Teen Fiction Review: The Black (Morpheus Road)

 If you’ve read this blog for any length of time, you know that D.J. MacHale’s Pendragon series is one of my all-time favorites for middle-grade and teen readers.  He’s following up that 10-book success with a new series for teens called Morpheus Road.  Last summer, my son and I read the first book, The Light, and a few weeks ago we both read Book 2, The Black.  It’s a scary, suspenseful story sure to please fans of supernatural thrillers.

Interestingly, Book 2 tells the same story as Book 1, but from a different character’s perspective.  That may sound repetitive, but it isn’t: it worked for Orson Scott Card with Ender’s Game and Ender’s Shadow, and it works here for D.J. MacHale.  Book 1, The Light, was written from Marshall Seaver’s perspective, about how his best friend, Cooper Foley, had mysteriously disappeared.  At the end of the book, Marshall found out what happened to Coop (and no, I’m not going to tell you!).

The Black takes place during the same timeline, but it is Coop’s own story of what was happening to him, as Marshall and Coop’s family searched for him.  It reminded me in some ways of Pendragon, with an ordinary teen boy at its center who suddenly finds himself responsible for the fate of the universe.  It is exciting and fast-paced like Pendragon, too, with plenty of plot twists.  The Morpheus Road series, though, deals with ghost stories, something D.J. MacHale knows well from his TV writing career.  I really don’t want to say much more about it because I don’t want to give away its many secrets and surprises, but if you like action-packed supernatural adventures, you’ll love Morpheus Road.

405 pages, Aladdin