Ghost Finders has never been my favorite series of Simon R. Green, but with this fourth volume in the series, Spirits from Beyond, the series really picks up. Green delivers with this excellent work of classic, good-old ghost-hunter fun that we’ve come to love from the genre without the book becoming a cliché.
The characters are finally fully developed as their own people in this issue, with their own personalities and problems, and the plot keeps on thickening, providing answers here and there but overall leaving the reader with more questions without becoming annoying.
In Spirits from Beyond, the Carnacki Institute’s boss herself sends out her A-team of J.C. Chance, Melody Chambers, Happy and Kim to deal with what was to be a piece of cake: a haunted inn in the country.
Of course, things are never what they seem and the team gets caught up in a storm — literally — of phenomena they need to deal with if they want to walk out with limbs, life and even soul intact.
I won’t delve further into the plot, because I don’t want to spoil it for anyone. Just let me tell you that if you love the kind of book where ghosts are the big bad and hunting them is key, without it becoming so scary it’ll give you nightmares, then this may be your thing.
Aside from the obvious ghosts and things that go bump in the night, it has character interaction that keeps the story “human” so to speak, fun pop-culture references that make you wonder what the hell the author is up to and one-liners that will make you laugh or at least grin in your seat. All elements that add up to another fine book by Simon Green.
A little advise on the series: If you’ve not started it yet, I would recommend reading this series in the right order or else you will miss out on a lot of fine details.
