Ha! I managed not to buy this book! Although I did just spend a fair amount of money at The Book Table last weekend, so maybe this isn’t quite the victory I want it to be.
I was super excited to read this book. It’s the latest installment in Maureen Johnson’s Shades of London series. The third one ended on a total cliffhanger, so I was dying to get my hands on this one when it came out. I managed to practice enough restraint to wait until my local library got it in and I got it from them.
The Shadow Cabinet picks up right where The Madness Underneath left off. It’s literally, only a minute or two later. At the end of the last book, Stephen has just died, but Rory was holding his hand when he did. Now that Rory is a terminus (which means she can end ghosts on contact), the theory is that, if you’re touching a terminus when you die, it ensures you come back (or stay behind, depending on how you look at it) as a ghost. This theory has only had minimal testing, so they’re not even sure it’s going to work, but Rory definitely feels something when they take Stephen off life support. And she got thrown across the room, which is usually a pretty good indicator that there’s a ghost about.
It didn’t work out quite like they planned. Stephen did not come back to haunt them, but he didn’t quite die, either. His heart stopped beating, but after a day in the morgue, he wasn’t showing any of the usual signs of death: no rigor mortis; no cloudy eyes; none of the usual symptoms morgues are used to seeing. So he gets reclaimed by a doctor who is sort of working for some sort of division of the British secret service. Still with me?
The doctor (Dr. Marigold) takes Stephen back to her place to see if she can revive him, but Jane shows up and hijacks Stephen, Marigold, and Marigold’s house. Jane has also kidnapped Charlotte (Rory’s annoying prefect from Wexford who got Rory to go to Jane for counseling in the first place) and turned her. Charlotte can now see ghosts and is completely devoted to Jane.
I was actually really glad we got to see Jane again. She’s completely batshit, but she is so much fun to read about! At the same time, I was found her end to be deeply satisfying. Somehow it just seemed perfect for her story to end that way.
My new favorite characters are Sid and Sadie. They’re also batshit, but they’re way more scary than Jane could ever be. They’re twins who were born with too much money and they both got the sight at age fifteen. Now they’re on some quest to “defeat death”. We’re not entirely sure what that means, but so far the quest has involved killing at least thirteen people, so it can’t be good.
Sid and Sadie first tried to defeat death back in 1973. Instead, they ended up like Stephen, and Jane has been taking care of them all these years. When she learned Rory was a terminus, Jane manipulated her into performing some sort of ancient ceremony to bring back Sid, Sadie, and Stephen. It worked and now Sid and Sadie are loose in the world, which I’m pretty sure is a really bad thing for the world. I don’t know what they have planned, but the end of the book hinted at the story continuing with these crazy twins. There’s no title for the fourth book that I can find, or even a release date, but I really hope it comes out soon. Not sure how long I can wait …