How to Survive Camping: The Lady in Chains by Bonnie Quinn
Another Season at Goat Valley Campground
The Lady in Chains is not in distress. Do not try to help her. It is a trap, and she will kill you.
Campground Manager Kate is back for another season, and it’s not going well. After defeating The Man With No Shadow and retaining control of Goat Valley Campground at the conclusion of the first How to Survive Camping installment, Kate hopes that better times are ahead as winter turns to spring. Spoiler: they aren’t.
The cursed campground is having one of its dreaded bad years. People are killed by supernatural monsters around here on a regular basis but in bad years the death toll climbs to unspeakable levels. Kate is desperate to find who (or what) is responsible for the bad year before SWORD, the campground’s annual summer medieval reenactment festival, begins.
She suspects that the culprits are the Harvesters, one of the most notorious races of monsters in the area. These creepy beings enjoy collecting human body parts. They will slaughter people who refuse to donate a “small” part of themselves (such as a finger or an earlobe). The Harvesters are angry because one of their kind has recently disappeared.
As much as she hates the Harvesters, who killed her aunt when she was a child, Kate realizes that they are not the main reason that the campground is in danger of unimaginable bloodshed.
A mysterious entity called The Lady in Chains is lurking inside the forest. As Kate learns more about this fearsome specter, she discovers a shocking revelation that forces her to confront dark secrets from her family’s past. Kate must battle annoying campers, countless bugs, family dysfunction, and a crafty supernatural being who is a master of deception in order to stay alive and keep her campground running.
Building on the Foundation Set by the First Book
Bonnie Quinn has an endlessly fertile imagination. From unique twists on classic folklore creatures to wholly original creations, she populates her series’ cursed forest with a remarkable variety of monsters. Some of them will be familiar to readers of the first book. The Beast, The Little Girl, the Dancers, and The Lady with Extra Eyes are all back.
So is the enigmatic and mercurial The Man With the Skull Cup, although he’s underused here. The romantic tension between him and Kate is ratcheted up this time, but The Man With No Shadow’s most fascinating monster is relegated to the sidelines for most of this installment. He’s mainly reduced to being used as a deus ex machina when Kate ends up in situations she can’t handle.
I suppose the idea is that he’s secretly stalking Kate and is thus able to conveniently pop up when she gets in trouble, but this still seems a bit sloppy to me. He thankfully does play a key role in a scene at the very end, which suggest a larger role in future installments.
The Lady in Chains benefits from not being burdened by the exposition that filled the first half of its predecessor. With her world established, Quinn is able to get a running start this time. The pacing is improved and the story is more cohesive.
Quinn fills the book with the same fun snarky humor as the first. Her writing style is simple but elegant. This is not a book that will impress people who are looking for something super literary and intellectual, but I don’t think that crowd would be reading a story like this anyway.
Rating
Slightly better than its predecessor in some respects, and a tad weaker in others, The Lady in Chains is another worthy entry in the nascent How to Survive Camping series.
Rating from 1 (avoid at all costs) to 10 (masterpiece): 8.5
