Dangerous Wishes ANNOTATION
To end the bad luck that fifteen-year-old Dom and his parents have been experiencing since their arrival in Thailand, Dom and his new friend Lek search for a jade carving that must be returned to its shrine to appease an angry Thai spirit.
FROM THE PUBLISHER
Three years of bad luck have passed since Dom's sister lost a valuable jade necklace on her way to Thailand. When his family travels there, he is determined to recover the necklace and appease the vengeful spirit. When Dom meets Lek, an English-speaking Thai his age, he thinks he's got the solution. But Lek has something with supernatural owers, too -- powers that can be deadly. "Riveting. Vintage Sleator."-- The Horn Book
FROM THE CRITICS
Publishers Weekly
Sleator brings the sights, sounds, tastes and smells of Thailand alive in lush detail, but the story itself, a sequel to The Spirit House, doesn't come alive until halfway through. Readers who tough out the repetitious narrative and plodding dialogue that set up the situation, though, are in for a snappy supernatural spine-tingler with edge-of-the-seat chase scenes. The action centers around Dom Kamen, an American teen who moves to Bangkok with his parents. Bad luck dogs the Kamens from the moment they arrive. Lek, a street vendor who is Dom's age, tells them that there is a bad spirit in their house. At first incredulous, Dom begins to believe that the spirit comes from a jade carving that his older sister had lost en route to Bangkok three years earlier. The plot machinery creaks a bit to enable Dom to accompany Lek to his native village, but once there it shifts into high gear. In a chase involving practically every type of Thai conveyance, Dom and Lek end up being pursued back to Bangkok by the khwan (malevolent spirit) of a sinister villager who ultimately gets his just deserts in "spirited'' fashion. An entertaining and empathic fantasy that affords a good glimpse of an exotic culture. Ages 10-up. (Oct.)
Children's Literature - Judy Silverman
With Dangerous Wishes, William Sleator has taken us back to Thailand, home of the exchange student Bia in his earlier book Spirit House. This time the adventure takes place entirely in Thailand, where the mother, father, and brother of the first book's heroine have come while his mother can do some research on the role of women in Thai society. Sleator's picture of a foreign family's arrival in Bangkok is right on target. And his portrayal of an English-speaking young Thai who can help the family adjust to life in this very different society is perfect. The story involves an amulet and angry spirits, very odd and very Sleator. A good read, and it's not necessary to have read The Spirit House.
The ALAN Review - James E. Davis
In this sequel to The Spirit House, fifteen-year-old Dom is in Thailand, where he and his parents experience a run of bad luck, all due to the jade carving that must be returned to its shrine to appease an angry Thai spirit. Dom is joined in his search by his new friend Lek, who takes Dom on a perilous journey to Lek's home village. They experience a cliff-hanging adventure on practically every page, but survive each one. Readers may be more interested in the subplot of how Lek is going to make his living than in whether Dom will rid himself of bad luck. All problems seem to be resolved when the carving is returned, but Dom has made one final wish for Lek. And as always with Sleator's work, the reader is left to wonder what will happen next.
School Library Journal
Gr 4-6-This sequel to The Spirit House (Dutton, 1991) is set in Thailand and involves Dominic, the younger brother from that book. Dom and his parents are living in Bangkok for two months while his mother does some research. Dom's secret mission is somehow to find the Buddha statue that has been causing his family so much bad luck and give it to the proper shrine. He is aided in his search by Lek, a 15-year-old street vendor who is suffering from his own kind of bad luck. Dom eventually bribes Lek to escort him to his village in search of the statue. After a meal to rival the banquet in the second Indiana Jones movie, they eventually succeed in their mission. Everything wraps up nice and tidy, with everyone suddenly having good luck and bright futures. It is much easier to believe in the presence of spirits than it is to believe that Dom's parents would be so easily persuaded to let him go off with a stranger into the boonies of a strange land, or that they would be so blindingly ignorant about the country they are visiting. The heavy-handed comparisons of the American (read "rich'') Dom and the native Lek, while perhaps valid, are extremely irritating after a while. The plot is clearly defined but the entire book has a jerky, sketchy tone that prevents readers from settling into it. Still, Sleator has a deft hand when it comes to cliff-hanger sentences, and he also does a nice job with dialogue and foreshadowing, which might be enough to save the story. This is not a completely satisfying novel, but for Sleator fans, or folks who just liked the first story, it might be enough.-Patricia A. Dollisch, DeKalb County Public Library, Decatur, GA
BookList - Merri Monks
In Sleator's sequel to The Spirit House (1991), Dominic Kamen and his family, who hosted a Thai exchange student in the first book, are on an extended visit to Thailand. In Bangkok, Dom becomes friends with Lek, a Thai teen who has come to the city to escape the grinding poverty of his village. A series of near-disastrous incidents has convinced Dom that, in order for his family to escape a vengeful spirit linked to a jade carving his sister had lost three years earlier, he must find and return the carving to its temple. Assisted by Lek, who has a coincidental connection to the carving, Dom visits Lek's village, where he has a terrifying encounter with a "kwhan", a creature of the spirit world. Sleator skillfully combines a glimpse of a complex slice of Thai culture and descriptions of both rural areas and Bangkok's crowded streets with a fast-moving story of adventure, the supernatural, and the growing friendship between the two young men, which transcends the significant cultural differences they must bridge.
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