The Haunting of Drearcliff Grange School

Drearcliff Grange #2

by Kim Newman

The stunning new novel starring the superpowered Amy Thomsett from the acclaimed author of Anno Dracula

Of course, Drearcliff Grange School was haunted.

Amy Thomsett - the girl who flies on moth wings - is confident she can solve any mystery, sleuth out any secret and defy any dark force. With her friends in the Moth Club she travels to London to take part in the Great Game, a contest of skill against other institutes of learning. In a nightmare, and in the cellars of a house in Piccadilly, Amy glimpses a spectre who might have dogged her all her life, the Broken Doll. Wherever the limping ghost is seen, terror strikes. And the lopsided, cracked-face, glass-eyed creature might well be the most serious threat the Moth Club have ever faced.

Genres: Fantasy, Fiction, Horror, Young Adult

400 pages, Paperback

First published October 23, 2018

About the author

Note: This author also writes under the pseudonym of Jack Yeovil.
An expert on horror and sci-fi cinema (his books of film criticism include Nightmare Movies and Millennium Movies), Kim Newman's novels draw promiscuously on the tropes of horror, sci-fi and fantasy. He is complexly and irreverently referential; the Dracula sequence--Anno Dracula, The Bloody Red Baron and Dracula,Cha Cha Cha--not only portrays an alternate world in which the Count conquers Victorian Britain for a while, is the mastermind behind Germany's air aces in World War One and survives into a jetset 1950s of paparazzi and La Dolce Vita, but does so with endless throwaway references that range from Kipling to James Bond, from Edgar Allen Poe to Patricia Highsmith.
In horror novels such as Bad Dreams and Jago, reality turns out to be endlessly subverted by the powerfully malign. His pseudonymous novels, as Jack Yeovil, play elegant games with genre cliche--perhaps the best of these is the sword-and-sorcery novel Drachenfels which takes the prescribed formulae of the games company to whose bible it was written and make them over entirely into a Kim Newman novel.
Life's Lottery, his most mainstream novel, consists of multiple choice fragments which enable readers to choose the hero's fate and take him into horror, crime and sf storylines or into mundane reality.

Reviews

[AFrolicInTheTomesXx]

So I kinda flew through this as I do most middle grades. They’re just super easy to read for me. The English/Brit language did slow me down, but not enough to take me down obviously!

So as I said this is the second book in a duology (idk if the author plans to write more), and that is not at all clearly marked on the book itself. I started it not noticing the (book 2) thing on goodreads. So yes this felt like gibberish when I first started. But eventually I was about to use reasoning skills to figure a lot out along with the book re-explaining some things.

The reason I’m giving it four stars is simply because I loved the entire idea. This book is a little x-men, a little miss peregrines home for peculiar children, and a little Harry Potter. Which sometimes was a bit too much… but anyway. I also love books with quests and stakes and competitions. and while this book doesn’t explain the purpose of the competition super well, I felt like the stakes and odds were compelling enough to keep my interest as the actual challenges were surprisingly impossible seeming sometimes, and not to mention dangerous.

I also love the mc, who is a poltergeist and can move things as a poltergeist would. There are other kids with powers too. She even has a club called the moth club.

The spooky aspects unfortunately weren’t as strong as the magical aspects. But eh, you win some you lose some. The idea of it was cool and it had its moments.

The school politics kinda dragged as well. But it picks up by the end and has a pretty interesting ending and a really cool last line.

I’m feeling generous today. 4 stars. And I’ll use this to kick off my fall of middle grade horror books, because the fall is the best time to read them!

[Bob Jamieson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ooops, accidentally bought book 2 of a series without noticing!

Speaks well of the author that I got most of the way through it before I even realised it.

This was really fun, a bit more YA than you usually see from Kim Newman, but dark as ever. Very much alike with the Genevieve and Anno Dracula books - inventive horror, clever female protagonist, non-obvious/sympathetic villains, chock full with references, etc. But for all that, a fun read. A better magical school than Hogwarts, and a faaaar more interesting set of characters. I'd love to see a lot more of this world.

[Sarah B · Rating 3 out of 5]

While I found this book entertaining I admit that parts of it left me feeling rather lost and confused...mainly the beginning of the book. I almost felt like I was reading a foreign language. Many places or names or things were being mentioned and I had no idea what they were. Most of the words were capitalized to indicate their importance but they left me feeling confused. This went on for about 40 pages. I was wondering when the actual story was going to start, as the main character seemed to be, well, absent during most of these pages. Maybe this was all thoughts in her head but I think all of this could have been skipped over easily, as it added nothing to the story for me.

I should add the story itself was also making me feel rather sleepy...which does not bode well for the book. Even though there was lots going on in the plot, it must have been boring me. Because later that same day I started a different book and then I was wide awake and all tiredness had vanished!

Another thing that really confused me about this book is that in several scenes they refer to Amy as a poltergeist. So is she a girl or is she a ghost? If she's a girl like I presume she is why did they call her a poltergeist?

Once the story started (and I was glad it did) then I got interested in the plot. It's about a girl named Amy who attends an unusual school and she has a gift that allows her to float in the air or to make other items float. She and her fellow classmates are taking part in some scavenger hunt where they need to find several hidden cups (Toby in British English) and there are mysterious riddles to solve. During the search Amy faces several challenges that she must beat. Things don't go smoothly and there are mishaps. Then in the second half of the book they go back to the school where she has more problems, including one that involves the scary Broken Doll... The plot involves lots of twists and turns, most of which I had not expected at all..and it does move along swiftly too.

The second half of the book asks some surprising questions about good and evil..and Amy has to make rather important decisions about this. Apparently sometimes some people can be really bad but they don't get in trouble for it because they are careful not to get caught! And sometimes people in authority can be bad too and they can influence people the wrong way. So parts of this book can be rather deep.

I didn't really care for the final chapter at the end. I would rather it end while she's at school.

[Nigel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Amy and friends take part in a competition with other schools and institutions on the streets of London. The outcome has some drastic consequences, not least of which is the mysterious broken doll that haunts Amy's dreams, but that's to say nothing of the new educational regime the Remove is subjected to, and the cunning and cruel game of secrets they are forced to play for prep. Brilliant stuff - Murder Most Unladylike with British old-school superheroes.

[Blodeuedd Finland]

I fear I have to give up. I am so lost. It is 3 years since I read the last one and I can not connect, nor have I time to re-read the previous one, or want to

[Redsteve · Rating 2 out of 5]

Only a so-so Newman novel. Like many of his other books it references (to more-or-less subtle degrees) characters from other fictional works, and also has more than a little crossover with some of his other series (including the Diogenes Club books, Opera Ghost Agency/Angels of Music, and "Basher" Moran/Hound of the D'Urbervilles). The beginning and end of the book also involves "The Undertaking" (essentially a nastier Victorian version of Men in Black)* . After an interesting start, the book seems rather slow, only picking up near the end - and I am definitely interested in seeing if Newman takes the story from Coda II (thirteen years after the events of this book) further. 2.5 stars.

*First appearing in the "Diogenes Club" books.

[Amy Walker - Trans-Scribe Reviews · Rating 1 out of 5]

The Haunting of Drearcliff Grange School is the second novel in the series, though the first book itself is a continuation, or rather an expansion of Kim Newman’s novella ‘Kentish Glory: The Secret of Drearcliff School’ which was first published in the 2010 book Mysteries of the Diogenes Club.

Continuing on from the first entry in the series, The Haunting of Drearcliff School follows Amy Thomsett, a young girl that is sent to Drearcliff School after being founding floating on the ceiling by her mother. A school for girls that includes the daughters of ‘Criminal Masterminds’, ‘Outlaw Scientists’, and ‘Master Magicians’, Amy learns that she’s an ‘Unusual’, and that she has powers and abilities that regular people don’t.

Throughout the book the school is portrayed as a combination of X-Men, Harry Potter, and Miss Peregrine’s Home For Perculiar Children. Whilst this is the kind of thing that can often work well, especially in the examples that I’ve pointed out, here it never really gels. Drearcliff school never really feels like a school in the way that the others do, there’s not a big focus on training powers like the Xavier school, or on lessons like Hogwarts. It’s just a place where these girls stay.

The girls themselves, the members of the Moth Club, never move beyond the two-dimensional. The girls lack any real depth or development throughout the course of the book. Even Amy, the lead character felt very disconnected. There wasn’t a huge amount of insight into her thoughts or inner workings. Rather than going on a journey with her we have to experience it from afar, separate to her. The story is okay, with some sense of mystery involved, but due to not having a great connection to the characters or the world it felt hard to become invested in what was happening.

The biggest issue with the book, however, is the language. Much of the book is written fairly normally, but a lot of the dialogue and some of the descriptive language can be very off-putting. I understand that the book is set in the 1920’s, and that the kids are using slang a lot, but when I needed to re-read what a character just said in order to figure out what they meant it can take you out of a story very quickly. For example, the first time you hear the teacher Miss Gossage sets the stage for a lot of the dialogue throughout the book. ‘Mawther Hein to Kentish Gloreah, Mawther Hein to Kentish Gloreah, come in, come in, ovah.’

The Haunting of Drearcliff Grange School is an incredibly hard book to get into, and there were a number of times when I just wanted to put the book down and stop reading. I’m sure that there are many people who will enjoy the book, especially if they read and liked the previous entry in the series, but it’s not a book that I would recommend to someone that hasn’t already expressed a love for the work Kim Newman.

[M · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very nearly a four-star book - it's a shame this seems to be the last one we'll get? It fixes a lot of the problems from book one, but not all of them. We get an action-packed, slightly hyperactive opening section where some of the girls from the Remove have to go to London to compete against rival schools of similarly 'gifted' children in a rather brutal scavenger hunt. It's part Triwizard Tournament, part Hunger Games. It's cool, but Newman is very invested in cramming as much character detail for new or previously background characters in at the expense of old favourites. (Kali really gets short shrift this book, for instance.)

In the aftermath of the Great Game, we're back to Drearcliff Grange School, but we're solely focused on 'The Remove' - the isolated class of particularly unusual girls with odd powers. A new teacher - very recently a Drearcliff girl herself - is brought in to stir the pot. By focusing more on just the powered girls, and focusing almost equally on their powers and their personality clashes, it has a very 'X-Men' feel. I did think part of the charm of book one was how rare and odd their powers felt, and that the WW1-era British society didn't know how to deal with the oddness. Now it feels like the social / historical aspect is gone.

It all builds up to a big confrontation, much like book one - though more artfully executed this time, I think. The antagonist didn't really make sense and Newman's attempts to deepen the 'broken doll' lore were pretty unwelcome. I did like the tie-in to his Dracula books, though.

I imagine Newman originally wanted to follow the Moth Club through each year of their school careers, with a book handling each year until they finished, but you can see that - as at the end of 'The Secrets of' - he is champing at the bit to skip forward in time, have them out there in the world, doing League of Extraordinary Ladies stuff instead of 'X-Men confined to Xavier's school only'. The last epilogue picks things up thirteen years after this book's events. I can't imagine he'll go back to Drearcliff if there is a sequel - so maybe this will just become the 'Kentish Glory' series. It would be a shame to say goodbye to Amy, Frecks, Kali and Light Fingers forever... I'd even miss rotters like Larry...

6.5/10

[Alison C · Rating 3 out of 5]

Amanda Thomsett is now in the Fourth Form at Drearcliff Grange School and she has been chosen to compete in the Great Game, in which teams from each of a number of special schools compete to find hidden objects in London. After recovering enough of the objects to win the game and restore the pride of the school, she is tricked out of her find and instead the school loses. Amy and her teammates are bitterly disappointed, but not more so than their schoolmates, who show their disdain in various ways. Although this is a difficult time for Amy, she has only just begun to face a hard year, particularly when the Broken Doll begins appearing in her dreams and then in real life…. This is a sequel to Kim Newman’s “The Secrets of Drearcliff Grange School,” and carries on the combination of genres that he displayed so well in that book - horror tropes and British girls’ school fiction, in this case set between the Wars. There are a huge number of characters in the book, which can be confusing because all of the school girls have their given names, nicknames and sometimes other monikers too, but fortunately only a handful of them are really central to the story and those are easy to keep straight. Mr. Newman also throws in references to some of his other work, in particular the Diogenes Club stories, but I don’t think the reader has to be familiar with those tales to get this one. Probably reading “The Secrets of….” first would be sensible, however; and I suspect, with so many characters left unexplored, we may see a third volume one day. Recommended.

[Philip Guy · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book is trying to be Harry Potter mixed with Miss Peregrine's School for Peculiar Children. Unfortunately, it fails to pull this off.

Acknowledging that this is the second in a series, and I have no read the first, I can confidently say that I have never read so much exposition at the start of a book before. It must have been 60 pages of info dump before anything actually happened.

As with many books of this kind, the world doesn't make much sense (and yes Harry Potter, I am looking at you). But the plot is muddy, and the Broken Doll is supposed to be frightening, but is actually rather boring. The characters are one dimensional, and their personalities are interchangeable.

The second half of the book is a definite improvement on the first, but I will not be seeking any more in this series.

[Drucilla · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is such a British book...it's great! If you want a classic boarding school story that just happens to have superpowers in it, this is the series for you. The slang and nicknames almost defeated me, but I managed to get through it. This book does have the opposite problem that the first book had. That book was a little tough to get into, but then (mostly) smoothed out. This book begins in an exciting medias res, but then kind of slows down before picking up a little at towards the end. It was a bit unbalanced and I felt like the Broken Doll wasn't established very well. Still, it was a good read. If Newman makes a third, I'm looking forward to it!

[Shannon · Rating 2 out of 5]

First off, the publisher isn't doing the author any favors by not clearly marking this book as the second in a series.

That said, as nicely written as each sentence is, 95% of the sentences in this book do absolutely nothing for the story. There are way too many characters also doing absolutely nothing for the story. The amount of slang locks it's clarity down to a small region of the globe. Basically, there is a brilliant story in here dying to get out, but it just didn't get written. I'm left frustrated because the talent and a brilliant story is there... muddled too far inside the mind of the author.

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have an embarrassing confession. I bought and read this without realising it was a sequel. This may explain my discombobulation for the first quarter where there is a degree of assumption of knowing the characters and their multiple names. I thought I was just slow on the uptake. Overall the world creation was good, the superpowers and period setting was well realised, though obviously reminiscent of the miss peregrine books, and overall the story was intelligent and gripping. If converted to a visual medium I suspect it would be pretty scary. Now I’ll have to go and buy book one.

[Hillary · Rating 4 out of 5]

I didn't like this one quite as much as the first in the series. I didn't quite understand the purpose of the Great Game (might have just been school bragging rights, frankly), but it seemed to be a literally life-threatening test of children's skills. Then school was terrible after the Game, and threats both within and without menaced Amy and the rest of the Moth Club. This one had a lot less focus on teamwork and friendship, which I didn't like as much. Still, a pretty good addition to the series.

[Geof Sage · Rating 3 out of 5]

3,75, rounded down.

It was as you'd expect from Kim Newman, though there was a distinct lack of references to other material, mostly just his own (Jeperson). And to be fair, i didn't remember the first Drearcliff Grange book at all.

Definitely no An English Ghost Story.

[Bethnoir · Rating 3 out of 5]

A scary and exciting trip through the life of a girl with special powers. She is called upon to play an alarming game, face mysterious challenges and solve strange riddles whilst negotiating life in her boarding school in Somerset.

An odd mix of the fantastic and the more traditional sneaking out after lights out with your friends, I enjoyed it.

[Ashley · Rating 4 out of 5]

I feel like there were some inconsistencies with the last book as to powers (at the beginning at least), but overall another great, weird read.
Side note, did I miss a short story about the preacher who looked like Rudolph Valentino, because I want to read it!

[Nancy Boyd]

As several other reviews have said, I had to give up reading this book. The beginning was so confusing and difficult to follow that I found myself wishing it were over by page 10. I read for fun and relaxation; I'm not going to force it.

[MH · Rating 4 out of 5]

The sequel to Newman's '1920s British 'Girl's Own Adventure' meets Lovecraftian horror' is less Lovecraft and more classic X-Men (a huge, super-powered ensemble, learning about themselves and how to trust, or not, one another), but it's still a lot of fun, and I hope Newman's planning to write more stories about Amy and her friends fighting villains and monsters, solving mysteries, and growing up.

[Lori Brown · Rating 2 out of 5]

Was hoping for an improvement to the story line, but really was barely able to force myself to finish. As a book club we had decided on the two books…we wouldn’t consider a third. The overwhelming amount of detail made for an exhaustive read.

[Bernadette · Rating 2 out of 5]

Didn't have a clue this was a sequel till I looked at other's reviews. The first 40 pages or so were like reading French. Not a clue what was going on and I regretted buying it. I got into it a bit more after that but honestly lost interest about three quarters in

[Heather · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a fun read.

[Lu · Rating 2 out of 5]

Eh. The beginning 80% of the book is dull & uninteresting. The ending is more suspenseful but then it ends on a cliffhanger. No resolution. Annoying.

"Mistresses of mistrust"

[Mira · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not bad, but pretty disappointing after the first one.

[Donna Brown]

I will not review as I read a few chapters and realized this type of book is not my cup of tea.

[Alicia Huxtable · Rating 4 out of 5]

What an entagled but enjoyable experience. At times I wasn't really sure where the story was going but Amy was always at the centre of it and soon I was on track again.

[Katy · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read the first book in this series a few years ago and really enjoyed it. I enjoyed this one just as much. The world that Newman has created is a lot of fun, and is incredibly quirky and unusual. There were ideas in it that I loved - especially when it came to people's special powers. The plot was quite gripping, especially at the start - I thought the Great Game was a good opener and I sped through that really quickly. There were some creepy bits as well that I thought were atmospheric and well-written. Also, it had a nice sense of humour that took the edge off some of the darkness.
I liked the twists towards the end, they were a nice touch and I was genuinely surprised by some of them.

I liked most of the characters. I think Amy is a good heroine, and I liked her set against some of the more morally grey, or completely immoral, characters that she encounters along the way. I liked getting to know some of the minor ones, too, like Knowles, Speke, and Little.

After a strong start, though, it got a bit slow and I found myself a bit reluctant to carry it on. Once I got towards the final 30%, however, things moved quite fast again and it really picked up. I think some of the plot around the Broken Doll could have been fleshed out just a little bit more - more incidents involving the Doll.

The main problem though is that the book can be quite confusing. The first one was like this, too; it sort of reminds me of fanfic, where prior knowledge of a world/set of characters means the author doesn't have to explain the worldbuilding. Most of the terminology - especially around Unusual people - is used with little explanation of what it means, and it's easy to lose track. You sort of have to imagine you understand everything that's going on as it happens to enjoy it, but that can get a bit difficult. The ending was a little opaque to me - I'm not really sure, having finished it, what was actually going on with the Broken Doll.

Similarly, there are just so many characters (including characters with similar names) that it can be a bit hard to keep track. This is made worse by the fact that some characters are known by nicknames, and some of those nicknames can also seem quite similar. I got Frecks and Light Fingers confused quite a bit - Palgraive and Paguinet too. A lot of the "villainous" types have similar personalities and names. It just made it difficult to understand. The book contains a register of characters at the back, separated by school/house, but I think it would have been handy for this register to include aliases and a brief description of magical power where applicable. It would have helped a lot.

I would recommend it if you want an unusual historical boarding school fantasy story with some horror elements.

Content Warnings: Violence, mind control, bullying.