From School Library Journal
Grade 4-6-- Life is a sequence of choices and consequences. In Ghost Drum (Farrar, 1987) , a slave woman choses to give up her baby daughter to a shaman so that the child could live free. In this companion novel, a young father, faced with the same choice, refuses to give up his new born son. The offended shaman, Kuzma, the only character to carry over from the first book, vows revenge, and so a tragic sequence of events is set into motion. Kuzma's anger is directed not only at Malyuta and his son, Ambrosi, but also at a nomadic tribe who follow the reindeer. This tribe is visited by Kuzma, and although they welcome him and treat him with respect, he curses them and changes them all into werewolves. To break the spell and save the tribe, one of them must serve Kuzma, and help him to steal Ambrosi away from his fiercely protective father. Like the previous book, this one has the feel and flavor of old folktales, specifically those from northern Europe. There is a purity and a beauty to the language; every word, every phrase, is perfectly placed, like an exquisite ice sculpture. This is a must for libraries that own Ghost Drum , and even for those that don't. --Susan M. Harding, Mesquite Public Library, TX
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Review
Do you remember, asks the narrator-cat here, winding its golden chain around the tree, how the jealous shaman Kuzma killed the witch Chingis, and in the end spent his days as a hammer, pounding an anvil? That was another tale (Ghost Drum, 1987). Here, Kuzma (with "Loki's heart in his breast") claims as his apprentice Ambrosi, born "sable, snow and blood," as his trapper father, Malyuta (slave to the czar), wished. But though Kuzma woos him in dreams and his extraordinary storytelling gift marks him as a born shaman, Ambrosi refuses to answer Kuzma's call. Meanwhile, Kuzma curses a tribe of the reindeer people (Lapps), transforming them into wolves who kill Malyuta, thus luring Ambrosi into the Ghost World to release Malyuta's spirit and break the spell on the few surviving Lapps. Still, Ambrosi refuses to he Kuzma's apprentice, choosing instead to remain in the Ghost World. Price's language retains the power and poetry of the earlier story, which won a Carnegie. But if Ghost Drum was a mosaic of jagged passions picked out in gold and vivid color, this is a starkly mythic tale in midnight black, icy white, and blood-red. Powerful, amoral, and capricious, Kuzma is thwarted by Ambrosi's native integrity and his love for his father, but there's little hint here of redemption. A dark, enigmatic tale, product of a powerful imagination. (Kirkus Reviews)
