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    The Vengeance of the Witch-Finder
    The Vengeance of the Witch-Finder
    The Vengeance of the Witch-Finder
    Audiobook3 hours

    The Vengeance of the Witch-Finder

    Written by John Bellairs and Brad Strickland

    Narrated by George Guidall

    3.5/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    Something evil has taken over. Lewis Barnavelt and his uncle are in England, visiting a cousin at Barnavelt Manor. Lewis quickly becomes friends with the housekeeper's son, and as the two boys explore a garden maze, Lewis accidentally unleashes demonic forces that summon the ghost of an evil wizard bent on destroying his entire family. Can Lewis fight the maniacal wizard, or will all the Barnavelts perish?
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRecorded Books, Inc.
    Release dateMar 30, 2018
    ISBN9781501983283
    The Vengeance of the Witch-Finder
    Author

    John Bellairs

    John Bellairs is beloved as a master of Gothic young adult novels and fantasies. His series about the adventures of Lewis Barnavelt and his uncle Jonathan, which includes The House with a Clock in Its Walls, is a classic. He also wrote a series of novels featuring the character Johnny Dixon. Among the titles in that series are The Curse of the Blue Figurine; The Mummy, the Will, and the Crypt; and The Spell of the Sorcerer’s Skull. His stand-alone novel The Face in the Frost is also regarded as a fantasy classic, and among his earlier works are St. Fidgeta and Other Parodies and The Pedant and the Shuffly. Bellairs was a prolific writer, publishing more than a dozen novels before his untimely death in 1991.

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    Reviews for The Vengeance of the Witch-Finder

    3.5/5

    53 ratings3 reviews

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    • 4/5
      The Vengeance of the Witch-Finder has Lewis Barnavelt and his Uncle Jonathan take a trip to Europe. Their first stop is London, England where we get reacquainted with Lewis' ability to deduce logical conclusions from a few clues when a bobby (policeman) helps him figure out where 122B Baker Street would have been located in pre-World War II (which was fairly recent in the book's fictional history) London. Later, that same bobby will come to the rescue even though Lewis and Jonathan are in the countryside, but that's getting ahead of the events.Vengeance is similar to The Ghost in the Mirror, which preceded this novel, in that the young person and the adult are alone together on a trip which proves to be more dangerous than either expected. In Ghost, the pair were Rose Rita Pottinger and Mrs. Zimmerman. The action in the two books happens concurrently over a single summer's vacation.One great aspect of the two books is that each one introduces children to culture they might not be familiar with. The England Lewis visits is not the England of Harry Potter, but a traditional tourist destination filled trip with destinations like the Tower of London.But Lewis is a curious boy who makes friends with his cousin's housekeeper's son, Bertie, who is blind. Bertie, who knows the grounds of Barnavelt Manor intimately, despite his handicap, enjoys showing Lewis around, while introducing Lewis to what it is like to be blind. Most fascinating to the boys is the maze in front of the manor. Note that this book was published four years before JK Rowling published Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire because the maze becomes a central part of the conflict the boys have to deal with on their own, much in the same way Harry and Cedric Diggory have to navigate a maze in Goblet. Lewis and Bertie, though, end up releasing an evil spirit once conjured and used by a notorious Puritan witch-finder, Malachiah Pruitt, who had tried to financially ruin Lewis' far removed cousin, Martin Christian Barnavelt--an act that set up the family's future financial difficulties that extend to post-war Pelham Barnavelt's current money problems.The evil spirit is able to bring Pruitt back to life and both proceed to mesmerize Cousin Pelly and Bertie's mother, and taking Uncle Jonathan prisoner. On their own, Lewis and Bertie have to try to save their families and get rid of the evil trying to claim Barnavelt Manor.Clever Lewis wins the day in a surprisingly clever way with a little mental magic of his own.
    • 5/5
      Lewis Branavelt and Uncle Jonathan Barnavelt are in England to visit their cousin at the family estate, Barnavelt Manor. An exciting trip to learn more about the family history and see where Sherlock Holmes once roamed.

      At the Manor, Lewis meets his Cousin Pelly and also becomes friends with the housekeeper's son Bertram. Even though Bertram has bad eyesight, he knows the property like the back of his hand and plays tour guide for Lewis.

      While exploring the maze, the two boys accidently unleash a demonice force that takes over the property and the people on it. A force that summons Malachiah Pruitt's ghost, a witch hunter from the 1600s and he is out for vengeance.

      Will Lewis be able to banish the witch hunter or will the witch hunter banish the Barnavelts?

      An enjoyable read with plenty of action.
    • 3/5
      When John Bellairs died, he left two half-finished books and outlines for two more. Brad Strickland completed all four books, and one of the results of those efforts is The Vengeance of the Witch-Finder. The story is part of the Lewis Barnaveldt series, and one which actually features Lewis (as opposed to the ones that feature his friend Rose Rita as the protagonist).One oddity of the series is that Lewis, teamed with his uncle Jonathan Barnaveldt and Rose Rita, teamed with the Barnaveldt's neighbor Mrs. Zimmerman seem to alternate in solving the various mystical mysteries featured in the books, but don't seem to work all together very often - almost as if Bellairs and Strickland had decided they needed an all-boy team and and all-girl team to feature but that the two sexes should be kept apart whenever possible.Lewis and his uncle Jonathan are traveling through Europe, interrupting their visits to tourist sites to visit Barnaveldt Manor, the home of their distant English cousins. While there, Lewis gets to poking around the manor, and with the help of the housekeeper's son, accidentally releases something that would have been better left undisturbed. Like many youthful protagonists, Lewis decides against telling any adults about the brewing trouble, and he and his uncle leave to continue their tour of Europe.Weeks later, Lewis and Jonathan return to Barnaveldt Manor, and find that what Lewis released was the spirit of an evil witch-finder who was alive during the English Civil War, and who wants to put all the Barnaveldt's on trial for witchcraft. The witch-finder was, of course, a practicioner of magic himself who dabbled in dark magic, unlike kindly Jonathan (who is a wizard, but only practiced good magic). Lewis outsmarts the evil spirit, and all ends well.The story seems a bit thinner than the works that Bellairs wrote when he was alive. The mystery itself is fine, but there is less material focused in on developing Lewis, Jonathan, and the other characters than in previous works. That may be at least partially due to the constraints Strickland worked under to complete an unfinished work, but it makes the book seem somehow incomplete. There is a little thrown in about Lewis' travels helping him to transform from an overweight, bookish boy into a "normal" boy who is athletic and plays baseball, but it is really only given cursory attention. It also seems somewhat out of place - earlier books established Lewis as an overweight, unathletic boy, and Rose Rita as a baseball playing tomboy - essentially misfits. And the books also established that this was perfectly okay, even if some people thought less of them for that. Having Lewis transform into a "normal" boy seems to undermine that message to some extent.While not as good as some previous books in this series due to a lack of character development, the mystery is still good, and Lewis (despite some foolish choices here and there) is a sympathetic and enjoyable protagonist.