Now 2023 Previous Articles Road Essays Road Reviews Author Black Authors Title Source Age Genre Series Format Inclusivity LGBTA Portfolio Artwork WIP

Recent posts


Month in review

Reviews
The Bone Houses by Emily Lloyd-Jones
Butterfly Yellow by Thanhha Lai
Cat Got Your Secrets by Julie Chase
Caterpillar Summer by Gillian McDunn
A Charm of Goldfinches and Other Wild Gatherings by Matt Sewell
The Deep by Rivers Solomon
The Dragon Thief by Zetta Elliott
Final Girl by Michelle Schusterman
Giant Days, Volume 11 by John Allison
Gideon Falls, Volume 3: Stations of the Cross by Jeff Lemire
Guts by Raina Telgemeier
Have You Seen a Giraffe Hat? by Irma Joyce
I Wanna Be Where You Are by Kristina Forest
A Kingdom for a Stage by Heidi Heilig
Kneaded to Death by Winnie Archer
Leviathan Wakes by James S.A. Corey
Little & Lion by Brandy Colbert
Milo's World: The Land Under the Lake by Richard Marazano and Christophe Ferreira
Murder by Mocha by Cleo Coyle
Now Entering Addamsville by Francesca Zappia
Operatic by Kyo Maclear and Bryon Eggenschwiler
Our Wayward Fate by Gloria Chao
Over the Moon by Natalie Lloyd
The Phantom Tower by Keir Graff
Posted by John David Anderson
Steel Crow Saga by Paul Krueger
Sunny Side Up by Jennifer L. Holm and Matthew Holm
The Testaments by Margaret Atwood
West with the Night by Beryl Markham
What Rose Forgot by Nevada Barr

Miscellaneous
It's Monday! What Are You Reading? (November 04)
It's Monday! What Are You Reading? (November 11)
It's Monday! What Are You Reading? (November 18)
It's Monday! What Are You Reading? (November 25)
October 2019 Sources
October 2019 Summary

Road Essays
Road Narrative Update for October 2019

Previous month



Rating System

5 stars: Completely enjoyable or compelling
4 stars: Good but flawed
3 stars: Average
2 stars: OK
1 star: Did not finish



Privacy policy

This blog does not collect personal data. It doesn't set cookies. Email addresses are used to respond to comments or "contact us" messages and then deleted.


The Phantom Tower: 11/29/19

The Phantom Tower

The Phantom Tower by Keir Graff is a middle grade horror about twin brothers Mal and Colm and their mother moving into the Brunhilde Apartments in Chicago. They're able to afford a fully furnished, luxury multi-room apartment because the building has had trouble keeping tenants in recent years.

For anyone familiar with horror, the opening situation is akin to 666 Park Avenue, The Devil's Advocate, or The Sentinel. What's different here is that it's a mother and sons, rather than a newly married couple or a single person. Usually in horror when a family moves to a haunted place, it's a haunted house.

Mal and Colm comment on move in day that the apartment doesn't have a thirteenth floor labeled in the elevator. Their apartment on the fourteenth floor, they argue, is technically on the thirteenth. They find this detail both cool and a little creepy. Soon, though, they'll come to realize just how creepy it is.

At a certain time each day the elevator changes to include a button to the 13th floor. For one hour in the day one can explore a ghostly version of the tower and meet up with previous residents who continue to reside there. Through further exploration the twins come to learn that the building is cursed. Everyone who lives in the place ends up stuck in the phantom version for ever. Except now, the curse is about to run its course and doom the living to the phantom world!

As it happens, this horror novel sits in the road narrative spectrum at CCCCC. It's the story of twins going to uhoria via the maze. The phantom tower is a maze because it's possible to get stuck in the phantom zone. There are also dangers in the world of the living that they have to contend with. For a closer analysis, please see CCCCCC: Siblings through the maze to uhoria.

Five stars

Comments (0)


Lab puppy
Name:
Email (won't be posted):
Blog URL:
Comment:

Twitter Tumblr Mastadon Flickr Facebook Facebook Contact me

1997-2023 Sarah Sammis