'What’s slithering about deep underground …? When a meteorite crashes to Earth near Crooked Oak, Pete, Nancy and Krish are determined to find it. But they’re not the only ones …
'After spotting one of their teachers up on the moor where the meteorite landed, they start to wonder if his strangely altered behaviour and appearance might be connected to the arrival from outer space. But nothing could prepare them for the horror they uncover deep down in Killburn Mine …'
The Crooked Oak series continues with its fifth entry as Dan Smith creates another wonderfully dark children's horror story that manages to skirt the line between scary and outright gruesome with a story that pays homage to a number of horror classics that older readers will enjoy too.
Pete, Nancy, and Krish are continuing their search for the paranormal and the strange, having already gone up against a number of things that most people wouldn't believe in, when Pete sees what he thinks is a UFO crashing to Earth whilst up late one night. However, their physics teacher Mr Bennings tells them that it's in fact a meteorite, a piece of rock from space, and that it's crashed somewhere nearby on the local moors.
Despite it not being the UFO he was hoping for, Pete wants to try and track the meteorite down, hoping to find something interesting. When the three of them head out to look for it the next day they come across Mr Bennings, looking unusual and acting strange. When they approach him he seems to dodge their questions, and leaves as quickly as he can. As time goes by, he continues to act stranger and stranger, and begins to look sicker too. Does it have anything to do with the strange leech that attached itself to Nancy's neck out in the moors, and where did the strange creature come from?
One of the things that I've loved about this series is that it absolutely can appeal to adults too. Yes, it's written for a younger audience, younger teens specifically, but there's a lot here that will appeal to readers older than that too. A big part of this is that Dan Smith is a big horror fan, and draws inspiration from other stories, and puts a number of sneaky references and easter eggs into the books. I've literally just now when writing that sentence realises that Me Bennings was a reference to the character of Bennings from The Thing, a film that's a very clear inspiration for this story.
The Crooked Oak series has tried its hand at a number of different types of horror, and this book is the body horror / alien invasion mash-up book. Spoilers for the story, but the meteorite that crashed to Earth contained eggs that spawned the leech creatures, and that they're feeding on blood to live, and even go inside Mr Bennings body. There are some moments in the book that even had me asking 'what the hell?' and being hugely impressed that the book was able to be as gross and frightening as it is whilst still being fairly bloodless and age appropriate. It wouldn't take much to turn this story into a gory horror tale for adults, but Smith manages to make it stay firmly in the kids category, and I found that to be hugely impressive.
The book has a lot of atmosphere to it, there's a big sense of mystery, and the cold, snowy winter setting help to make the kids feel isolated and alone. The cold is a great setting for horror, and wintery horror stories have a starkness and sense of dread that comes in part just from the weather alone, and this book really makes use of those feelings. It also means that even though this book is not set in a remote arctic research station Smith gets to use a variation on the phrase 'man is the warmest place to hide'.
The Creatures of Killburn Mine come with a number of illustrations by Chris King, whose work helps to build the horror in several of the scenes. The first piece of art is pretty normal, showing the kids at school, but as the story goes on and things get more and more creepy the images start to do the same. We have an illustration of a leech being pulled from Nancy's neck, another of Mr Bennings allow a leech to enter his body, and eventually a leech covered man coming after the kids. They're dark, frightening images, and they're absolutely fantastic.
The Creatures of Killburn Mine is a great addition to the series, one that might be the most horrific of the bunch, and that really seems to push the limits of what you can get away with in a young readers horror story. Oh, and as I know Dan Smith loves Resident Evil and sneaks references to that series in all the times, the leeches are definitely a nod to Resident Evil 0, a game I did not expect to see referenced.
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