Malice: Are you chickin'?

Tall Jake take me away, Tall Jake Take me away, Tall Ja..(cough, cough). The smoke gets me every time. I’m really not scared about ending up in Malice, it just that this whole burning things insid,e makes me choke every time and can never finish. Fortunately for Tall Jake, many kids don’t have that problem, Malice is one of those places where you get there by doing a little ritual and saying “Tall Jake take me away” six times (then wait around for creepy Tall Jake to whisk you away to the fun little place we call Malice).  Malice is also the name of a crazy comic book about Tall Jake and the kids that he takes. Of course, this is all just a big rumor and not really true at all (I have never seen this comic book). None of the kids really believe it to be true until Kady’s and Seth’s friend Luke disappears and a copy of Malice is found in his room with blank pages. Seth can’t let it go and things get weird for Kady after they begin to dig deeper into a story of a kid who recently reappeared after having gone missing and can’t remember anything about where he was. When Luke fails to reappear, Kady and Seth set out to find answers to connect Malice with the missing kids.

This book is mostly a regular novel but contains portions of graphic novel as we see pages of the comic Malice. The format works great for the book and I found myself pushing forward to get to the next graphic novel portion. It wasn’t an incredibly scary book but it did have that eerie feel at parts, as it kicked me back to the looking in the mirror in the dark with a candle and saying “Bloody Mary, Bloody Mary, Bloody Mary.” It’s that whole thing of knowing it shouldn’t be true but scared that it might be. Tall Jake and Malice exist in this realm of rumor/myth. The idea was original and pretty intense all the way through. There is plenty of intense action and originality in this story and it kept me going. Did I mention that the hardcover book has an awesome 3D cover with Tall Jake on the front that drew everyone in who saw it? Well, It does, and it’s definitely cool. This is an everyone book that will leave you saying, “Tall Jake take me away.” (I think I only managed to say “Tall Jake take me away” four times, eeeeee, five times. That was close I almost said, “Tall Jake take me away” six times while this stupid concoction was still burning. Oh my gosh, what was that scratching. Momma?)