man. By night he looks for visions in a spinning ice-apple. He sees a beautiful, red-headed girl who is also alone. Taking up his goshawk skin, he flies to her window.
Hundreds of miles away, the penniless orphans, Glev and Kristiana, live in the Czar's palace. Every day Glev searches for a nobleman to marry his sister and make them both rich while Kristiana remains alone in their room. A noblewoman must not be seen in public.
Kristiana comes to love Vulchanok but to be with him she must shame and dishonour both herself and her brother. She must learn to work, though she has never lifted anything heavier than the page of a book.
Can the love between Kristiana and Vulchanok survive Glev's anger and Vulchanok's enemies?
If you enjoyed the Carnegie medal winning The Ghost Drum, then you'll enjoy this story of ice, firelight, love and revenge.
110 pages, Paperback
First published July 10, 2017
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April 25, 2023Susan Price's The Ghost Drum from 1987 was one of the most formative reading experiences of my young life. It's a story of Russian Czars and shamans and snow and magic; a dark fairytale of ghosts and revenge - to this day I still think of it as so important to me. She went on to write 3 other books, not direct sequels but set in the same world, with this most recent story from 2017.
Vulchanok is orphaned as a baby, rescued by wolves, and then brought up by villagers. As he gets older, and a wolf witch guides him into his wolf and shaman powers, the villagers start to shun him and he grows lonely.
Meanwhile in the city, noblewoman Kristiana is locked up in a shabby apartment, waiting for her brother to arrange her marriage. All she has is her books and her patience (very reminiscent of Ghost Drum, actually) until Vulchanok, in the guise of a bird, knocks on her window.
None of the sequels have quite lived up to the original for me, and it's the same for this one, though I did like it! "All life is sorrowful but also very sweet," Vulchanok says to Kristiana, and this story is both of those things.
Vulchanok is orphaned as a baby, rescued by wolves, and then brought up by villagers. As he gets older, and a wolf witch guides him into his wolf and shaman powers, the villagers start to shun him and he grows lonely.
Meanwhile in the city, noblewoman Kristiana is locked up in a shabby apartment, waiting for her brother to arrange her marriage. All she has is her books and her patience (very reminiscent of Ghost Drum, actually) until Vulchanok, in the guise of a bird, knocks on her window.
None of the sequels have quite lived up to the original for me, and it's the same for this one, though I did like it! "All life is sorrowful but also very sweet," Vulchanok says to Kristiana, and this story is both of those things.
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