Book Review- The Call by Peadar O’ Guilin

Title: The Call

Author: Peadar O’Guilin

Published- Aug 2016 by David Fickling Books

One of the great things about working in a library is that you tend to see all of the new books that come in and can take your pick.

However, because there are so many, you can sometimes find that one has passed you by.

On Monday I started work at a new library and, as usual, found myself wandering over to the YA /Teen shelves to see what their stock was like.

To my surprise, delight and chagrin, there were loads of books that I had never even heard of. I made myself a pile of books and began to filter through when one cover in particular caught my eye.

The Call by Peadar O’Guillan.

Synopsis:

Nessa and her friends attend Boyle College to train for the most dangerous times of their lives- the Call.

Without warning each of them will wake in a terrifying land, alone and hunted, with a one-in-ten chance of returning alive.

No one believes Nessa can make it, but she is determined to prove them all wrong. And she will need every ounce of spirit and courage in order to survive…

Review:

It sounded a bit like the Hunger Games and, after flicking through, I realised that, FINALLY, it’s a YA book written in the third person.

I started it on my lunch break and nearly got hit by a car because I couldn’t stop reading it on the way home. So you could say that this book was life-threateningly good.

The synopsis didn’t do it justice at all.

In Ireland the fae are not just a story. They are a menace. The Sidhe were exiled to the Grey Lands decades ago and they take their revenge by calling the children of their captors to them. Only one child in ten makes it back alive. The rest are mutilated beyond all recognition.

Thus came the training colleges, where they surviving members of society do their best to prepare the children for the horror of the Call.

Nessa had polio as a child and has crippled legs as a result. Everyone assumes she will die when called, but Nessa is determined to prove them all wrong.

Summary:

I adored this book. I didn’t realise I had been looking for a YA horror until I read The Call and this was horror done brilliantly.

I wasn’t expecting it to be as graphic and twisted as it was. The descriptions of what the Sidhe were doing to the children was horrifying and the atmosphere of despair and inevitability permeated the whole story, infecting the teachers and students alike.

Each student’s 3 minute Call was scripted wonderfully. It would have been easy for them to get repetitive as there were so many characters but each one was unique in its brutality. The reveal of traitors was genuinely shocking but understandable and, although their suffering could have made you even empathise with the most disagreeable characters, you were removed enough to dislike them just as much.

I appreciated the fact that Nessa’s disability wasn’t glossed over. People made fun of her, it hindered her from doing what she wanted to do. It was a real disability that wasn’t suddenly miraculously cured. It made the book that much more real for me.

Perfect plot, characters with flaws as well as disabilities and an ending I did not see coming at all.

I heard that there is a book two and I am eagerly awaiting it now.