Death Watch

"Death Watch," Ari Berk, is a fantastic novel on death and what it means to live.
       Lichport is a town where the dead outnumber the living.  Amos Umber used to be the town's Undertaker, putting the spirits of the dead to rest and keeping the fragile peace between the world.  Amos Umber went missing while working a year ago, though, and his disappearance has haunted his son, Silas.  Moving into his uncle's house in Lichport, Silas stalks the old, abandoned streets looking for clues to his fathers appearance.  But Silas is no child and the more time he spends looking for his lost father is less time he has to figure out the real problem in Lichport, the one that's got everyone on their toes; a lonely ghost locked in a house, an insane man looking for blood, and the ship wicked that's hovering just beyond the horizon.

You know what's going on forty pages after Silas steps over the threshold and into his uncle's house.  Well, you know the basic premise of what's going to happen, but still.  That's a hundred pages into a (I want to say) 500 page book? Eh.  Could be better.
     Also, Silas is a spoiled brat.  All he thinks about is his 'girlfriend' and his father's disappearance.  Okay, so, maybe he's not a spoiled brat.  But he's pretty self-absorbed.  He is a basically good person and he's selfless when he can see past his own problem.  When Mr. Peale dies he's still wrapped up in his father and he has to do the final rites.  Hello?  Quit worrying.  There's a time for everything.  Eventually, though, I do believe that he learns his lesson.  It's always nice to see a character grow after reading an absurdly long novel.  In my mind, he was cutting an impressive figure by the end, but that might just be my perception and my obsession of good beating evil, good personalities over bad personalities.
     I'm not saying that it's a bad book, though. It's one of those books that can carrying on no matter what mood the protagonist is in.  There isn't a dreadful amount of dialogue; the descriptions of things outweigh the dialogue by far.  The amount of description is like that of C.S. Lewis's, in literary nature, of course.  I've heard some people describe the Narnia books as wordy, and if you can't handle those I don't believe that "Death Watch" is for you.
      But, lo, the descriptions describe something wonderful.  The ghostly worlds jump of the page.  It's phenomenal.  The town of Lichport is as real as any town on the map, sometimes more real.  The closed in lanes of the Narrows; the playground;  the cramped, chaotic, and serene sight of that graveyard that's on the hill that I've gone and forgotten the name of; and (one of my favorite parts) the tea house and the alehouse where the spirits go to forget that they ever lived.  They all played like a little movie in my head, and I believe that I would recognize those places if I ever stumbled across them.
       Also, I love books about death.  I know that's extraordinarily morbid, but I do. Books that bring up theories about what happens to you after you die, books that speculate what the meaning of death is.  This is a book that does both, with an added question: What is death if you've never really lived at all  The question is sort of buried within the many pages, but I agree with it wholeheartedly, or, at least, as much as one can agree with a question.  The book also brings up another interesting concept (yes, this one also has to do with death); the memory of the dead.
       Not the memory of the spirits, but how people remember them.  Silas's mother's grandfather decided not to die, so he's basically a 'zombie' or a corpse with a will.  No, he does not try to eat anyone's brains, sorry for the disappointment.  Mainly, he sleeps.  But, all that aside, Silas's mother's grandfather is a good example of the books theme "Remember the dead," because Silas's mother is afraid of her grandfather. She doesn't want to remember him.  In fact, she moves so she doesn't have to remember him anymore.  This could be in part because he's a corpse, but it also could be a metaphor, and not just about death.  A lot of people are afraid to remember things that are painful to them.
      Also, in the spirit world, spirits try to remember things too.  I think that those souls 'have lost something but have given up on looking for it' but I don't have the book in front of me so I can't check up on the correct wording.  But these souls lost something in their life, and now, upon their death, they've given up looking, but they're still stuck. This could be another metaphor, but about people who are living.
     So, really, the book isn't all about death.  It's about the living and how death affects them.  It has multiple levels, which makes for an enthralling read.  All in all, Silas Umber's story isn't half bad, not half bad at all.  Now, if only he can stay alive long enough to give us more of them.