Spirit Week, by Ira Marcks

    If you are a fan of scary books or the horror genre, it's possible that you've heard of author Stephen King. He's not an author for kids or teens, but older teens sometime read his stories anyway (hopefully with some parent permission). They are intense, scary, well-written...he may be the King of Horror!

    One of King's most famous books is called The Shining. It takes place in the mountains of Colorado outside of a tourist town called Estes Park. The book I am reviewing here today, Spirit Week, also takes place at a hotel in the mountains of Colorado, outside of Estes Park. Spirit Week is about a possibly haunted hotel where a famous but older author of horror stories lives. One young photographer has been invited to create a film about the hotel, and along the way his trip to Estes Park has other people involved.

    Spirit Week is well drawn, but I found the storyline difficult to follow. The first part of the story is clearly a reference to Stephen King and The Shining, and I even checked the author's notes at the back of the book about half way through reading it to see what Marcks had to say about these references - I thought maybe Marcks had written a graphic novel tribute, of sorts, to The Shining or King. I was "horrified" to find no reference or mention at all...really?!? The second half of the book was not The Shining, but I'm not really sure what it was. On one page the characters were outside in the snow at the hotel, and the next page they were going into a mine. The storyline tried to make sense of this sort of transition, but it did not work for me. By the time I had less than 75 pages to read, I just wanted to finish the book so I could start another one. That is not a good sign, or the sign of a good book.

    I give Spirit Week 3 paws, and that is a little generous...I did enjoy the artwork. But using someone else's story as your own, to the degree that Marcks did, should require some mention or reference to the book and author being written about. In all, not a terrible graphic novel, but there are far too any great graphic novels out there for you to spend a lot of time on this one. Darn.