YA Audio: "Attack of the Fiend" by Joseph Delaney

YA Audio: Attack of the Fiend by Joseph Delaney, 2007, downloaded from Wisconsin Digital Library.

#4 in the series. #3 is not available in audio off the digital library. The absence of that book really chaps my ass. I reserved the eBook version for some damn reason, I'd rather read the print but just finished the eBook a couple days ago.

Thomas, The Spook, and Alice are living at the Spook's home. Thomas and Alice are sent back to Thomas's family farm to bring back the locked trunks Thomas's mother left him. Apparently Tom's mother took off back to Greece in book #3 and left the trunks for him. Thomas's father died in the last novel and his will left the trunks and the room in the farmhouse where the trunks reside. The room is some sorta of special.

Alice and Thomas spend the 1.5-2 days travel to get to the farm that is now owned by his brother, Jack. Tom and Co. find the livestock missing, the barn burned down, the house ransacked, blood on the floor, Jack and family missing, and all the trunks gone. They find out witches raided the farm and took Jack's family to Pendle along with the trunks.

Pendle is a well known witch area. Alice - former witch-in-training - goes to Pendle to snoop and look for Jack and family. Thomas hurries back to the Spook. The Spook was just visited by a Pendle priest - and former apprentice - who told the Spook that the Pendle witch clans have grown stronger and are taking over the area.

Spook and Jack travel to the area. Stay with the Priest. Travel to local magistrate for assistance.  Things happen. The witches are quite strong and a Evil Mutant Dwarf Thing and other witches use mirrors (and mirrored surface to spy on people). Jack and Co. have to get inside a castle the withces now control. There are underground passages, a water monster, feral Lamia witches, a boss witch who controls the magistrate, a murdered priest, so on, so forth.

These are fun stories and move quick. The novels have been getting progressively more violent. Jack and the Spook have been working against more and more violent witches, boggarts, and other magical beings. There is more blood, more dangerous situations, and more cruelty.

Here are some more witchy details:
- Beware women and girls who wear pointy shoes. They are probably witches.
- Witches can persuade people or bind people to them with spells of glamour, fascination and dread.
- There is a cannon in this one. Soldiers are called to use the cannon to breach the castle.
- Witches cannot cross moving water. The Pendle clan have installed wooden damns to lower across a current and let them cross using the stream bed.
- A witch clan is a group of witches. A coven is 13 witches drawn together to cast spells.
- Bladed weapons can kill witches.