The Twelve-Fingered Boy: The Shibboleth - YA Book Review

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The Shibboleth is the second book in John Hornor Jacobs' The Twelve-Fingered Boy trilogy. You can read my review of The Twelve-Fingered Boy here. If you haven't read the first book, you may want to skip reading this review. I'll try not to spoil anything for you, though.

At the end of the first book, Shreve was back in juvie and Jack was off somewhere with Quincrux. But Quincrux hopes to convince Shreve to leave juvie and come work for him. It takes a fairly violent incident and a stint in a psych hospital to get Shreve into Quincrux's custody, and Shreve isn't really sure that's where he wants to be. But at least he's back with Jack.

Now Shreve is also with something called the Society of Extranaturals, and they're trying to stop this mysterious thing in Maryland that is causing a wave of insomnia across the nation. What is this thing and what does it want? More importantly, how can the Society of Extranaturals and Shreve stop it?

The first half of this book was kind of slow and didn't really hold my attention that much. It was basically all set up for the last half of the book, which was all just set up for the third book, The Conformity, which doesn't come out until 2015.

That said, it was interesting to discover more about the Extranaturals and these powers that Jack and Shreve have. I also thought that the writing style in this book, especially when it was just Shreve on his own, reminded me of Stephen King's series The Dark Tower. But you should know there is quite a bit of violence that could turn off some readers. (The recommended age range is 14-18.)

The Shibboleth is published by Carolrhoda Lab and is available to purchase now. I received a free review copy for my honest review.