Gothic horror for children. Bellairs was one of my favorite authors when I was a kid, but this is my first time reading this particular book. The problem with reading Bellairs as an adult is that it seems unbelievable when the characters don't seem to learn anything from book to book - Johnny gets a bad feeling about something and they all brush it off every time, and yet every time this happens, something terrible follows. No lessons are learned. But this was one of the things that was great about reading these books as a kid. It didn't matter that the characters followed the same pattern every time, because that's why you were reading the books. Something bad would happen involving wizards or witches or magicians or ghosts or curses or some other vague occult something, it would be scary, but you knew it would be okay in the end. One thing I appreciate about Bellairs is that none of his characters are conventionally attractive in the slightest. Most of them are described in pretty unattractive terms, including the heroes of the story. Professor Childermass is "short and elderly and crabby-looking, with wildly sprouting muttonchop whiskers, gold-rimmed glasses, and a nose that looked like an overripe strawberry." Whereas Johnny is shy, nerdy, and nearly friendless; and Fergie is "a gangly, droopy-faced kid with big ears and a blunt-ended nose." No handsome heroes here. I think it made the characters more relate-able for me when I was a kid.
Kindle Unlimited Free Trial | I think Bellairs missed a great opportunity in this one: (view spoiler)[when Johnny asked why his eyes would have been used to hurt grampa, the response was about how useful a near-sighted robot would be. Since the robot would look like Johnny, Sloane would be able to send it into Johnny's house unsuspected, able to make grampa suffer apparently at Johnny's hands. Then, conceivably, show grampa that this wasn't his grandson, just Johnny's eyes, which would break grampa. Why ignore that in a book willing to talk about kidnapping, removing living eyes without anesthetic, and murder, in favor of "a near-sighted robot is easier to control"? (hide spoiler)]
Do You like book The Eyes Of The Killer Robot (1998)?
Wow, that Red Sox-Yankees rivalry gets people to do some crazy, crazy things, like reassembling a potentially deadly demonic pitching machine.Which, rather coincidentally, resembles Curt Schilling. (No, that is definitely not what the author intended, considering the date of publication, but it is amusing.)
—Meril
