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White Space: Book One of The Dark Passages Hardcover – February 11, 2014
Seventeen-year-old Emma Lindsay has problems: a head full of metal, no parents, a crazy artist for a guardian whom a stroke has turned into a vegetable, and all those times when she blinks away, dropping into other lives so ghostly and surreal it's as if the story of her life bleeds into theirs. But one thing Emma has never doubted is that she's real.
Then she writes "White Space," a story about these kids stranded in a spooky house during a blizzard.
Unfortunately, "White Space" turns out to be a dead ringer for part of an unfinished novel by a long-dead writer. The manuscript, which she's never seen, is a loopy Matrix meets Inkheart story in which characters fall out of different books and jump off the page. Thing is, when Emma blinks, she might be doing the same and, before long, she's dropped into the very story she thought she'd written. Trapped in a weird, snow-choked valley, Emma meets other kids with dark secrets and strange abilities: Eric, Casey, Bode, Rima, and a very special little girl, Lizzie. What they discover is that they--and Emma--may be nothing more than characters written into being from an alternative universe for a very specific purpose.
Now what they must uncover is why they've been brought to this place--a world between the lines where parallel realities are created and destroyed and nightmares are written--before someone pens their end.
- Print length560 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherEgmontUSA
- Publication dateFebruary 11, 2014
- Grade level9 and up
- Reading age14 - 18 years
- Dimensions5.71 x 1.82 x 8.61 inches
- ISBN-101606844199
- ISBN-13978-1606844199
- Lexile measureHL770L
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Review
"One of the marks of a classic horror story is the slow and insidious shifting of the rules within the tale's universe. Bick understands the power of this trope and uses it relentlessly in this sophisticated horror novel for older teens. A brilliant five-year-old watches her novelist father call horrors from a powerful mirror. A high school junior with static-filled gaps in her memory pens a horror tale, one that had already been written decades ago. A psychically gifted girl accepts a ride from a troubled but sweet boy. A marine and his younger brother head out on snowmobiles after accidentally killing their abusive father. Fleeing their separate nightmares, the cast assembles in a fog-bound, snow-filled valley from which there seems to be no escape. Lovecraft-inspired monsters inflict gruesome deaths and time and space are unreliable in this mind-bending narrative. Slowly, it's revealed that no one is quite who they thought they were, and the boundaries of this universe are definitely falling apart. Continuous references to fictional time and space travelers (The Matrix's Neo, A Wrinkle in Time's Meg Murray) add intricacy, leading characters to wonder if they themselves are made up. Bick is a master of the genre, balancing tension, terror, and tedium through repetition and fractured storytelling. White Space is filled with echoes of other horror stories, but the author manages to hold on to her own narrative voice, playing on readers' expectations through a series of reveals, some just predictable enough to inspire a false sense of security. The first of a series, it also can stand alone." ―School Library Journal
(Journal)5Q 5P J S
"When Frank McDermott's young daughter, Lizzie, overhears a conversation between her parents about Frank's unfinished works, she is frightened; when she sneaks from the house to the barn where he works, she witnesses horrific events involving a transformation of her father into a monster. When her mother burns the barn down and leaves with Lizzie, readers meet Emma, the other main character. Emma's professor, Kramer, threatens to fail her because she plagiarized (or did she?) the famous writer Frank McDermott's work. But Emma never read the book, so where did her thoughts come from? Are Emma's thoughts and ideas coming from within her, from her blackouts―called 'blinks'―that take her into alternate worlds? Emma meets a series of other characters: Eric and Casey, brothers who have escaped an abusive father by shooting him; Rima, whose mother is an alcoholic who tried to kill her; Bode and Chad, who are enlisted in the Army; and Tania, who is really Anita. All the characters try to escape monsters and other horrifying creatures unleashed from the white space, and Lizzie eventually shows Emma how to pull her own stories from white space, which is a blank page waiting to be written with symbols and ideas.
"Emma is the thread that binds the entire story together and uses a cynosure as a way to focus and show the way for all the characters to follow to escape the horrors. The characters are well written, the descriptions of the horrors they witness are blood curling, and the end is a shocker. She has lived through a difficult experience, and her mind is helping her escape it. This is a fascinating, intricate story with multiple threads running through it. It is a combination of mystery, science fiction, and horror―an exciting page-turner. Readers will devour it and want the next book immediately." ―starred, The Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books
(Journal)There is a crazy lady living in Lizzie's attic. It is quite clear to her that the crazy lady is something out of her Dad's writings. When Lizzie catches her father metamorphosing into a demon-like creature, Lizzie's mother sets the barn ablaze destroying the writings and her father. Years later Emma Lindsay submits for class the story about kids stranded in a spooky house during a blizzard. Unfortunately, it is the unfinished manuscript written by Frank McDermott. No one has seen the unfinished manuscript since Frank McDermott's murder. Emma begins to question her reality; her life begins to parallel McDermott's storyline. Maybe she is one of his characters released from his pages. Chapters are written in voices of each of the central characters and go back and forth in time. Readers will be captivated by the entwined storylines and eerie mystery in this first book of The Dark Passages series." ―Library Media Connection
(Journal)About the Author
From the Trade Paperback edition.
Product details
- Publisher : EgmontUSA (February 11, 2014)
- Language : English
- Hardcover : 560 pages
- ISBN-10 : 1606844199
- ISBN-13 : 978-1606844199
- Reading age : 14 - 18 years
- Lexile measure : HL770L
- Grade level : 9 and up
- Item Weight : 1.55 pounds
- Dimensions : 5.71 x 1.82 x 8.61 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #3,735,592 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- Customer Reviews:
About the author
Ilsa J. Bick is a child psychiatrist, as well as a film scholar, surgeon wannabe, former Air Force major—and an award-winning, best-selling author of dozens of short stories and novels. (Really, no one is more shocked about this than she...unless you talk to her mother.)
Ilsa's work spans established universes such as Star Trek, Battletech, Battlecorps, Mechwarrior Dark Age, and Shadowrun while her original novels include such critically acclaimed and award-winning books as The ASHES Trilogy, Drowning Instinct, The Sin-Eater’s Confession, and Draw the Dark. The first novel in her DARK PASSAGES series, White Space, was long-listed for the Stoker, and the concluding volume of the series, The Dickens Mirror, is now out in paperback.
Most recently, Ilsa’s proud to be included in the launch of New York Times best-selling author Elle James’s BROTHERHOOD PROTECTORS Amazon Kindle Worlds Series. Ilsa’s book, SOLDIER’S HEART: PART ONE, will be available June 8, 2017 to be followed by Part Two (September 7, 2017) and Part Three (January 11, 2018), with two additional BroPro titles to follow in 2018.
Ilsa will also be debuting in New York Times best-selling author Susan Stoker’s SPECIAL FORCES: OPERATION ALPHA (March, 2018).
Currently a cheesehead-in-exile, Ilsa lives in Alabama with the husband and several furry creatures. On occasion, she even feeds them.
Drop by for a visit at www.ilsajbick.com and check out her Friday’s Cocktails and Sunday’s Cakes and other assorted effluvia on Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/ilsa.j.bick and https://www.facebook.com/ilsajbickauthor/ ), Twitter (@ilsajbick), and Instagram (@ilsajbick).
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Can't wait for the next book in the series!
Characters appear out of nowhere and one must constantly try to glean (from little to no information) what they are doing in the story. In similar books, if the writing is sufficiently compelling or the narrative begins, at some point, to become a story, the reader may choose to continue reading and hope that matters clear up. In this instance, there was lots of running around but little clarity even at the conclusion. I found much of the characters' activity, as in the gratuitously drawn out and ultimately pointless to-and-fro of the characters at the accident scene, to be simply boring. I struggled to keep reading as they dug themselves out of snow drifts and wandered around, trying to figure out (as I was) what was happening and why. The occasional foray into teenage romantic angst signified nothing but the writer's probable realization that her readers may have become tired at being led round in circles.
Although the author references various classics in this genre in an apparent attempt to suggest that her book belongs on the same shelf, the writing has no resonance and is merely competent. Although I wouldn't argue about what made-up category it belongs in, my husband places such books into the "Some Stuff Happened" category.
I wanted to like it, but in the end it was awful. Now I'm kind of hesitant to read any other books by the same author.