From Publishers Weekly
Sleator brings the sights, sounds, tastes and smells of Thailand alive in lush detail, but the story itself, a sequel to The Spirit House, doesn't come alive until halfway through. Readers who tough out the repetitious narrative and plodding dialogue that set up the situation, though, are in for a snappy supernatural spine-tingler with edge-of-the-seat chase scenes. The action centers around Dom Kamen, an American teen who moves to Bangkok with his parents. Bad luck dogs the Kamens from the moment they arrive. Lek, a street vendor who is Dom's age, tells them that there is a bad spirit in their house. At first incredulous, Dom begins to believe that the spirit comes from a jade carving that his older sister had lost en route to Bangkok three years earlier. The plot machinery creaks a bit to enable Dom to accompany Lek to his native village, but once there it shifts into high gear. In a chase involving practically every type of Thai conveyance, Dom and Lek end up being pursued back to Bangkok by the khwan (malevolent spirit) of a sinister villager who ultimately gets his just deserts in "spirited" fashion. An entertaining and empathic fantasy that affords a good glimpse of an exotic culture. Ages 10-up.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From School Library Journal
Grade 4-6?This sequel to The Spirit House (Dutton, 1991) is set in Thailand and involves Dominic, the younger brother from that book. Dom and his parents are living in Bangkok for two months while his mother does some research. Dom's secret mission is somehow to find the Buddha statue that has been causing his family so much bad luck and give it to the proper shrine. He is aided in his search by Lek, a 15-year-old street vendor who is suffering from his own kind of bad luck. Dom eventually bribes Lek to escort him to his village in search of the statue. After a meal to rival the banquet in the second Indiana Jones movie, they eventually succeed in their mission. Everything wraps up nice and tidy, with everyone suddenly having good luck and bright futures. It is much easier to believe in the presence of spirits than it is to believe that Dom's parents would be so easily persuaded to let him go off with a stranger into the boonies of a strange land, or that they would be so blindingly ignorant about the country they are visiting. The heavy-handed comparisons of the American (read "rich") Dom and the native Lek, while perhaps valid, are extremely irritating after a while. The plot is clearly defined but the entire book has a jerky, sketchy tone that prevents readers from settling into it. Still, Sleator has a deft hand when it comes to cliff-hanger sentences, and he also does a nice job with dialogue and foreshadowing, which might be enough to save the story. This is not a completely satisfying novel, but for Sleator fans, or folks who just liked the first story, it might be enough.?Patricia A. Dollisch, DeKalb County Public Library, Decatur, GA
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.
