The Empty Grave

This is my review of the whole series. This thing has no right to be this fantastic. I've read another series by this author, but that was so long ago I barely remember anything about the story. It was good, I gave it 4 stars, so I expected this to be at least somewhat enjoyable. Then I started it. 50 years before the story started, ghosts began popping up and attacking people. Humans being humans, a fight started, first with two young visionaries, Marissa Fittes and Tom Rotwell, who developed their methods of dealing with ghost and figured out ways to protect yourself. Time passed, they, then many others, started agencies that specialised in ghost extermination. But here is the catch. Only kids see them. Once you become 18-19-20, you are effective deaf and blind to them, yet they can kill you just the same. The agencies are still led by adults, but the people working there and doing the fighting are all kids and teenagers. Except at Lockwood & Co. They are all teens. At first I really wasn't sure about the era in which this story played out. The whole situation gives industrial revolution child worker vibes, yet... we get mentions of televisions and dishwashers (the machine kind, not a human servant). So it's obviously a somewhat modern world, one that has huge, glass-and-metal skyscrapers, but no social media and cell phones. To me, that was a surprise. Not sure how anyone else feels. Puts the ‘urban' into urban fantasy. We see a world that is lived-in, the ghost situation is part of everyday life in a way that makes sense. It's not just an extra thing on top, but it has been a thing long enough for generations to have grown up in a different lifestyle. It never gets overexplained, you see enough of it to make sense of how things function. Generally, I am not the biggest fan of teenage girl protagonists. They often go into the smug, better than everyone bullshit territory. She is so special, she just doesn't know. Or she knows, and she feels she can be an asshole to everyone, because she is SPECIAL. And here we have Lucy, who is incredibly relatable. Sometimes, she is not nice. She can be standoffish, judgemental. She doesn't always take direction too well. She can be a slob and bad at talking about her feelings. A person who isn't always showing her most flattering side, but is loyal to her friends, works hard and stands up for the right things. I find it hilarious how we get a million books by female authors with bitchy female characters or downright manic pixie dream girls, yet we have a man who writes the best teenage girl. Fantastic work. When it comes to characters, I always need a concrete explanation why teens do most of the heavy lifting in a story. One of the reasons why I hated [b:Six of Crows 23437156 Six of Crows (Six of Crows, #1) Leigh Bardugo https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1651710803l/23437156.SY75.jpg 42077459] was because it made no sense that the most feared gang was a bunch of kids. Why? Why them? Why did criminals respect their authority? Here I could buy these children being needed. Sure, Lockwood was essentially his own boss, with a teenage group of fellow agents, but it's not like they technically needed any adults. They would have done the jobs anywhere, because they were the ones who could properly sense the ghosts. Talking about fantastic work, a middle grade/YA series that doesn't sacrifice an ounce of quality for being targeted at a younger age range. This is good writing. Doesn't speak down to the reader. The teenage characters are competent without being supernaturally so or without forming a world that pretends they are the be all, end all. Hell, by the end an adult becomes part of the main group! Which is another odd think I normally don't love about books, late additions to the main group. More often than not, we get new characters who are automatically 100% in and the authors (or showrunners) love to try and make us love them just as much as people we've been following for a long time. Here that is part of the plot! That new people bring new dynamics to a group. Someone finally actually understands! It's so good to be proven that I'm not crazy; many authors just ignore this thing. This series is a parade of those clever little things. Great characterisation. A world building that is enough and never infodump-y. Prose that works perfectly with the mood that is created. Incredibly competent, fun and just overall an A+. It's not even that I would recommend it, I have already done it. So yeah, go and pick this up, it's a blast.