Return To The Past
Hey gang! We're back with another dastardly tale. This one taking place in the "present" of 1997 and the past, 1917. It's a tale of war, cowardice, and regrets. Submitted for the approval of the Midnight Society, I call this. the review Of The Tale Of The Zero Hero.
Premise: A boy is haunted by the ghost of his great-grandfather and pulled into the past.
When we met Simon Decker, he and his family (Mom, Dad, kid sister, Lauren), are moving into a new house in their new town Barstowe and we learn that they moved because the dad's business venture hadn't panned out and they were starting over in a new place, which, yeah, that would make me grumpy too if I had to leave my school and all my friends. I feel for Simon in this respect. Of course, Simon soon realizes that something strange is going on when he feels a cold spot before going into his room but at first, he just thinks it's nothing and brushes it off.
Then he has his first day where, although he makes a new friend in a girl named Jennifer Furedie, he makes an enemy of a kid named Wayne Howard, the school's soccer star. In later chapters, you learn that Simon's great-grandfather Thomas Decker, let Wayne's great-grandfather, Matt Howard, die, which, yeah, I could understand about being miffed at this. The way the story reads, it appears that Thomas' cowardice resulted in a curse where the next generation's endeavors end up in failure thus having the sins of the father visited upon the children, which is kinda Biblical, but at the same time, I'm wondering if Simon's dad set himself up for failure simply because he knew what people had said about his grandfather? The world may never know.
Anyhoo, turns out, Thomas is haunting Simon and transports him to France's trenches of World War 1 via an old lucky rabbit's foot that acts as a talisman for Thomas to use. Once he realizes what's going on, Simon is understandably freaked out. Look, if one of my ancestors was haunting me and transporting me to their present day merely so that I could help them right a wrong decision that they had made, I would not be calm at all. I do not blame Simon for not wanting to have anything to do with this kind of nonsense. Boy's got enough problems dealing with a new town, a new school, a history report that's due, and enemy that tried to take him out during soccer tryout (Wayne tried to cheat during this time and got himself kicked off the team. Boy, you caused your own mess, but that's a whole different rant). Back to Simon. Simon is not happy and wants none of it. Thomas though has other ideas and continues haunting Simon, even appearing to Simon with a big old hole in his stomach, saying that he's going to let himself get shot because he can't live with the guilt over his prior actions, meaning that if he dies before he's supposed to, none of his descendants will ever be born, which dude, not a great selling point in getting someone to help you, though it does work, because Simon isn't a jerk.
Back in World War 1, Simon meets up with Thomas again, finally convincing him of his story when he shows him the rabbit's foot, which I gotta quote Dean Winchester on this, "Poor little guy. Why is he always getting shafted?" Digressing, sorry. Simon sticks close to Thomas trying to figure out what part of the man's experience he's supposed to change and the answer comes when their site is bombed and a mud-trench room for the injured is compromised. In the original timeline, Thomas doesn't save anyone which leads to Simon's history, but with Simon's encouragement, Thomas leaps into action and ends up saving the people who had previously lost their lives, including Matt Howard.
After this, Simon returns to the present where he finds out that even though he's still friends with Jennifer, some pretty big changes happened because of his actions: he finished the history report, his family's luck had changed, and the real biggie: he is now best friends with Wayne Howard. Which begs the question of, how did that work? In this new timeline, did the boys play together during family vacations to Barstowe? And what was the reason for the move in the new timeline? Inquiring minds want to know, people! All in all, a great trip down memory lane and I'd probably grab more of these books if I ever saw them. This story I would give a 9. And so, I declare this meeting of the Midnight Society closed.
Comments
Post a Comment