Page 44 of Nightcrawler

Genre: Teen, young-adult, fantasy

Review/rating by Nightcrawler: Two and a half stars, rounded down to two

Synopsis:

The fascinating story of an ordinary young mouse named Peter and his quest to save his starving kingdom by participating in a series of harrowing challenges. As he moves from one challenge to the next, they increase in difficulty. The starving hero of our story begins his quest, finally culminating in the one challenge which will save not only his life, but the rest of his kingdom.

My review:

Let me begin by saying that this book didn’t totallysuck. Watching this brave mouse try to overcome one challenge after another was exciting…in a way. It begins with him finding his way through a vegetable patch without stealing so much as a strawberry to eat even though the author describes his hunger quite thoroughly. He even climbs trees to pick apples and throw them down to field mice farmers who collect them in baskets below as he ignores his own hunger…well you get the idea.

But whoever rigged these challenges, doesn’t know, and never will, how to set a mousetrap. Some of them were simple to overcome. I’ll give you an example. Peter—our mouse—has been running through the forest for an entire day with nothing to eat when he gets to a lake of liquid cheese. The challenge is to swim through it without licking even a drop off his lips. Honestly, reading about Peter’s bravery when faced with such a challenge was the only reason I gave this book two stars instead of one.

Peter, however, faces his greatest challenge just when the culmination of all his achievements is suddenly threatened…by rainfall. Yes, that’s right. You heard me. Peter’s very life is threatened by rainfall. We’re not talking about a hurricane here; we’re talking about rainfall. Our poor tired mouse hero is forced to slog through the sprinkling rain to find safety and finally, completely out of strength to go a single step more, he decides to keep dry under a mushroom.

The only reason I’m giving this book two stars instead of three, is because another mouse is already taking shelter under the same mushroom which is how Peter got the idea to begin with. Philosophically speaking, I felt like the mushroom represented not only safety and life to Peter, but a profound instinct to survive.

Reader beware. I promise I will not be reading any more of Stephanie Wise’s books. They’re way too exciting and I just don’t know if I should recommend them to anyone with a weak heart.

When a knock came at the door, I let my grinning friend into the apartment, and he swept me into a hug. He was still wearing his scrubs and my guilt at asking yet another favor of him returned in full force as he let me go. He looked around the apartment, noting the full extent of my possessions packed up in a pathetically small number of boxes.

“We should start with the mattress,huh?” he asked.

“It’s dark, so I think yes, we should get it downstairs,” I said, feeling another thank you on the tip of my tongue but deciding to leave it until we were done.

“Good plan,” he said, walking over to the soaked mattress and looking down at it. “Didn’t realize he’d lost that much blood.” He looked over at me as I felt my face reddening. “He’s really okay? It’s kind of a miracle he didn’t need a transfusion or at the very least, IV fluids.”

I shrugged my shoulders, feeling another wave of guilt wash over me. Vonne must have seen it in my face because he closed the distance between us and looked up at me before clapping me on the shoulder. “It’s okay, really. If you think he’s okay, it’s good, right?”

“I mean, he seems like he’s fine and I think I’d know if he was trying to hide something that important from me.”

He didn’t say anything but when a smile slowly spread across his lips, he seemed to figure out something. He nodded slowly. “You know him that well by now,huh?”

I frowned at him. “Enough. I mean, he came out to meet with some friends of mine about my next job.” I brushed past him, not really wanting to discuss the retrieval of the nasty meth head we were going to go after. I felt the weight of his stare on me as I bent and grabbed the mattress, pulling it off the bed and laying it on its side where it’d be easier to push out the door, down the hall, and to the stairs. I took the sheets with it. They were slightly stained and worth almost nothing, so I figured I might as well dispose of the whole lot of the bedding with the exception of the quilt my mother had sewn by hand. I’d already folded that and carefully packed it away.

The quilt had turned up among the belongings Cassidy and Mike had packed for me in the aftermath of that awful night when they’d returned to gather what they thought I might want from the house. Child Protective Services had come to the LAPD substation the night of their murders after I’d sobbed through a statement to the police, and I’d never gone back into the house. I hadn’t even realized that it had been Cassidy who’d initiated the packing of my belongings and the remnants of my parents’ lives until years later.

He’d seen to it that the house was packed up after he and Mike had picked through the few things they thought would hold sentimental value to me and put them in boxes. The men who’d robbed and killed my parents, had trashed most of the dining room, kitchen, and living areas, and stolen all my mother’s jewelry, so there wasn’t a whole lot to pack. I hadn’t gone through any of the boxes Cassidy had stored in his own garage until I’d gotten out of the group home, and I’d found the quilt, the silverware, and the photographs I loved. I thanked God for him and Mike every day.

“He went with you to meet friends for a job?” he asked, helping me wrestle the mattress out the door and down the hall.

“Yeah, Jamie has me going after a fugitive and since the fugitive is a big guy, I needed help.”

“Who’d you call?”

We struggled down the stairs to the parking garage, grunting as we went, and pushing it out the second door to the filthy subterranean level before I answered.

“Cassidy Ryan and Mike Williams.”

“They’re gonna help you take this guy down? They’re not gonna want to arrest him themselves?”

“No, they know I need the bounty and…ah…” I ran my hand through my hair. “It wasn’t exactly my idea. Raven called them when he figured out I was planning on going after him alone.” We were trudging back up the stairs together as Vonne laughed.

“That boy is good for you.”

I turned to him and smiled. “Yeah, I guess he is.”

We loaded boxes and clothes into my truck, along with Stanley, and drove to the dump to unload the mattress before I dropped him off back at my place with a huge thank you and a big hug. I took one more look around my barren apartment with only a few pieces of crappy furniture and left the key on the counter, before heading out to Raven’s place, thankful that I had a place to crash.

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