Stone by Finbar Hawkins
I would like to thank Ana from Zephyr for an advance copy of this novel in exchange for fair and honest review
Publisher – Zephyr – Head of Zeus
Published – Out Now
Price – £14.99 hardback £4.79 Kindle eBook
When Sam, grieving the death of his father, finds a silver-flecked stone, ice-cold to the touch, strange and eerie things begin to happen. Myth, legend, magic and witchcraft mingle on the ancient hillside where the chalk white horse has galloped for centuries. Ravens wheel. Wolves prowl. As Halloween draws close, witches dance. Odin gathers brave, fallen warriors to his side.
Only the mysterious new girl, Oona, can heal Sam's heart, revealing tarot secrets with her bewitching ways. For 12+.
Being a teenager there are always going to be so many firsts to navigate. Rebelling against your family; first love and our first encounter with death. Few of us have to deal with the death of a parent at that age but to experience such an event and how that would impact a teenager is the subject explored in Finbar Hawkins’ emotionally powered YA fantasy Stone. This is the subject delicately handled and I think very successfully with an exploration of the power of myth too.
Sam has just lost his father who was a soldier in Afghanistan and his family is bracing itself for the funeral. At the same time a new girl at school named Oona keeps crossing his path while his worst school bully has taken even greater interest in making his life a misery. But Sam finds a strange smooth white stone that appears to give him strength and speed; he seems haunted by the ravens and wolves that his Dad’s favourite mythic god often told him tales about. Are the worlds touching? Sam needs to work out this mystery to help his future.
What struck me the most of this story is I found Hawkins really captures the feelings of being a teenage boy. The strange mix of awkwardness, frustration, bewilderment, and stress of discovering that this world is so much more complex than you ever realised. Sam our narrator feels amazingly normal but at the same time his explanation of the shock, pain, and anger that grief and also guilt causes is extremely well delivered. It is also refreshingly a story where Sam learns the benefit of actually talking about his problems be it with his best friend, Oona, his sister and also a grief counsellor. There is a really solid and refreshingly non-adversarial relationship with his sister Beth and a compelling bonding with a pensioner also in pain named Bill – a reminder that death impacts everyone in hard ways. These human relationships really worked for me and gave Sam a very low key but very important arc to navigate.
In terms of plot, we have a human and a more fantastical storyline overlapping. We explore the closeness of Sam’s relationship with his father and start to understand why Sam feels so terrible about what has happened. But alongside this is the mysterious stone and the area that he lives near with a long history of magic suggests some form of thinning of worlds and time zones is in the offing. Very subtly we have the potential magic of the area and also Nordic legend that suggest something is aiding Sam for some unknown purpose. You could easily read this as just Sam’s trauma having a psychological impact on his imagination but I’m always on the side of the magic. There is no magical reset button but this ultimately a story about acceptance and moving on.
Stone was a really enjoyable and powerful read with relatable characters and a delicate handing of a serious subject. A strong reminder YA Fantasy covers so many stories and can cover a large range of emotional topics some that adult fantasy still tends to steer way clear of. Stone is well worth a look.
