The Boy Who Couldn't Die [Hardcover]

William Sleator (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 1, 2004

Sixteen-year-old Ken lost his best friend in a plane crash and now he wants to be invulnerable - to accident, attack and death. He finds a psychic who claims she can make him immortal for 50 USD - if he will give up his soul. He agrees, but then realizes that the psychic may be exacting a more sinister payment.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Young teens will rejoice at this just-for-fun creepy adventure by William Sleator, one more in a long line of such stories going back to his classic sci-fi novels, House of Stairs, and Interstellar Pig. Here he shifts from science fiction to horror, with a plot based on Hollywood-style voodoo lore. When seventeen-year-old Ken's best friend Roger dies in a plane crash, Ken suddenly realizes that he too could die at any moment. Terrified, he seeks out a plump, middle-aged psychic named Cherie Buttercup, who grants him invulnerability from death in exchange for his soul. Eager to test his new powers, Ken talks his family into a vacation in the Caribbean, where he can swim with sharks. There he is entranced with Sabine, a young scuba instructor, and shares his story with her. When Ken begins to have vivid dreams of secret murders, he and Sabine realize that Cherie Buttercup is using his soul as a zombie to do her will. But the dreams also give clues as to where his soul is hidden--so the pair set out to retrieve it. Breathless action is leavened with the unconscious humor of typical Sleator touches in which preposterous fantasy collides with the details of reality, only adding to the fun. (ages 10 to 14) --Patty Campbell

From School Library Journal

Grade 7-9-After his best friend dies in a plane crash, 16-year-old Ken Pritchard keeps thinking of a folktale about a monster that hid his soul, ensuring eternal life. Determined to avoid death himself, Ken finds a woman who removes his soul from his body. At first he is pleased; as in the folktale, he gains physical invulnerability, along with a respite from his misery. But, as readers will suspect from the many creepy details Ken willfully ignores, the rest of the folktale comes true as well. The woman is a zombie master, and he has become a modern-day monster partially under her control. Ken's increasingly desperate first-person narration, as he struggles to find his hidden soul and escape the zombie master's ever more brutal commands, makes for a gripping read. Particularly well rendered are the scuba-diving scenes in the shark-infested waters of the Caribbean and under the thick ice on a wintry Adirondack lake. Sleator spends little time on the spiritual or emotional consequences of Ken's transformation, and characterization is secondary to plot development, but teenaged horror fans won't mind. From the photo of a just-unearthed skull on its cover to the plot twist in its final pages, this fast-paced, suspenseful book will appeal to reluctant and avid readers alike.-Beth Wright, Fletcher Free Library, Burlington, VT
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Product Details

• Hardcover: 174 pages
• Publisher: Harry N. Abrams; First Edition edition (March 1, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0810948249
• ISBN-13: 978-0810948242
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.4 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (17 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,698,137 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars THe boy who couldn't die, March 6, 2005

By 

Marg000 "Margo K" (FL) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Boy Who Couldn't Die (Hardcover)

The boy who couldn't die is one of the most interesting books I've read in a long time. With so many things going on at once, you can't be more satisfied with a fiction book. Im not in favor of Science fiction type books, but this one was in the top five on my list. It all starts out with the main character Ken. After his best friend Roger died in a plane crash, Ken simply decided he didn't want to die. Cheri Buttercup, a "Practitioner of rare art" is the one who Ken believes can do the job. Hesitating, he finally pitches in for fifty bucks. After the treatment, he feels different, and is ready to fight the world, or for the world to fight him. He wants to test his invulnerability by getting beat up, which he doesn't get hurt at all, and for his final test. He wants to go to St.Calao in the Caribbean, were the only thing to do is Scuba Dive. He found out someone died form a shark attack there, and he wants to put him self to the test and also keep his parents safe. He there meets a girl, Sabine. At fist he doesn't like her, but then as time goes on, he is on the verge of being madly in love with her. After these realistic dreams Ken had been having, he tells Sabine, and she tells him that Cheri Buttercup turned into a zombie. She is actually an evil voodoo soul stealer person. There are two kinds of these Zombie priests, according to Sabine, and The only thing to save him from his realistic dreams, which are really happening, and his soul is starting to do some horrible things, that he can't control is to get his soul back. When he goes to Cheri Buttercup to get his soul for fifty more dollars, she charges fifty thousand, and he can't afford that! From there the tale gets more serious and fun. All these strange things happen to him and Sabine that will make you want more. It's worth it all the way to the end. I could seriously not put this book down. William Sleator is a genius writer, and I will certainly be looking into other books of his for hopefully more thrill and excitement.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Short Tale About Death and the Lack Thereof, March 3, 2005

By 

Christopher "chrysaetos" (Wengen-en-esprit) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Boy Who Couldn't Die (Hardcover)

I haven't read a Sleator book in decades, and I thought it would be fun to pick up a copy of his latest work. I am older with a lot more reading experience than I used to have, so I was aware of what I was getting into: Young Adult fiction. The writing would be unsophisticated, the tale slow in pace, etc.

Boy was I wrong! Sleator writes as well as I remember, throwing in larger, everyday-sort of words that will improve a young reader's vocabulary. There isn't enough room in a short book to expand character development into something deep, but that's okay. Sleator does a great job of keeping our hero down-to-earth, funny, and even romantic.

Unfortunately, our hero also falls into a breed of characters that I am finding more frequently in today's books: wealthy. Like Stephen Coonts's "Saucer" books, the main character can essentially afford anything he wants. This ultimately gives a 16 year old the ability to have an adventure typical of an adult. But without this adventure, there would be no book.

Sleator's writing is incredible and straight-forward. And what a coincidence: chapter 13 is one of the most tense and frightening in the book, and I made the mistake of reading it at 3 in the morning. And I had to go to the restroom and was a little anxious about walking around in the dark, to say the least.

This means one thing: Sleator can write a very frightening book if he wanted to, one that keeps the suspense above "unbearable" for any length of time. I hope in the future he writes a larger story for his adult fans.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Mesmerizing, May 27, 2008

By 

Class of 08 (New York, NY) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Boy Who Couldn't Die (Paperback)

Ever wonder how it would feel to anything in the world. To be like a super hero like in the comics and never die when you do something dangerous. Well William Sleater is a guy that writes magnificent science fiction, horrors, mystery and other wonderful books that is so mesmerizing. His books come with so many trills that will make your body shiver.


Ken is a kid that lost his best friend (Roger) in a plane accident. Ken then starts to worry about himself dieing in such a horrible accident. That is when he finds a woman (Cheri Buttercup) who says that she can make him invulnerable to pain and death for a very cheap price. But when he finds out what has to happen, then he would have to choose between feeling pain and death or if he wouldn't want to die. Once he decides on what to do, he then tests it out. He tries to get fight and beat up the school bully, he notices that he can't get burned, and when he takes a little vacation he wants to do something even more dangerous and that is to...



William Sleater writes some of the best young adult books you could ever imagine. It is so detailed and William Sleater describes how the character is feeling really well and what is going through their minds. Here is a quote from the boy who couldn't die. . "I'm lying in some kind of box, and I'm paralyzed, I can't move an arm, a leg, a finger. I have no voice, because my breathing is so shallow it's like I'm hardly aware of breathing at all. I feel very cold. My temperature is so far below normal that if I weren't paralyzed I'd be shivering uncontrollably. I have the digestion sensation that bugs are crawling under my skin, but I can't move to scratch. And then everything goes black when they fit a cover onto the box." This is the things that William Sleater writes, it's amazing.