Grounded for All Eternity
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- £6.49
Publisher Description
A group of kids from hell come to Earth on one of the craziest nights of the year—Halloween—in this “entertaining, high-octane” (Kirkus Reviews) middle grade adventure about teamwork, friendship, shattering expectations, and understanding the world (or otherworld) around us.
Malachi and his friends are just your regular average kids from hell. The suburbs that is, not the fiery pit part. But when Hell’s Bells ring out—signaling that a soul has escaped from one of the eternal circles, Mal and his friends can’t help but take the opportunity for a little adventure.
Before they know it, they’ve somehow slipped through the veil and found themselves in the middle of Salem, Massachusetts, on Halloween night. And what’s even worse, they’ve managed to bring the escaped soul with them! As the essence of one of history’s greatest manipulators gains power by shifting the balance on Earth, Mal and his squad-mates—along with some new friends that they meet along the way—work desperately to trap the escapee, save the people of Earth from the forces of evil, and find the portal back to their own dimension.
If they can’t manage it before their parents realize they’re gone, they’ll be grounded for an eternity. And an eternity in hell is a very, very long time.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Dark fantasy collides with Dante-esque imagery in debut author Marks's nail-biting occult adventure, in which a fateful act of rebellion strands an adolescent group of literal hell's angels on Earth. In the infernal suburbs, black-winged middle schooler Malachi is on a school holiday before following in his parents' footsteps and becoming a "power"—a guardian of damned souls held in one of nine Dante-inspired circles. But vacation is rendered boring when an especially dangerous soul, puritan minister Samuel Parris—who acted as a ringleader during the Salem witch trials—escapes from hell's eighth circle (which houses manipulators), resulting in a lockdown. After stumbling through a thin interdimensional veil on Samhain, Mal, along with close friends and fellow fledgling powers Crowley and Lilith, become stuck in Salem, Mass., having unknowingly let another party—Parris—through the veil. Already simmering tensions heighten as the group test their training and friendship, desperate to return Parris to his prison and frantically navigating hell's bureaucracy in search of a way home. Though characterizations can be thinly rendered, a breakneck plot, rousing fight scenes, and light romance drive this action-forward fantasy with a unique premise. Characters read as white. Ages 8–12.
