The Midnight Children: The Cemetery House

Description

What do you do when strange things happen around you? The Midnight Children trilogy is a series of dark fantasy novels for children age 8-13 combining Asian mythology and Gothic elements. The characters, ten-year-old Min and twelve-year-old Zak are the main protagonists. In The Midnight Children- Cemetery House, Min and her mother move into Cemetery House with the distasteful Uncle Obb. Zak has been taken to the Moonlight Lands but flees from the oily creatures on a boat. He finds help at a river-side village but is betrayed by a village shaman and is almost trampled by a man-horse. Min, in the meantime, discovers a book and using its magic brings Zak back. They meet Shaz, the shaman, once again in the cemetery and he gives them a magic bottle. After almost being killed by a vampire, Min and Zak learn that their mother is in hospital but, before they can visit her, Uncle Obb locks them in a dog cage so that the oily creatures can kidnap them that night. Zak kills the two oily creatures using the magic bottle but Uncle Obb kidnaps Min at knifepoint and takes her to the Moonlight Lands.

Tunku Halim was born in 1964. He is dubbed as Asia's Stephen King and by delving into Malay myth, legends and folklore, his writing is often regarded as 'World Gothic'. His novel, Dark Demon Rising (1997), was nominated for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award whilst his second novel, Vermillion Eye (2000), is used as a study text in The National University of Singapore's Language and Literature course. He has also won first prize in a Fellowship of Australian Writers' short story competition and has had three consecutive wins in Malaysia's Popular-Star Readers' Choice Awards between 2015 and 2017. His short-story collections include-The Rape of Martha Teoh & Other Chilling Stories (1997), BloodHaze- 15 Chilling Tales (1999), The Woman Who Grew Horns and Other Works (2001), 7 Days to Midnight (2013) and The Rape of Nancy Ng - 13 Nightmares (2018). His other novels include Juriah's Song (2008), Last Breath (2014) and A Malaysian Restaurant in London (2015). His non-fiction books include A Children's History of Malaysia (2003), History of Malaysia-A Children's Encyclopedia (2009) and a biography of his late father, A Prince Called "Charlie" (2018). Tunku Halim's collection of short horror stories, published by Penguin Random House SEA in 2019, Scream to the Shadows, was a best seller in Singapore and Malaysia.