Betsy Streeter
Light Messages Publishing
Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Goodreads
To say fourteen year-old Helen Silverwood has an odd family would be an understatement. Her brother draws the future. Nightmares of rescuing strange creatures plague Helen’s dreams. Her mother works nights at a job she won’t discuss with her children, and her father is missing.
As the family picks up to move again, Helen begins to unravel the thread of mystery surrounding her mother’s work, her father’s disappearance, and her place in all of it. The shape-shifting Tromindox prey on humanity and Helen may have the key to stopping them.
Silverwood is an imaginative story with enjoyable characters. Dreaded Tromindox feed on humans to survive. Each member of the Silverwood family possesses some gift to battle the Tromindox. As the story unfolds, they figure out their places in the fight against the creatures.
There were some plot elements that didn’t really work for me. Helen and her father have identical gifts. The Tromindox want to capture Helen because of this ability, but don’t seem interested in her father, even when he’s standing right in front of them. Odd. At one point, townspeople begin walking out into a lake and disappearing beneath the surface of the water. A woman captures this event on film – she records it and then leaves the lake. Doesn’t call for help, try to save the person, call 911, etc. Just leaves. No explanation is offered. She kind of just goes home scratching her head.
The story is written in present tense from an omniscient viewpoint, so the action feels very immediate. The omniscient point-of-view did make for a few confusing moments when the author shifts without warning from one person’s thoughts to another’s. Over all, it wasn’t too hard to follow.
Fans of really offbeat stories like The Last of the Really Great Whangdoodles by Julie Andrews Edwards or The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster may enjoy this novel.
Language Content
Infrequent mild profanity.
Sexual Content
None.
Spiritual Content
None.
Violence
Tromindox must eat humans to survive. Brief descriptions of them shape-shifting into creatures with tentacles and a poisonous barb which they inject into a human’s neck.
Drug Content
None.