![]() And yet, despite some of the parallels one can easily make, there is a largely a consistent but individual use of these motifs. The brick wall near Camden Lock giving access to the Ministry is reminiscent of Platform 9¾ at King’s Cross Station from Rowling’s Harry Potter books. The boy who haunts cemeteries recalls Bod from Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book. Ministry of Pandemonium is set in a modern London with a supernatural underground familiar from China Miéville’s Kraken and Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere. Will Ben manage to put off his inquisitive new friend Becky Sanborne before she discovers his unlikely calling? And what is the secret of his mother’s exhaustion and the explanation for his father’s disappearance? It transpires that the Ministry’s job is to locate lost souls and open the door to another world for them before demons gets to them - no easy task given the magnitude of the task. As you might expect from a word coined by Milton for Paradise Lost, this synonym for disorder and chaos simply means “all the demons”. ![]() Through a rather odd stranger, Mr October - whose name conjures up that witching period of Halloween or Samhain, with its feasts of the dead - Ben is introduced to the secret Ministry of Pandemonium. This is Ben Harvester, who is drawn into a world of ghosts and demons and, in the process, discovers the latent abilities he has arising out of that sensitivity, a sensitivity that encompasses both his artistic gifts and his concern for those less well off than himself. In other words, a youngster who fulfils many of the prime requirements for the outsider protagonist of a novel. And a boy whose father has mysteriously disappeared and a mother who is seriously ill. Who finds it hard to make friends when he starts a new school. Who displays extraordinary artistic gifts. Who sees the spirits of the recently departed. And as far as they're concerned, Ben's just chosen the wrong side in a very dangerous war.Ī sensitive boy who frequents graveyards. The ghoulish Lords of Sundown want those spirits for their own sinister reasons. Because the Ministry is not the only organization hunting spirits of the dead. October wants him to be his new recruit.Īs Ben's apprenticeship begins, his eyes are opened to a new world of wonder - a world where magic is real and ghosts haunt every crime scene, accident site, and hospital corridor. October works for the Ministry of Pandemonium, a secret organization responsible for tracking down lost souls and guiding them to the afterlife. October in London's Highgate Cemetery, he has no idea what a strange and dramatic turn his life is about to take. When Ben Harvester meets the mysterious Mr. Ill-mannered spooks and fearsome monsters populate the alternative London of this charming paranormal adventure. A paranormal fantasy-adventure in which death is only the beginning.
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