Necromancer: A Novella by Lish McBride

Published February 1 2011 by Henry Holt and CO.
ISBN 9781429991902
32 pages
Series? Short Story
Rating: PG
BUY / Nook / Kindle

Matt’s childhood friend, Ashley, has been stopping by a lot lately. That might seem pretty normal, but Ashley died years ago and now she’s Death.

And tonight she wants waffles and fries.

There are three types of books that I am familiar with: the novel, the novella, and the short story. A short story to me is a few chapters long and a full length novel is usually hundreds of pages. A novella is some where between that. That leaves a novella on average ten to fifteen chapters long with a maybe a few less or more. What I downloaded from Barnes and Noble was two chapters. That is a short story. Now that I have that out of the way we can get to the actual story.

Characters. As a short story there was not really that many characters that could play a significant roll in the book. In this case we have Ashley and Matt. I liked both of them and even after I read the two chapters I wished that I could learn more about them. I was especially interested in why Matt could see Ashley even though she had died. There is an attempt at an explanation but it felt either half-hearted or like Ashley did not really want to tell Matt the truth.

Plot. The short summary really gives most of the story away. If I had just read the novella I would have happily stampeded my way toward putting the book that this novella stemmed from on my wish list. However, there was also an excerpt that came with the download. It introduced Samhain (Sowin) and the people that he worked with in a fast food restaurant. I did not like any of them. They were rude and found fun in trying to break the young new guy. The part that was taken out just did not interest me and yet I really liked Ashley. I still want to read Hold Me Closer, Necromancer to see if Ashley is in it but because of my dislike of the people in the excerpt I am less enthusiastic about it and may just wait to see if my local library has the book in stock.

I would recommend that people who enjoyed Hold Me Closer, Necromancer to read this book. Also if you are thinking of reading that book or you are looking for a fast, cheap read this is a good book for you. You don't have to be familiar with the world to read this book because it does explain everything that it needs to enable almost everyone an adequate understanding of what is going on.