Joseph Delaney - The Spook's Apprentice

[Mark Robson]

Read this last night as it is one of the 7 titles shortlisted by the YAs of Warwickshire for the secondary book awards. I'd never heard of this author before, but I believe this is his first series, so I suppose it is not that surprising.

The Spook's Apprentice plotline has many similarities to Sabriel by Garth Nix, but I would say that it was aimed a little younger and it lacked the depth of Nix's creation. The young hero is the seventh son of a seventh son, and is therefore qualified to be trained as an apprentice Spook. A Spook is someone who binds the dead and basically is a troubleshooter for anything supernatural. Thomas J. Ward is a reluctant apprentice. He's scared of the dark, let alone ghosts, ghasts, boggarts and witches. Nevertheless, he commits to the trial as the Spook's apprentice (I guess there wouldn't have been much of a story if he didn't!) and, somewhat predictably, he makes some early mistakes with dire consequences.

I enjoyed this YA novel. If I were to criticise, then I would say it did not bring much in the way of new ideas to the genre. The storyline was well constructed, but felt familiar, as if it were a re-hash of stories I'd read before.

There is already a sequel called The Spook's Curse, so if you liked this first effort, then I'm sure there's going to be a few more to come.

[Alia]

Joseph's bibliography:

Series
Last Apprentice
1. The Spook's Apprentice (2004)
aka Revenge of the Witch
2. The Spook's Curse (2005)
aka Curse of the Bane
3. The Spook's Secret (2006)