Curse of the Bane

The Curse of the Bane

By: Joseph Delaney



Now it's the dark's turn to be afraid The Spook and his apprentice, Thomas Ward, deal with the dark. Together they rid the county of witches, ghosts, and boggarts. But now there's some unfinished business to attend to in Priestown. Deep in the catacombs of the cathedral lurks a creature the Spook has never been able to defeat; a force so evil that the whole county is in danger of being corrupted by its powers. The Bane! As Thomas and the Spook prepare for the battle of their lives, it becomes clear that the Bane isn't their only enemy. The Quisitor has arrived, searching for those who meddle with the dark so he can imprison them--or worse.

I still like the feel of these books, but I wasn't quite in the mood for this one. I try not to use that excuse too often because a good book will always be a good book despite what mood you're in, but I really was not in the mood for this one. That means, all along I was appreciating what was happening and I knew it was exciting, but I couldn't get into it and it took me way too long to read.
(To be fair, I am still kind of in a book-hangover from Crown of Midnight because it was just SO FREAKING AWESOME. That could have something a lot to do with it.)

This was an important book character-wise. A ton of stuff went down with Alice and between the Spook and Tom. While the last book was setting up the world-building for the future this book was definitely setting up the characters for conflict and growth in the future.

The Bane was sufficiently creepy and now I'm worried about Alice going dark-side and everything. We know a whole lot more about Tom's mam. We've seen Tom best some pretty intense creatures that not even the Spook could beat.

I'm going to take short break from this series until I'm more in the mood for it, but I'm excited to see where it goes from here. 

Quotes:

"...and suddenly it felt good to be working with people like that. People who knew what they were doing. We'd all played our part, all done what had to be done as quickly and efficiently as possible. It made me feel good. It made me feel a part of something."
"...and the first step toward knowledge is to accept your own ignorance."

"Most things look better from a distance," he said. "And as a matter of fact, so do most people."