Stevie‘s review of Raising Hell by Bryony Pearce
Young Adult Urban Fantasy published by UCLan Publishing 03 Jun 21
It says something about the times we’re currently living through that urban fantasy with multiple gory deaths and zombies counts as fluffy escapism. But that’s pretty much how I approached this book. Taking place in a 2025 where the events of 2020 were very different, but no less world-changing, the book follows Ivy Elizabeth Mann as she attempts to atone for her part in that catastrophe by dealing with the repercussions in her present. Ivy was a very ordinary London teenager, when she and two of her friends performed a ritual aimed at resurrecting the fourth member of their group recently killed in a tragic accident. None of them expected it to work, but it did, and they also opened a portal to other, much more dangerous, realms. Nearly five years later, Ivy is working as a school security guard, stopping the current crop of teenagers from taking magical artefacts in to their classes and from performing life-threatening rituals between their classes. Her week gets off to a bad start when she fails to stop one particular student from releasing a bunch of hellhounds into the world, and it gets worse when that student’s big brother gets her fired from her job for, essentially, doing her job.
Ivy is dedicated to her cause, however, and sets out to track down and banish the remaining hellhounds before they turn on and destroy their summoner. She is aided in this, reluctantly at first, by the aforementioned big brother, who happens to be wealthy and handsome, with a lot of resources at his disposal. It’s just unfortunate that he’s spent more time on his family’s business than on taking care of his little sister and noticing her interest in raising the dead. Also helping are the spirit of Ivy’s grandmother, now inhabiting the body of a cat, the ghost of her boyfriend – one of the original rift-opening trio – and the girlfriend of the girl the trio was trying to raise from the dead – now involved in various dodgy dealings involving the sale of magical items to teenagers. Plus another student Ivy caught performing illegal rituals.
The group uncover a not particularly secret conspiracy to overthrow the government – and to take over the world – by a new British political movement that has emerged following the opening of the rift. And then a zombie apocalypse starts up, which can only be stopped by Ivy and her companions returning to the scene of the initiating events and performing a new ritual that will hopefully close the rift once and for all.
This was a fast-paced and gripping story, although I had a few gripes regarding plot-holes and backstories that weren’t fully explained. It’s potentially the first in a series, however, so maybe all will be revealed in later books, and I liked some of the additional new complications in Ivy’s life that were revealed right at the end.
Grade: B
Summary:
Meet Ivy Elisabeth Mann -‘ I know what you are thinking, but I’m not half faery, or demon, or angel or anything like that. Mum’s a Body Shop consultant living in a bungalow in Birmingham and Dad enters crosswords.’ Once upon a time, Ivy and her friends did a very stupid thing and now there’s a rift letting dark matter into the world. Dark matter that manifests as black magic which actually works. Now every teenager with access to the Internet is raising hell. Literally. Ivy’s doing her best to stem the tide, but her new job working school security barely pays the bills and there’s only so much one girl with a machete (and a cat possessed by her own dead grandmother) can do against the forces of evil. Now she’s facing a teenage goth with an attitude, her ruthless but frustratingly handsome brother, a dark cabal with a terrifying agenda and a potential zombie apocalypse. Ivy losing her job might be the best thing to happen to the world…
No excerpt available.
