Customer Reviews

The Boy Who Couldn't Die

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

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.

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.

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.

When your best friend dies, life seems to end right then and there. But, Ken doesn't let this happen. He visits a psychic, and for only $50.00, she preformed a "spell" on him that would eventually change his life forever.

I really had a lot of favorite parts in this book. But the best part would have to be when this large guy Toby, tries to beat up Ken after hearing that he is going to take out his ex Kaitlin. But since Ken can't feel pain, to Toby, it feels like punching a brick wall. But soon that night, Ken figures out that his spell in totally not what he expected. And this shows that what you may think is the easy way out, will end up surprising you in the end.

Overall I really liked this book because it shows that everything has its negatives. And either you can chose to handle it or do something about it. Many people, I think, will enjoy this book, especially if you like mystery and thrilling suspense! On a scale from 1-5 stars, I gave I would give this book 4 stars.

An unusual book title, "The Boy Who Couldn't Die", by William Sleator, caught my attention when I first saw it. Not only the title but also a picture of a skull on the cover took my attention too. Before I have even started to read it, I had my expectations highly and the book did not disappointed me at all in any ways. This book was basically about zombies, and one thing I learned about zombies through this book was that not all of them are evil. For example, Sabine, who is a friend of Ken (the main character), helped Ken in every single way to fight off his enemy and she was a zombie herself. This book also had a lot of examples of conflicts. Not only external conflicts with enemy vs. main characters, but also a lot of internal too. When I was reading this, I thought this book would have been easier to read when I studied about conflicts at school. The book I read was okay, but this book was way more interesting. Sometimes during the whole story, Ken had bad dreams about him doing unacceptable and cruel things, which really happened, and the dangers he and Sabine faced gave me something like chills and sometimes it really scared me a little at some scenes. When I was reading, I thought that William Sleator's descriptions were fantastic! I think it was very descriptive enough. Although this was my first time reading one of William Sleator's many books, I think I could enjoy other books he wrote because I really enjoyed this book. I though it was absolutely amazing! And it's been a while since I read books that I really liked and a while since I read a book that was beyond my expectations.

This book was great. The main character ken goes to a sort of phsycic person and she offers him a deal or order for him not to die or feel pain. He would have to give her his soul no matter what the consequences. He accepts and soon realizes he did a terrible mistake. He goes on an adventure to get back what she had taken from him and what she didnt want to give back

I really enjoyed this book. I read it in only two days. This book is a really good mystery/horror/romance kind of book. I started reading it to my mom and she didn't want me to atop reading it to her.

The Boy Who Couldn't Die, by William Sleator, was a great book. It was suspenseful, full of action and romance, as well as a book that you would stay up all night to read. It starts off with the main character, Ken, walking from his house in New York to Cherri Buttercup's, an evil spell caster, house in Queens. He is going to this her house because he saw her ad in the newspaper which said she can take away the risk everyone takes everyday of dieing by making you invulnerable.
After Ken's friend, Roger, died in a plane crash, Ken realized how easy it is for something to go wrong and, so he decides to see Cherri Buttercup. After she makes him invulnerable by taking his soul out of his body. Ken wants to see if it worked so he asks out the girlfriend of the quarterback on the football team. When her boyfriend finds out Ken asked her out, he goes to kill Ken. However, because Ken is invulnerable, he can't hurt him and is embarrassed in front of every kid in the school.
When Ken gets home, his parents tell him that he can pick where they go for vacation this spring break and while looking online for a cool place to go, he finds a site about an island in the Caribbean called St.Calao. The sites say that recently there has been a shark attack there and this makes Ken excited to go there. "What a time to test if I am truly invulnerable and can't be killed," Ken thinks to himself. Ken then finds tickets for a plane and hotel rooms for him and his family.
Once on St.Calao, Ken and his father take lessons on scuba diving. Ken becomes very good friends with one of the instructors, Sabine, who tells him that the drums he hears at night are voodoo ceremonies held by good voodoo priest and there are also bad voodoo priest who study black magic and make people into zombies by saying that they make people invulnerable, just as Cherri Buttercup did to Ken. Ken then realized that Cherri Buttercup was a black magic studying voodoo priest and has made him a zombie and she has control over him at night. Sabine then tells Ken that he must get his soul back or she will always be able to control him at night. Sabine tells Ken that she will help him get his soul back through e-mail.
Ken and Sabine continue to e-mail each other and Sabine tells him what he must do to get his soul back. She tells him that he must find where his soul is held and get it back. Does he get his soul back and stop Cherri Buttercup from controlling him and others or does Cherri Buttercup continue to control people. That's what you must find out for yourself by reading the great book The Boy Who Couldn't Die, by William Sleator. Prepare to stay up all night.

As a fan of the horror genre myself I decided to get this little wonder. Ken is a teenager who goes to a voodoo priestess who claims that she could make him invulnerable to death. After his friend dies from a horrible plane crash Ken's phobia of death has made him go to this priestess and for $50 , Madam Cherri Buttercup, The voodoo priestess would make him death free. But with everything, there is always a catch to it. Ken, yes, he is death free but not what he expected. Now more then ever he is more concerned about the people around him (for when they die, he won't). His friends abandoned him because they had no idea what was going on, he has terrible nightmares, and the success of going out with Kate, his "high-school crush" was not much of a success at all.
Ken goes to St.Caolo with his parents for a vacation; he meets up with a girl named Sabine, and soon he reveals his secret and falls in love with her. The mystery unfolds as Sabine and him try to interpretate his reoccurring nightmares. In his dreams he kills people and does horrible things. What they find out is Cherri Buttercup is controlling Ken's Soul! From that point Ken and Sabine's journey begins in retrieving his soul back, and defeat the evil power of Cherri.
.As an observer of the horror genre the author must nail you right at the beginning, this book does that with no flaw. What I also liked is that William Sleator explained many things in good detail, his writing is fast paced. Before I knew it I was in the middle of the book, when I thought I was still in the begging! Although this novel grabs you in the begging the middle is much slower pace, so you have to keep on reading because you'll lose focus or interest in it quickly. Not only is this book entertaining, but also it is educational in a way. I never thought I learned much about scuba diving, and voodoo until I read this. William must of have that type of experience beforehand.
There are many themes to this book. The main ones I like to point out is life and death. Much like Ken we all have that fear of death. With death on our minds, question like this rise up every once in a while; How am I going to die, is it going to be painful? Where will I go? In many ways people think about death so much that they don't aprecaite the more important thing, life. During the end of this book I think Ken has a more respect of life and death. I think all people should have that. If we did, would we be more caring? Or cautious about things? Who knows? All that I know is that this book gives you that question. But if you are interested PICK UP THIS BOOK! To learn more about William, you can go to this website:



http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/authors/William_Sleator.htm

I've read and loved other works by William Sleator as a kid. I'm now 25 and have recently reread "Singularity," which was significantly better than this book.

On the positive side, the basic plot was interesting. It does a good job of explaining voodoo black magic and exploring what could happen if a teen got involved with it.

Unfortunately, the actions of the characters aren't believable and most of the conversations are strained. It seemed like the author didn't take any time to research how teenagers would have talked or acted in the given situations. The ending was abrupt; I felt like there was one more chapter that didn't get written. Overall, it just felt like there wasn't much effort put into it.

If you'd like to read a book by William Sleator about dark magic, I would suggest you pick up "Blackbriar" rather than "The Boy Who Couldn't Die."