My Swordhand Is Singing by Marcus Sedgwick

Proper Old-Fashioned Vampires
review by Maryom

After many years of travelling, constantly moving from one place to another, Peter and his father have settled at last in the village of Chust. Despite it's picturesque setting with meadows and forests, Peter feels it's a place with something dreadful hanging over it. As the villagers prepare for winter - coating their door and window frames with tar and garlic to keep evil at bay - the feeling increases. Then various villagers start to claim that their dead loved ones have returned from their graves to visit them...


My Swordhand Is Singing takes the reader back to a time when vampires were ghastly, disgusting, half-rotten, half-dead creatures risen from their graves, best avoided at all costs - not the handsome, devilishly-dashing, film-star sort played by Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt - and I think I prefer them this way. It's a wonderfully spooky, creepy, shivers down the spine book. The tension mounts slowly with hints of evil lurking in the forest and the reader just *knows* something appalling is going to happen.

I first discovered Marcus Sedgwick through an audiobook of White Crow which I won on Twitter and found seriously scary. So when I found My Swordhand is Singing in my library I picked it up mainly out of curiosity and loved it so much, I've immediately ordered more by the author. Although aimed at teens, they've the right amount of scariness and horror for me.

Maryom's review - 5 stars
Publisher - Orion
Genre - teenage fiction, horror