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| Waiting on Wednesday is a weekly meme, hosted at Breaking the Spine, that spotlights eagerly anticipated upcoming releases. |
I don't believe I've ever participated in Waiting On Wednesday before, but since there are a few upcoming titles on my to-read lists over at Goodreads, I figured I'd give it a go!
My choice for this week is Party Games: A Fear Street Novel by R.L. Stine, which will be released September 30th, 2014 by St. Martin's Griffin. I was totally shocked to see that this book was coming out, considering how many years it's been since there's been a new Fear Street book. (It's been almost a decade, right?)Goodreads has a "teaser premise" up, ostensibly from Stine, which reads:
It’s about girl named Rachel, who Brendan Fear invites along with a bunch of other people to the Fear’s summer house on Fear Island, in the middle of a lake. They’re 17, in high school. It’s Halloween time, and they’re reopening the summerhouse just for this party. Brendan invents games, he loves games, and one by one the guests start getting murdered—every murder is attached to a game. One girl is found all folded up and there’s a note that says, ‘Twister, anyone?’ They’re trapped on an island, and there’s a killer there who wants to kill everyone.
So we've got our Final Girl already, and I assume Brendan's either the LI, the villain, or the obvious red herring (or a combination of such). It sounds vaguely reminiscent of Diane Hoh's The Invitation, in which a group of unpopular kids is invited to the "party of the year" for a humiliating and deadly "game", but more fun... assuming Stine can pull it off.
Now, I'm not the biggest fan of Fear Street. They're sort of a guilty pleasure of mine, though perhaps that's not the word for it; I certainly feel no guilt about reading them... I just don't particularly enjoy them. They're kind of fun in a "this is a cheap, rather tasteless donut, but I like donuts, so I'm going to eat it" sort of way.
...donut metaphors aside, I'm hesitantly looking forward to Party Games. I wouldn't mind seeing the Fear Street series resurrected, but I don't exactly expect the quality to be vastly improved from the 90s stuff. At the very least, though, it should be fun seeing the concept updated for a 2014 audience. Will it be full of modern pop culture references, the way the 80s books were always name-dropping 80s icons? Will there be smartphones and tablets and social networks all over the place instead of private phone lines and VHS tapes and cassettes? I kind of hope not... but I'll be amused to find out.
So, what do you think about Fear Street's resurrection? Good thing? Bad thing? Non-thing? Let me know below!
