If you crack open The Phantom Cabinet, you better be prepared for a confusing, albeit, incredibly interesting story. Jeremy Thompson crafts a story that feels all over the place, yet I couldn’t help but keep reading. That to me is a sign of a good book. Read on to see if you agree…
Short nitty-gritty plot description is as follows: Space Shuttle Conundrum collides with empty atmosphere, passing from known reality into the realm beyond life. At the same time, a dead newborn is resurrected amidst a hospital-wide poltergeist infestation.
What connects these ghastly occurrences, and how can the fate of humanity rest on a single boy’s shoulders?
As the haunted Douglas Stanton spends his adolescence an outcast—his only friend the ghost of a long lost astronaut—a porcelain-masked entity lurks in the shadows, planning Douglas’ demise. Because Douglas is the key… the key to the door… a door between what we know and what we fear. And when the key is turned…realities will come crashing together.
When Heaven and Hell don’t exist…what does?
Step into The Phantom Cabinet…
Book Opinion: The Phantom Cabinet is a very busy book. Each chapter is so crammed full of ghosts, ghouls and plot development, that it sometimes can become extremely overwhelming. Thompson will introduce characters left, right and centre, but they’ll disappear come the next chapter. It can be quite confusing, but after a few chapters, he manages to lay out a better story structure, which is all about the poor, troubled and haunted life of Douglas. After you warm up to the story structure, you can forgive a few mistakes, such as Thompson’s struggles with character dialogue, which comes off as stilted. He can describe a ghost with beautiful and grotesque prose, but when it comes to dialogue, it’s hit or miss.
The general gist of the story is about Douglas, who after some strange circumstances around his birth, is haunted by ghosts. As Douglas grows older, these ghosts become more common place in his life and others around him, to the point where people end up dying. We follow Douglas as he grows up and deals with bullies at school, a father who doesn’t love him, friends who come and go and a certain porcelain mask ghost that just won’t leave. The imagery of the ghosts is quite ghoulish and Thompson crafts some interesting creatures, even if they only appear in a page or two and disappear forever. The story is wrapped up nicely at the end and Thompson’s idea behind the afterlife is something I wouldn’t mind reading more about.
Verdict: Coming in at around 200 pages, The Phantom Cabinet isn’t an overly long book, but it’s crammed full of story and can be confusing at some parts and convoluted at others. Still, the story kept me interested enough to keep turning the pages long into the night. Recommended.
Rating:
