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Spirits In The Park (2009)

by Scott Mebus(Favorite Author)

3.92 of 5 Votes: 1

ISBN

0525421483 (ISBN13: 9780525421481)

languge

English

genre

Paranormal Fantasy

publisher

Dutton Juvenile

series

Gods of Manhattan

review 1: Rory and Bridget are back, and so are the bad guys! It's only been a month, but Fritz m'Garoth and his crew have already foiled multiple attempts on Rory's life. It's been 103 degrees in Manhattan all summer, and next thing you know, there's an earthquake--all because the Munsee Indians are still held captive in Central Park by William Kieft's Trap. When Rory enters the Park hoping to run into the cute Indian girl Soka, he uncovers an old wampum necklace that holds the memories of Olathe, an Indian girl who was an eyewitness to Kieft's burying something in the Great Hill at the Park right before springing the tap, and whose husband, Buckongahelas, was killed by Kieft's minion Harry Meester.Nicholas and Alexa of the Rattle Watch are told by a mysterious passing drunk that ... morethe person who knows all about the rift between A. Hamilton and his former allies the Munsees is Harry Meester. Who? The Rattle Watch starts asking around ,and gets immediate results...but not of the kind they want.Accidentally lured into the clutches of an group of sailors who want to press gang him, Rory learns about the power of his spiritmdog, Tucket, who grows to the size of a bear to defend him from the men. He also meets explorers Giovanni de Verranza and god of subways Alfred Ely Beach, and Verranza insists Rory is one of the Tew Boys, notorious pirates who once sailed on a ship with him. Okay, maybe not Rory...but maybe his brother--or dad?Kieft and banking god Tobias have hired famous murderer William Poole to kidnap Rory, and Typhoid Mary to spread her disease to unsuspecting gods, like Walt Whitman, who eat surprise treats she delivers. Rory and Bridget are at a meeting of the Rattle Watch at Dyckman's farmhouse in upper Manhattan when Hessian soldiers attack, Nocholas and Lincoln are wounded, and Rory is nabbed by Bill the Butcher, who's going to take him to Kieft. It's only because Bridget shows back up with her paper-mâché alter ego that the siblings get away...and agree with Alexa that it's time they go into hiding. She brings them to the Stuyvesant farm just in time for them to overhear Mayor Hamilton and his vampire lawyers cronies threaten Nicholas and the others that if they don't lay off the questions about Harry Meester, they'll get sued. A powwow with Hex (aka Aaron Burr) in the Stuyvesant barn lets Rory know that (1) Harry Meester, along with Hex, were the two minions who worked to put together and spring Kieft's trap for the Munsees, and (2) that Harry Meester is also Rory's long-lost father. R&B are taken to Irving Place to hide out with Washington Irving. Upon hearing Olathe's story, he assembles Langston Hughes, Billie Holliday, and George Gershwin to create The Ballad Of Buck And Olathe, which helps ease the feeling against the Munsees. Alexa remembers getting a social invitation from Harry Meester 150 or so years ago, so she goes to see some mutual friends who also might know him. They're at a party at the Waldorf-Astoria (now the Empire State Building) and, after being turned away from the party by the goddess of Society, Simon's relation Mrs. Astor, they find the friends in a hotel room playing cards. They do find out that Harry Meester used to hang out with Abigail Hamilton, the mayor's daughter--also known as Olathe. Soka sends Rory a message to meet her in the Park, and Bridget attends in her paper-mâché body--only to be grabbed by a renegade Munsee with snake tattoos who speaks a curse that makes her paper body start to fall apart. She's rescued just in time by Soka, who uses her own magic, and some chestnut wood obtained locally, to fix the problem...but NOW, because of the wood, Bridget is trapped in the Park too. Rory desperately leaves her there with a reluctant Tucket, the first spirit dog the Munsee have seen in 150 years. Creepy Askook, the snake-tattooed Munsee who cursed her, has a secret deal with Kieft, wherein he works undercover as Kieft's minion, and Kieft sends him magic power through a small hole in the Trap. When the Village elders are considering banishing Soka for helping a "demon", the two girls make a run for Seneca Village, a place where other spirits, who were in the park when the trap closed, live. Here they meet Finn Lee and his grandfather, who guided Olathe up the Great Hill 150 years ago, but then lost her in a freak blizzard. When the sachem Penhawitz came looking for her tai lat year, granddad guided him too, but was attacked by a giant squirrel. This time, Finn Lee will be doing the guiding. Caesar Prince was another of those who engineered the trap in Central Park, and as he sees it getting ready to be breached,, he knows he'll be blamed. So he proposes a deal with Kieft, offering to bring Stuyvesant to his house for a meal, where he'll be given food prepared by Typhoid Mary. Stuyvesant gets sick, and Kieft hires some of the Bowery Boys (who have been running riot dressed as Indians, getting the Anglos all riled up) to finish creating panic by killing Nicholas Stuyvesant. Surprisingly, one of Kieft's lackeys, Mayor Jimmy Walker (god of Looking the Other Way) is tired of Kieft's ramping up for way, which Walker considers to be bad for business and also no fin. So he helps Nicholas and Lincoln escape, even as the Stuyvesant farmhouse burns behind them.In the meantime, Hans the battle roach has tacked down a sailor who once knew Harry Meester, and he tells Rory, Alexa and Simon how the sailer always stopped at Swinbirne Island convent as he was sailing out of town. They go there to find his contact--the mother abbess, who knew him as Morgan Green-- and she tells them that he sailed past on the ghost ship Half Moon not three days ago. They know they have to find him--but before they can leave, they at attacked by Bill the Butcher at the convent, and the abbess herself takes a knife meant for Rory. The crazed killer chases the, all the way onto their boat, and they escape oly by cutting the lines...which then leaves them drifting at the mercy of the tides. Probably not by chance, they are picked up by Captain Kidd, who sails them out into the mist before requiring Rory to make a deal with him: in return for Kidd's help finding the Half Moon, at some future time Rory will have to accompany Kidd on a sea voyage to an undisclosed location. With no other real options, Rory agrees. However, a huge storm comes up, and in it, they find Wampage,adrift in his canoe after having found the last ancient god of his people and collected his Tories in a single blue wampum bead. Wampage uses the stories lodged in the bead as a backup source of wind to drive the ship back to a safe harbor. (In the meantime, Simon has been acting weird, and it's clear that he has one of the lockets of a god who was murdered in the last book--which, if he puts it on, will turn him into the god of Fine China. He saves Rory and Fritz from death at the mast, and his sudden burst of strength and good spirits would be suspicious of anyone were paying attention at that moment.)In the park, after a hair-raising encounter with Askook's pack of giant coyotes, the girls decide to stay the night at McGown's Tavern, which does not make Finn Lee happy. In the tavern, they meet three of Finn's former girlfriends, which eases Bridget's worries about Soka liking Finn better than Rory. War of 1812 troops help,the, escape their pursues at the tavern, and they scale the Great Hill in the face of a blizzard. After an epic battle where Tucket defeats a monstrous bear, they find the cave--devoid of any treasure, but still with Abigail's buried half piece of wampum that will take them Ina straight line to its other half...hopefully still resting with Abigail herself.After the storm, up through the mist appears...the Half Moon! And not only is Harry Meester aboard, but so is Buckongahelas (aka Buck) the "everyone thought you were dead" husband of Olathe/Abigail. Turns out that Harry was in fact a trouble-making minion of Kieft's, but that when ordered to kill his friend Buck, he faked it with a non-lethal shot to the back just as the Trap sprang closed, separating the two of them from the Munsee inside. Harry and Buck have been sailing with pirate crews ever since. Harry has recognized Rory by this point and feels really bad about having bailed on the family, but he'd been discovered by a battle roach and thought that meant the Mayor was on to him and might harm his family--thus giving him no choice but to leave. Rory is pretty disappointed with his dad's caliber, but it is what it is.Soka, Bridget and Finn follow the wampum bead to the Bethesda Fountain in the Park, and discover that Abigail/Olathe is trapped within the bronze angel statue there. And who should step out of the trees next but Pierre Duchamp, Finn's grandfather, whom it turns out had been chasing the Indian girl as she spoke the words that turned her into bronze. He also captured Penhawitz last year when the old man had come looking for Olathe's tail, and has him stashed in a little room under a bridge. Pierre is forcing Soka to tell about the treasure in the cave when someone grabs Bridget from behind and carries her off. Surprise! It's Toy, making his first appearance in Book 2. Turns out Toy has been following her for a long time (maybe he has a crush on the only other paper-mâché being in town!) and helping as best he could--like by dropping a rock on a coyote's head in battle, allowing them to get away. He's accompanied by Sgt. Kiffer, who tells the story, and a rat who gets sent for reinforcements.Turns out that Askook was the one who removed all Kieft's things from the cave long ago, and also the one who fed Pierre stories about the treasure until the old man went crazy for it. Askook also saw Abigail being turned into the Angel all those years ago...but now the Trap is getting ready to come down, and the crazy Injun is getting ready to dispatch Tackapausha too.Nicholas and Lincoln deliver Abigail's wampum beads to Mayor Hamilton, who now learns the real story of what happened to his daughter, rather than the fabricated one of Kieft's devising.
review 2: Spirits in the park is about a boy named Rory Hennessy. Rory is just an average New York kid except for the fact that he can see a hidden world that is right ontop of Manhattan. This world is caled Manhatta, and is home to all the spirits and gods of Manhattan. Many years ago, the Native american tribe that lived on manhatta was locked away into central park by something called the "Trap". It is up to Rory and his sister Brigitte to bring down the Trap before Manhatta, with Manhattan shakes itself to pieces.My connection in this book would be to Rory. Rory has not seen his father for a long time, i may live with my adoptive father, but i dont know who my real father is. I probably wont ever.I give this book five stars. I really like how the author uses imagery in this book. Everything is very descriptive. The author has very good detail skills. less

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