It’s not very wholesome, especially with Edward’s insistence in following God’s law, but what’s theology without a little hypocrisy. They meet in the woods to make out and declare their love for each other.

Edward Fier is handsome, dresses well, and he has a thing for Susannah. See, Susannah wants to be a good Puritan lass, but then there’s this boy. I didn’t do a ton of follow up reading on this (see: skimming Wikipedia articles), but I can’t find an actual precedent for doing that sort of thing, so I assume the editor was opposed to putting the Devil in books for kids, which is strange considering just about everything else goes on in this book. This also starts the trend of saying “Evil One” when they mean “The Devil”. The whole village is consumed with it, thanks to the magistrate Benjamin Fier and his brother Matthew, who have gone around accusing everyone. Susannah Goode lives in the village of Wickham during the good old days of “blaming everything on witches”. I also write a historical fiction horror serial, and if Stine is cutting corners I cannot say I blame him. I found this section particularly jarring as I’d just picked up Conversion as well, which felt very well researched.

I can assume that he found a book on pilgrims and considered that research enough. This was all written pre-Internet, so I can’t assume that Stine read a Wikipdia page on colonial life and called it a day.

We switch over to Wickham Village in 1692. People shout about how evil the Fears are, the fire doesn’t stop, and Nora runs into to find Daniel and sees visions of people being burned alive, young men being tortured, and sees the ghost of a woman tied to stake and being consumed by a fire. Her beloved Daniel Fear is trapped in the fire, and all she has left of him is a strange amulet “with its sparkling blue jewels held in place by a silver three-towed claw”. We meet Nora Goode, who is telling the story, who is trapped in a fire. This book starts in the Village of Shadyside in the year of 1900. At this point there’s been a bunch of volumes and hints as to the true nature of the Fears, so we would be clamoring to know. The Fear Street Saga… where the terror began. It’s not as soap opera-y, which this book definitely is, but it’s got a little more mystery to it, and it sort of goes with the idea of generations of Fiers. The new cover ( pulled from its Amazon page) is a little better. I suppose that’s Nora running away from the fire as well, though why she’s cloaked isn’t really covered in the book. Which girl is that supposed to be? I doubt it’s Susannah, so it’s probably Nora, but nothing suggests Nora would have this coy look about her. The 1993 cover ( pulled from GoodReads) is a little hard to understand.

Fear street saga the betrayal