Thursday, May 21, 2009

The Hand of Power, or “Give Us a Hand”


Another Fear Street Saga. I have to say, these things grow on you. At first, you’re all – seriously? Bring back R. L. Then you start thinking about them a little bit more, and it’s like: what are they going to throw at me next? This book is really fucked up, and so on. The Hand of Power surely does not disappoint in the wtf arena, no sirree. I hope you enjoy this as much as I do.

A ship at sea, 1624

A ship at sea, eh? Could we be a little more vague about where this story is taking place? Alina Sturdevant is in said ship in the midst of a storm, and nearly falls over the railing before being saved by her studly husband, Niels. She goes down to the cabin for safety’s sake, and thinks about the fire that will always be waiting for her ...

Hudson River Valley, 1664 – Village of Tilburg
What is this Village of Tilburg business? What about the village of Shadyside? Why have a Fier if not in Shadyside? Anyways, Margarete Fier has been kidnapped by some random nasty widow. Not a woman, or a lady, but a widow. Not sure why the necessity in focusing on her marital status. She’s been kidnapped because she has these famous visions where she sees stuff that happened in the past, and this widow’s daughter is missing, so she’s forcing Margarete to have a vision to find out what happened to her. Margarete does have a vision, and is compelled to run out into the woods, to a shallow grave under the trees, where she finds the widow’s daughter. All this time they’re surrounded by villagers carrying pitchforks and torches. Ah, villagers, you’re so cliché. Despite the fact that they MADE Margarete have a vision to find this out, they decide she must have also killed the girl because she knew where she was buried. Btw, that’s super unfair on their part. They decide to burn her on the spot as a murderer, and if not a murderer, at the very least a witch.

Margarete flees the angry villagers, and is rescued by a handsome stranger in the woods, who throws her onto the saddle of his horse and actually whispers (to the horse, presumably): Run. Run, Prince. Run like the wind.” Snort. Who wrote this? Sounds like a cheesy romance novel already. Handsome stranger takes Margarete to the patroon’s house. Um, I don’t know what a patroon is, so I’ll look it up. Patroon, heh. It’s a funny word. Dictionary.com tells me it’s “a person who held an estate in land with certain manorial privileges granted under the old Dutch governments of New York and New Jersey.” That is surprisingly historically accurate. Well done ghost writer, you did your homework. When Margarete sees the patroon’s house, she freaks out and tries to flee once again, because supposedly the patroon’s house is haunted. Surely preferable to being burnt to death, though, right?

Handsome stranger forces her inside, and makes a fire. To warm her, not to burn her. Margarete is just starting to relax when she realizes handsome stranger is less handsome than initially thought, because he has a gross shrivelled hand. She hurts his feelings by being grossed out, and finally decides he’s okay. Handsome stranger reveals he is the patroon, which isn’t a huge surprise because he lives in the patroon’s house, but Margarete is impressed. His name is Peter Sturdevant. Apparently the house isn’t haunted by ghosts, but by the mystery of what happened to Peter’s grandparents, Niels and Alina. Alina was from a Caribbean island, where Niels fell in love with on his way to the New World. She betrayed her people for him, then he murdered her, as the story goes. How’s that for gratitude? Margarete suddenly gets a vision of Alina.

An island in the West Indies, 1624
Alina and Niels are on some vague island, secretly married and pregnant with a love child, which is pretty scandalous by Fear Street standards. Niels is supposed to start a trading colony on the island, and he asks Alina to spy for him so he can conquer her people. So, not asking much, then. They are attacked and separated by some “bird of evil omen” which is like death to look upon, or something. The bird somehow sort of herds Alina to the shaman’s hut on the island. This really didn’t make sense to me, I thought this evil bird was kind of trippy. The shaman makes Alina join in a ritual where the evil bird chooses the shaman’s successor. No one’s surprised when the bird brands Alina, and Alina is pushed into the fire pit.

Hudson River Valley, 1664
Margarete comes to after the vision, and Peter is there being really kind to her. She tells him all about her visions, which I personally would keep to myself with all the “burn the witch” issues going on outside, but Peter vows to protect her forever. The villagers come a-knockin at the door, and Peter goes to deal with the mob with rational arguments. Cause that always works. No one could actually prove the accusations that she’s a witch. And then Peter makes her touch the church key, to see if it burns her, and when it doesn’t, she’s proven to be not a witch. If only the witch trials were all that simple. Peter then accuses the dead girl’s fiancé of killing her, and threatens to lock him in the icehouse. The man babbles out a confession that he did kill her, but please, not the icehouse. (??) Won’t they probably execute him now? Anyways, not my problem. The mob takes fiancé away, and Margarete faints from all the excitement.

She wakes up in Peter’s house, and makes herself pretty for him – ooh, scandalous. Peter asks her to help him find an object of his grandmother’s of great power – he thinks it will help him heal his withered hand. In thinking about this, he gets all angry and violent, then apologizes tenderly, saying that Margarete makes him forget himself, and he’s afraid she’ll make him hurt her. Um, classic abusive relationship in the making. Run, Margarete! Margarete of course immediately falls in love with him, and agrees to stay to help him look.

They confess their love to each other after a week in each other’s company, and kiss passionately. Peter goes to town to get the pastor to marry them. Despite the promise she made to him not to enter the attic without him, she immediately goes to the attic to find the object of power. Hmm, disobeying the potential abusive husband is not a good idea. Margarete finds a trunk she thinks is his grandmother’s, and in the false bottom finds a metal box. Touching it gives her another vision.

An island in the West Indies, 1624
Alina is about to have the power of the shaman passed to her. Shaman calls the spirit of the fire to pass into Alina, which is literally a man made out of fire. Alina finds she can reach into the fire without injury, and pulls a metal box out of the embers. Inside the box is a hand. The story behind the hand of power is the original shaman sacrificed her hand to the fire to get his aid in removing the white man from their land. She got her hand back but it was powerful and evil. She killed all the foreigners, then turned on her own people. The people killed her, but saved the evil hand, just in case someone might need an evil hand. Okay, are you giggling too? The hand can apparently be slipped on like a glove.

Alina puts on the hand, and initially is full of mad-rage-power and is going to kill Niels, but then he reminds her of their scandalous love child. So she turns on the shaman instead, stabbing her in the throat. The shaman curses Alina, as shaman tend to do, as she dies.

Hudson River Valley, 1664
Peter shakes Margarete awake. She tells him she found the object of power, but he should stay away from it as it is evil. Peter tells it to shove it, and is delighted to find the hand of power – a perfect hand to fit over his withered one. Wouldn’t it have been ironic if the hand of power was the same hand as him good hand? That would totally suck. Or maybe he could put the hand on the wrong side, like backwards, but better than nothing? Speculation, because things worked out just fine for Peter. He puts on the evil hand.

And predictably goes insane. It is so painful, he thinks Margarete must be trying to kill him, so she must be “punished.” I warned you about him, Margarete. She manages to get away and locks herself in the attic, which is a fool proof plan. She goes back to the box to finish the vision.

Hudson River Valley, 1624
Alina is in the home Niels built for her (the patroon’s house) with her baby boy, but her hand is still burning all the time and she wonders when the curse will kick in. Niels comes to play with the baby, throwing him around which upsets Alina. She’s so upset she runs into a pitcher of water, spilling it over the hand to her horrific pain. Wait, so she hasn’t had water touch her hand since it was put on? This woman has not washed her hand in MONTHS. She goes into a madness with pain, and turns on Niels. Her evil hand goes after him with a shard of pottery (a deadly weapon). The baby crying brings her out of it, and she tells Niels about her evil hand.

Alina says they must cut the hand from her body and throw it in the river to end the evil. Niels instead wants to use the power of the hand, and locks her in the attic, saying he’ll leave her there until she reconsiders. Alina cuts the hand off with the shard of pottery, which has got to take some dedication to the job. She’s too weak to get the hand into the nearby river, so instead she locks it in the box and hides it in the trunk. She dies from blood loss, because Niels was too late coming to her.

Hudson River Valley, 1664
Margarete comes to, and Peter is on the other side of the attic door, saying he came back to himself and is sorry, so she lets him in – fool! She tells him what happened to his grandparents. Peter takes out his hunting knife and … cuts his evil hand off! It starts crawling around, which is, just, ick. Margarete sticks it with a cane, puts it in the box and throws it in the river. Triumph! Margarete and Peter see the ghosts of Alina and Niels, reunited at last, then they kiss as they are over whelmed with happiness.

Awww … how often does true love conquer all in a Fear Street. Margarete has got to be one of the only Fiers to have a happy ending. This book was fantastically cheesy, from beginning to end. An evil HAND? Genius. It would have been better if the hand acted of its own accord, though, getting into hijinks before it was cut off. Sigh. Oh well, the cheesy love story was enough for me. 7 severed hands out of 9.

18 comments:

Anonymous said...

Not only did true love conquer all, but everyone was evil ''except'' the Fier.

Anonymous said...

Great! Thanks for posting this recap. Now how about doing my two other requests? circle of fire and dance of death.

L. K. Stine said...

The Fier connection seems really tenuous here. Um, also the First Saga book, the Betrayal, begins in 1692 - so this book is set before any of the big Evil stuff happens to the Fiers. So why does Margarete have all these powers? Weak, ghostwriter.

No fear: both Circle of Fire and Dance of Death can be categorized as "Coming Soon"

raspberry swyrl said...

I am super nerd and could have sworn that the Fear family was evil earlier on and thus had to find the saga about it.(you guys reviewed it!) Fear Street Saga number 4! The Sign of Fear! "...and the power through evil will live on through his bloodline." So yah, the family has always been evil, since like 50 C.E. I mean really, Stine and the ghostwriters could have been doing more stuff earlier on if they had really wanted to.

L. K. Stine said...

Ooh, good call, raspberry swyrl. I forgot about the extreme historical fiction.

raspberry swyrl said...

I fill my head with YA fiction trivia instead of you know, school stuff.

I found this when googling fear street...sorta like a book report...

http://io.uwinnipeg.ca/~nodelman/resources/fearstrt.htm

L. K. Stine said...

Haha, that's awesome. I should totally go back to school to study Fear Streets. They totally overlooked the ongoing theme of abusive boyfriends, not to mention the unhealthy obsession with hot dry lips!

Chad Walters said...

That report thing seems very inaccurate to me. For instance, "everyone lives on or near Fear Street"; that's not even accurate just taking the protagonists into consideration, because at least a few of them live in North Hills, across town from Fear Street.

Anonymous said...

They're right on the money about money, though.

A. M. Stine said...

I agree, the report is very inaccurate. I feel like they probably only read 10 or so books. Also: WHY did someone do this?

HelenB said...

Is now a bad time to say that dismembered hands have always scared the bejeesus out of me? There was that movie Idle Hands... and the evil mother's hand in Coraline... sometimes I lie awake at night and I'm certain I can hear a dismembered hand scuttling across the floor.

Anonymous said...

It's probably because they're a lot like giant spiders.

HelenB said...

Yes, but giant spiders can't strangle you in your sleep D:

L. K. Stine said...

Imagine if they COULD, though - worst thing ever

Anonymous said...

Worse, they can crawl in your mouth.

L. K. Stine said...

Well, now I just imagined a disembodied hand crawling into my mouth, and I think that's the worst thought I've had all week.

HelenB said...

Great, now I'm imagining it too.

And that thought is terrifying.

Broken1again said...

kind of sad this series is over now...i really enjoyed all of them...I think I liked these the best since they all are based from early times...but anyways...idk i kept thinking about the phoenix bird from harry potter when reading about the "evil" bird lol....