This book is full of dead people
–by Michael Pierce
PETER GREEN AND THE UNLIVING ACADEMY by Angelina Allsop. Published November 20, 2018 by TCK Publishing. Photos courtesy of the publisher.
Fourteen-year-old Peter Green can’t remember how he died, nor can he remember anything else about his previous life. He finds himself in Afterlife. More specifically, he’s in Purgatory.
You wouldn’t think it, but there’s a bureaucracy in Purgatory, and Peter quickly learns something that we as adults already know – there’s a form for everything. Once all the preliminary paperwork is completed, Peter begins his life in AfterLife. And what a life it is.
Peter meets all sorts of life forms in Purgatory. Some are human. Others, well, not so much. He finds out he still has to go to school. He gains friends and enemies at the Unliving Academy, and everyone (or everything) he encounters will teach him important lessons.
Still, Peter is troubled by his lack of memories. He can’t remember how he died. He can’t remember who or what he was before he got to Purgatory. As he struggles with this void he learns that all his memories are on file at the school. With the help of some friends he recovers his memories. Once he does this the terrifying circumstances of what happened to him begin to unfold, and Peter has a mission. A mission that he MUST complete.
This is the rollercoaster ride that is PETER GREEN AND THE UNLIVING ACADEMY. Author Angelina Allsop, in her first novel, has given us a cast of memorable, if sometimes terrifying, cast of characters. The plot twists and turns as Peter navigates his way through unfamiliar territory. He comes to AfterLife as an awkward young man. By the end of the story he, and his friends, are fierce warriors.
One of the great things about this book is Angelina Allsop’s description of the characters that Peter encounters in his journey. I appreciated the fact that there are no illustrations in the book, so I was able to visualize my own version of and Peter and the people and creatures with whom he interacts. For me, this is what made this book such a fantastic read.
In the end PETER GREEN AND THE UNLIVING ACADEMY is a story of family, and how family isn’t necessarily someone connected to you by DNA. It’s also a story of trust and friendship, and of sometimes having to recognize the fact that we can’t control events and circumstances. It’s a story about putting others above ourselves.
You can find the book at http://geni.us/petergreenbook1m
TCK Publishing is at www.tckpublishing.com