THUNDERLAND

Thunderland
by Brandon Massey
352 pages
ISBN: 0-7582-0247-4 (Paperback)
Dafina Books
1998, 2002
$ 6.99 paperback

Thunderland is a place where the imaginative companion of your youth, Mr. Magic, assists you with your every want and desire. Does this sound like some place you would like to go? Jason Brooks finds that this companion even gives the dream gift for him on his birthday, only Jason didn’t tell anyone human about his wish. It just happened.

Jason is a fourteen-year-old boy who comes from a very dysfunctional family. His parents are still married to each other, however, his mother is a recovering alcoholic and his father is a workaholic. The parents are not involved in any facet of this child’s life which I find to be very disturbing. They seldom know who he is with, where he is, and what he is doing. Jason is a loner except for two new friends, Shorty and Brain, who he basically lives with during the summer events of this book.

When Jason has an unusual accident where he falls from a tree and is in a coma for three days, apparently part of his memory suffered during this time. He then begins to have horrifying nightmares that cause him to hide under his bed in the fetal position.

From the nightmares this dream explodes into a horror that Jason never expected. He is wise enough though, even as a fourteen-year-old boy, to be careful as to what he wishes for, he just might get it, and not necessarily in the way he would have planned. As his wishes turn in nightmares, the horror throughout this novel becomes chilling.

In the words of Mr. Magic, “Consider this, Jason: What have your parents ever done for you? For almost all of your life, they’ve ignored you, neglected you, broken promises they’ve made to you, beat you, cursed you, in nearly every imaginable fashion have clearly shown that they don’t care about you and, least of all, love you. Haven’t they? Yes, they have. By their heartless acts, they forced you to withdraw into your bedroom, into books, into music, into yourself, into me. Yes, me. I exist because of your parents’ abandonment of you. You created me, and I made your private hell bearable, I gave you laughter, joy, excitement, acceptance. Even when you grew older, when you reached the age at which most children cast away imaginary playmates, you stayed with me, didn’t you? You stay with me because I was your true friend. Because I would make you happy when no one else cared to try. Because I was always there for you. Because I loved you. I have said this before, Jason, and I shall say it once more: we are part of each other, inseparable; the link we share is unbreakable. If you turn your back on me, you will, in effect, be turning your back on your own soul.”

So what does Jason do to rid himself of this obsessively clinging creature? Read this horrifying book only if you are not a teen-aged boy or the parent of a teen-aged boy.

The world Mr. Magic creates is surrounded with torrential rain and thunder. That’s the origin of Thunderland. Once you are a part of it, how do you get out of it?

This is definitely a psychotic thriller with the supernatural. With Thunderland being Mr. Massey’s first novel, his next could prove to be interesting. Dark Corner, his second novel, was published last month.

Brandon Massey was born in Chicago and currently lives in Atlanta. He originally self-published Thunderland which was his debut novel. Mr. Massey is a winner of the Golden Pen Award for African-American Authors. With slight revisions to the original novel, Kensington Publishing, printed this book in December 2002.