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The Haunting of Alaizabel Cray Paperback – 17 May 2002

by Chris Wooding (Author), Edward Miller (Illustrator)

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It happened after the Vernichtung-the war left the city damaged, bruised, battered, its people shattered and battle-scarred, and open to a terrifying retribution...Foul things lurk within the labyrinth of the Old Quarter, and those who venture out a night are easy prey. Prey for the wolves and murderers that stalk the crooked streets, and for creatures far more deadly-the wych-kin. But evil diguised is deadliest of all. And behind the facade of wealth and charity that surrounds the uppermost levels of society lies a terrifying pact with the wych-kin that threatens humankind's very existence. At the heart is the beautiful, vulnerable, enigmatic Alaizabel Cray-key to the ultimate evil. Chris Wooding weaves an utterly compelling story set against a vividly imagined cityscape. You will be drawn irresistibly into its cobbled lanes, where the darkness awaits.

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Product details

Paperback : 352 pages
ISBN-10 : 0439994527
ISBN-13 : 978-0439994521
Product Dimensions : 12.9 x 2.3 x 19.8 cm
Publisher : Scholastic; New edition (17 May 2002)
Language: : English

Best-sellers rank 1,183,345 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
2,647 in Horror for Young Adults
5,089 in Horror & Ghost Stories for Children
10,324 in Fantasy Fiction About Wizards & Witches for Young Adults

Customer reviews:
55 ratings

Product description

Synopsis

It happened after the Vernichtung-the war left the city damaged, bruised, battered, its people shattered and battle-scarred, and open to a terrifying retribution...Foul things lurk within the labyrinth of the Old Quarter, and those who venture out a night are easy prey. Prey for the wolves and murderers that stalk the crooked streets, and for creatures far more deadly-the wych-kin. But evil diguised is deadliest of all. And behind the facade of wealth and charity that surrounds the uppermost levels of society lies a terrifying pact with the wych-kin that threatens humankind's very existence. At the heart is the beautiful, vulnerable, enigmatic Alaizabel Cray-key to the ultimate evil. Chris Wooding weaves an utterly compelling story set against a vividly imagined cityscape. You will be drawn irresistibly into its cobbled lanes, where the darkness awaits.

Customer reviews

5 star		88%
4 star		5%
3 star		7%
2 star 0% (0%)		0%
1 star 0% (0%)		0%

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Irresistably dark, exciting, and fed my thirst for supernatural fiction perfectly

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 20 March 2016

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As a new fan of Chris Wooding I jumped into this book excited to lap up some more of his folklore inspired writing. I was not dissapointed. The story is irresistably dark, exciting, and fed my thirst for supernatural fiction perfectly. Highly recommended!

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Elainedeastolat

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 10 December 2013

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This is a great read. Chris Wooding is a brilliant, imaginative author with excellent skills.

The story is victoriana steam punk set in an alternative reality. Reminiscent of Neil Gaimen in style but certainly not an immitation, just simply a great example of the genre.

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Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 8 January 2013

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Very enjoyable supernatural story, based in an alternate steam punk Victorian London. Stands up no matter the reader's age, I first read it as part of a class assignment in secondary school and purchased recently after remembering and found it just as enjoyable.

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Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 20 July 2013

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Really incredibly well written and exciting story from the first to the last page. Hopefully Wooding will revisit these characters for another adventure. Fantastic book.

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Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 30 December 2013

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Bought second-hand, in reasonable condition, and the story has gradually been more and more appreciated by its 18 year-old reader.

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Great reading, totally absorbing...

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 15 September 2013

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This book is definitely worth curling up in bed to read and recommending to others, currently awaiting next book in series...

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Belle Armstrong

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 1 November 2014

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This book is so imaginative and uses great vocabulary, great for kids my age (13+) as it expands your vocabulary and is a great lengthy story that grips you from the first chapter! Also if you enjoyed this get chris wooding's book called poison this was also amazing.

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Fantastic work of fiction

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 17 April 2015

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Fantastic work of fiction. A bit frightening and with quite complex language for younger readers but definitely recommend to any young people (or adults) interested in historical horror.

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Top reviews from other countries

sweetkary

Many In One

Reviewed in the United States on 10 January 2020

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The condition of the book was prefect, thank you! I first read this book back in high school for English class. Back then I did not like to read and didn't really read much. Despite all that, this book helped me to be more open to read books with other genres than what I was normally used to read. It has horror, fantasy/sci fi and a bit of romance. I loved it back then and for some reason I still have this story in my mind more than 10 years after reading it, so I purchased it as a gift for my little brother, who's not really little and is in high school now. Although the English in this book is a bit different, it took me a few pages to get into it and I had a harder time understanding certain words, I still loved it and couldn't stop reading once I got the hang of it. It was like a full movie that left my mind satisfied at the end.

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Matthew T. Carpenter

Many touches and overtones near and dear to Lovecraft's heart

Reviewed in the United States on 14 May 2008

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My perspective for this review will be the interest this book holds for a dedicated Lovecraftian. I first heard about The Haunting of Alaizabel Cray in a post on a Cthulhu discussion board, where it was described as "mythos related." Funny, it has been around since 2001 as far as I can tell, and somehow I missed it. Maybe the tag `young adult' turned me off. At any rate, my curiosity was roused and I got a used copy for < $5.00, including shipping. Copyright was 2001, and my copy was by Scholastic Point, a decent trade MMPB from 2005. The cover photo depicted an out of focus London skyline, and was by Francosco Hidalgo. No wow factor for me. The interior art, however, had a mystical sigil or medallion that had a very Lovecraftian looking beasty before each major section of the book. Too bad they were all the same! I would have liked more; it was also unclear to me who did it.

I think this was a really good book. In fact I don't think the YA label applies; it has broad appeal to horror fans. Maybe it should be YA so that very young teens and children won't see it. Maybe that's a good thing considering the violence and references to drug use and prostitutes. I read more graphic stuff, however, when I started delving into Howard and Lovecraft etc about age 12-13. Now the question that gets to be more problematic is, is it a `mythos' novel. I guess it is all a matter of semantics and frame of reference. Can anyone really say for certain? We all have our opinions. For me, an obvious Cthulhu mythos novel refers to or depends on in, in some important way to the story, some entity or alien, or occult/eldritch device/tome that has been used or is intended to be included in HPL's Yog Sothothery by the ever widening Lovecraft Circle. Just mentioning a name or two won't cut it for me. Just because A Darkness Inbred mentions the name of Nyarlathotep doesn't make it mythos, not when this entity was in no way important to the story except (in my opinion) as a marketing device. Michael Slade's (a pseudonym I know) Ghoul is about some psychos who were influenced by HPL's books and used some of his names for their band. Not a mythos novel (actually just a schlocky piece of crap). Otherwise we have to include King's Needful Things where one character sees some graffiti `Yog Sothoth Rules' and is very disturbed by it. In this sense, THOAC is not really a Cthulhu mythos novel. On the other hand, it may very well be thought of as Lovecraftian. That is, it uses plot devices and thematic elements near and dear to the Old Gent's heart, without using his critters or any tomes from the Eldritch Library. Perhaps the more literary minded among us would say THOAC was heavily influenced by HPL and his circle. I dunno; did HPL originate the idea of inimical things outside our dimension yearning to break through to ravage the earth, or was he just our favorite exponent of these concepts? Whatever, if you like fiction with a Lovecraftian bent, you should like this book.

The setting of THOAC is London about the time when the ravages of the industrial age were just starting to be felt with pollution and toxic fog, about the time when Jack the Ripper stalked his victims (he doesn't make an appearance here, except in spirit...). I didn't do any web based research so I could be way off base; feel free to correct me. I guess around the time of the 1870 Franco Prussian War, England and Germany got into a dispute, and Germany sent airships, dirigibles, to bomb the city. England was forced to capitulate against the superior might of the Germans, and the center of the city was left a decaying ruin. Around this time London started to be infested by creatures out of nightmare, the wych-kin. Wooding's London is a grim and dirty place; the downtrodden would have been familiar to Dickens. That is, if Dickens' London had roving packs of wolves, blood sucking cradle robbers and ghouls. None of these wych-kin are mythos creatures exactly, although there are the Draug, the Drowned Folk. When the Draug approach all is dark. The air becomes as cold as the depths of the sea and stinks of salt; their steps are wet and sloppy, and sound liked webbed feet. Not a big stretch to compare to the Deep Ones! No one knows how the wych-kin originated, but with painful experience, a profession of sorts has emerged over the years: the wych hunters, people who chase these creatures into the Old Quarter where they lurk. Weapons include pistols, charms, wards, silver and chants. Wych hunters go loaded for bear because no one can tell what charm or ward might be best for a new sort of wych-kin. We meet Thaniel Fox, son of the greatest wych hunter London ever new, and his tutor, now partner, Cathaline Bennett. While stalking a cradle jack, Thaniel comes across and shelters a young woman, Alaizabel Cray. She turns out to have a tattoo she knew nothing about, a grotesque many tentacled thing (hmmm....image sound familiar?) we eventually learn is called the chackh'morg. Alaizabel is possessed by the spirit of an old wych, shades of Asenath Waite. In this setting, however, the wych did not transfer her spirit into Alaizabel, rather, a shadowy conspiracy known as The Fraternity effected the transfer by means of the tattoo and wychcraft. Unexpectedly, Alaizabel has somehow had the strength of character to resist. About the same time, London is being stalked by a serial killer who slices up his victims. He wears a tattered mask and a wig, and is known as Stitch-face. Detective Carver is heading the long standing investigation to track down Stitch-face and notices something. Stitch-face has a home range he never hunts outside of. Now there are even more extravagant murders being perpetrated around London. He is mapping them in his office and a pattern is starting to emerge, that of a many tentacled thing...It turns out, using a copycat technique to Stitch-face (who is not at all appreciative of having his work imitated), the Fraternity is performing some dire wychcraft. They want to open a portal into London. Our intrepid band, and a few others, are unable to prevent the completion of the murderous pattern of the chackh'morg and the first step of this summoning which releases a permanent twilight and a swarm of wych-kin upon a desperate city , but they may be able to forestall the opening of the gate. The latter half of the book details their harrowing attempt to do this. What follows is some more Lovecraftian imagery. In the Old Quarter, concealed somehow by wychcraft for years, the Fraternity has erected a cathedral of sorts, described as "it was part castle, part church, part temple; a thing beyond the power of all but the world's most insane architects to conceive." To me this echoes the geometry of R'lyeh, although the setting is not the South Pacific, and it appears to have been built by men (may I again urgently recommend perhaps the best modern mythos story, Final Draft by Annandale from Dead But Dreaming; my other contender is A Colder War by Stross). The Fraternity is inside; amidst the chaotic destruction in London they are attempting to allow their gods, the Glau Meska, to access our dimensions. It is not clear exactly what their reward is to be. Perhaps like Cthulhu cultists they will be eaten last? What are the Glau Meska is left deliberately nebulous but here is a vision one character has: "...vast loping things a kilometer high or more lumbered half-seen...;things that should not exist rose from the ocean and sent tidal waves to destroy man's cities; babies would be born with gills, their little digits webbed and atrocious." Now that is Lovecraftian imagery! I've put in enough spoilers so I will not mention how the book ends and what is resolved. One more thing, however, to show this is not so much mythos is that the origin of the wych-kin has more to do with Forbidden Planet than with extradimensional shambling.

So is it Cthulhu mythos? I would say not, as there is no mention of any of specific Great Old Ones, and the wych-kin are more or less conventional, like non-Lovecraftian ghouls. Also their origin is distinctly not mythosish. There is no use of the Elder Sign, no consultation of specific eldritch tomes. Just my opinion! But is it Lovecraftian? You bet! This was a corking good read, with living and breathing characters, an fiendishly intricate plot, thrilling suspense and tautly written action scenes. Characterizations are deftly drawn (although the one caricature was the American wych-hunter...figures) I was thoroughly entertained and will seek out more works by Mr. Wooding. I think anyone who reads Lovecraftian fiction would really like this book.

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Silence

Here there be monsters . . .

Reviewed in the United States on 28 January 2010

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If Alice's rabbit hole swallowed London, meshed with Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere, dallied with 18th century sensational fiction in a steampunk blender, and was retold with precise, elegant prose-it might be a little like this:
Set in an alternate Victorian London, The Haunting of Alaizabel Cray is the story of 17 year old Thaniel Fox-a wych-hunter, son of the greatest hunter of all time. Thaniel is heroic and gentlemanly-a rarity in "modern" fiction, as well as intelligent and resourceful. Wych-kin, a generic term for nightmarish, familiar creatures, are running rampant in the West End of London. Thaniel is hunting one when he is attacked by a crazed girl. He takes her home to his friend and mentor of sorts, Cathaline Bennet (a great character in her own right). Discovering the girl's identity-and its significance, plunges Thaniel and Cathaline into a whirlwind of danger, death, and epic intrigue. Secret societies, vibrant side characters, and constant peril make this one to read far into the night.

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Maggie

AWESOME!!!

Reviewed in the United States on 25 November 2018

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One of my most favorite books of all time! Full of suspense, kept me on the edge of my seat, intriguing, a little bit of humor, a little bit of everything!

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Zaltair

I love author Christ Wooding

Reviewed in the United States on 23 June 2015

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I love author Christ Wooding. His stories winds through unexpected turns around every page. His style is beautiful, as especially seen in The Haunting of Alaizabel Cray. This haunting tale will leave you looking around in the dark for the monsters that he brings to life through his vivid descriptions. Make sure you have a night light!!

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