My RSS Feeds
Night Runner by Max Turner
****/5
Zack Thomson isn’t like other teenage boys, and the fact the he calls the mental institution home is just the tip of the iceberg. His parents died when he was little and ever since, Zack suffers from weird, life-threatening allergies. He can’t go out in daylight and he can only stomach a certain kind of strawberry smoothie Nurse Ophelia, luminous goddess of health care, makes for him special. In all, Zack was pretty happy living on the psych ward. It wasn’t like he had to attend school or anything- he could exercise and watch as much TV as he wanted without anybody bothering him. In fact, it never occurred to him to leave until a large man on a motorcycle crashed through the front doors of the hospital saying he was there to break him out. The man didn’t just shatter the front doors of the hospital, he successfully broke through the comfortable cocoon Zack had been living in since the death of his father. With the sudden disappearance of Nurse Ophelia after that night, and the mysterious appearance of his uncle, Zack doesn’t know who to trust. He does know one thing though-he has to get to the bottom of these mysteries, and he’s going to have to leave the loony bin to do it.
Set in sleepy Peterborough,Ontario, Turner serves up a hilarious, rip-roaring twist on the vampire genre. Zack Thomson is a likeable, if not a bit deluded (but, hey, if you were a vampire wouldn’t you go through a denial phase?) character. He rarely has the “right” reaction in crisis situations, making him more believable than those characters who all of a sudden are able to spear an apple in two using a machete from a distance of 50 feet. In fact, Zack is just your normal teenage boy- he is awkward with girls (okay, living in an asylum was not too conducive to flirting) and he’s embarrassed by his condition. Turner is able to weave together an excellent mystery surrounding the death of Zack’s parents and his mysterious condition with a fast-paced adventure as well as a believable coming-of –age story. I recommend this books to aficionados of the vampire novel as well as those who liked the City of Bones series.
