Rage of Aquarius (Zodiac Chillers) (Paperback)

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Editorial Reviews

From School Library Journal

Grade 6-10-Eight friends stand at the edge of a high cliff, about to jump into the ocean on a lark. Becky is terrified and doesn't want to give in to the intense pressure to join in, but she's pulled over against her will and dies. Then, one by one, friends receive notes in her handwriting before they die in freak accidents. The survivors suspect that she is getting revenge from "beyond," but in the end it turns out that Brad, Becky's boyfriend, has orchestrated everything. This first book in a new series is not distinguished in any way. The characters are bland, the plot is predictable, and even ardent fans of the horror genre will be disappointed.
Jacqueline Rose, Lake Oswego Public Library, OR
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Product Description

One by one, grieving and guilty teenagers find themselves slowly dying to be with their dead friend Becky, who reluctantly took up one of their dares, and lost her life as a consequence.

Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 9-12
  
• Paperback: 169 pages
• Publisher: Random House Books for Young Readers; Sprinter ed edition (July 25, 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 067987304X
• ISBN-13: 978-0679873044
• Product Dimensions: 6.8 x 4.1 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 0.3 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,709,633 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An excellent cliff- hanger, hard to put down!, August 16, 1998

By A Customer

A young girl and her friends thrill seek and jump off a cliff. The girl struggles and lands twisted on the rocks below. Her friends land safely in the roaring ocean below. Her death is mourned greatly but soon after strange notes are found written in her handwriting. They portray her friends death. Her love of astrology is seen in the notes by her star sign at the bottom.The friends die in the ways she tells of.Is she bringing them to her? At first they believe it is her killing them but is it? Who else would be cruel enough to throw a boy up against live wires? With a great plot and twists at every corner the killer isn't known until the very end! Enjoy reading it, I certainly did.

5.0 out of 5 stars " . . . Trish's body slammed against a tree trunk on the other side of the street, she was way past screaming.", November 23, 2009

By	Mark Louis Baumgart (Ortonville, MI USA) - See all my reviews

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And so my fascination with Carol Ellis' work continues. This is the first Ellis novel that I have read where the supernatural is featured. Or is it?

Alex, Brad, Diane, E. J., Trish, Tony, and Kara are spending the summer together and they decide to do a group dive off of a cliff into the ocean, but they want their friend Becky to jump with them. Becky is afraid of heights and doesn't want to do it, but she bows to group pressure, jumps, and drowns. Six months later while the survivors are going through some of Becky's stuff, Diane gets a strange and cryptic note that seems to be written in Becky's handwriting and uses Becky's Aquarius Zodiac sign as her signature. Diane is the first of Becky's friends to feel wrath of this suddenly appearing mysterious stalker. Unfortunately, Diane has just had quite a blowout with her boyfriend Alex, and it is he who immediately comes under suspicion from Kara as the culprit behind her "accident".

Then one-by-one each member of the group of friends start getting notes and one-by-one they start to feel the vengeance of their mysterious stalker. Yet, nobody but Kara seems to think that there is nothing but coincidences behind the sudden rash of accidents.

One problem that I had with "Rage Of Aquarius" was that like all of the novels of hers that I've read there seems to be a noticeable absence of adults to be found. C'mon, people are dying, and there are no police, and no parents take any part of what is going on with their kids, even though some of them ARE dying. Another thing is that except for two or three of the teens, none of the characterss have any real depth.

Still, the fact that Ellis is writing for another company than Scholastic seems to have freed her up to write a more gritty teen suspense story than the other novels of hers that I have read. The violence here is more graphic, and there is more of it as a very large cast gets whittled down to a very few, and the violence doesn't happen off stage. We are all witnesses to the character's demise. A good thing that Ellis' does, and does well, in "Rage Of Aquarius'" is that its story takes place over a period of just a few days. Ellis uses this short period of time to keep building the suspense, and keep you reading.

With "Rage Of Aquarius" Ellis juggles several characters around in the beginning of the novel so we aren't sure as to who the main character is until about the halfway mark. As she is doing this, we are never sure as to whom to root for, again, a good way to keep the suspense high. Ellis had a brief flurry of creativity in the nineties, and then her novels stopped appearing. If she is still writing then she is doing it under another name.

"Rage Of Aquarius" is billed as being a supernatural horror novel, but is it? Ellis tosses the whole supernatural angle back and forth to us throughout the whole novel. So, right up to the end we are not quite sure if Becky's ghost is stalking the teens, or if it is somebody else. Ellis is a slick and clever writer, and she tells her story very well, and I wanted to keep reading and turning the pages. The whole Zodiac thing is basically just a gimmick, and it really doesn't play much into the book's plotline. Unlike her Scholastic publisher, not only does "Rage Of Aquarius" have a very good piece of cover art, but the artist, Bill Schmidt, is actually given credit this time around.

All-in-all, Carol Ellis has turned out one her better novels here, and "Rage Of Aquarius" is fun and well worth tracking down to read.