Review: THE WHISPERING SKULL (Lockwood & Company #2) by Jonathan Stroud

4.33 STARS from 1,224 GoodReaders

"Don't look now," Lockwood said. "There's two of them."

I snatched a glance behind me and saw that he was right. Not far off, on the other side of the glade, a second ghost had risen from the earth. Like the first, it was a pale, manshaped curtain of mist that hovered above the dark, wet grass.  Its head, too, seemed oddly skewed, as if broken at the neck.

I glared at it, not so much terrified as annoyed. For twelve months I'd been working for Lockwood & Co. as a Junior Field Operative, tackling spectral Visitors of every horrific shape and size. Broken necks didn't bother me the way they used to. "What?" I said. "Where did he come from?"

There was a rasp of Velcro as Lockwood pulled his rapier clear of his belt. "Doesn't matter. I'll keep an eye on him. You keep watching yours."

I turned back to my position. The original apparition still floated about ten feet or so from the edge of the iron chain. It had been with us for almost five minutes now, and was growing in clarity all the time. I could see the bones on the arms and legs, and the connecting knots of gristle. The wispy edges of the shape had solidified into flecks of rotted clothing: a loose white shirt, dark tattered breeches ending at the knee.

Waves of cold radiated from the ghost. Despite the warm summer night, the dew below the dangling toe bones had frozen into glittering shards of frost.

THE WHISPERING SKULL is the second installment in Stroud's Lockwood & Company series. And if you loved the first book you'll be pleased as punch with this one too.

If you remember, in THE SCREAMING STAIRCASE we were left with a hint that George's Skull in a Jar wasn't done talking with Lucy. And indeed, in this book he does play a fuller role. And in fact we find out who the skull belongs to. Not that he dominates the story in any sense, but the skull becomes an active player, as does a very peculiar Flo Bones.

Flo --who Lucy describes as a grubby, shambling figure -- is a relic-woman who works the shores of the Thames looking for bits of haunted material that she can sell. She is one of Lockwood's informants.  She joins the cast of familiars which include Quill Kipp and the rest of the Fittes crew. 

I swung the rapier up.

The mouth gaped, the sockets flared with greenish fire. With terrible speed, it flung itself forward. I screamed, jumped back. The ghost collided with the barrier a few inches from my face. A bang, a splash of ectoplasm.  Burning flecks rained down on the muddy grass outside the circle.

Now the pale figure was ten feet further back, quivering and steaming.

"Watch it, Lucy," George said. "You just stepped on my head."

Lockwood's voice was hard and anxious. "What happened? What just happened back there?"

I'm fine," I said. "He attacked, but the iron drove him off. If he does it again, I'll use a flare."

The whispering skull might whisper but the item that is the center of a massive hunt is a mysterious black glass mirror housed in a casing of bone. Haunted bone, of course. And this mirror has been missing since the night Bickerstaff was forced to look into it. He died that night and the be-robed parties that waited expectantly to find out what he saw, fled. Some went home or abroad, while some merely went mad.  

And when the mirror once again comes to light, DEPRAC sends Kipps and his Fittes team, and Lockwood and Company searching for it.

I didn't find THE WHISPERING SKULL quite as tension fraught as the first book. I suppose this might be due to the fact that I'm more convinced of the team's abilities. The writing, of course, is excellent and the world totally convincing and believable.

Highly recommend this series.

Pam~


The Whispering Skull
(Lockwood and Company #2)
(Disney/Hyperion)
by Jonathan Stroud

Reading Information:
Word Count: 105,585
Page Count:  400
Accelerated Reader: 5.2 / points: 16.0
AR quiz: 168794
Lexile: 670L
--sample pages and reviews available

See the Review and Reading info for THE SCREAMING STAIRCASE

updated December 2014