It's time for one last ride into Shadyside car craziness. And after how last book ended, I really have no idea what Stine has planned to wrap this story up. Because after you do time travelling car witches, how the hell do you even move forward? Well, let's see how the Cataluna Chronicles reaches the finish line. Let's discuss The Deadly Fire.
After killing Jessica, William learns he killed an innocent girl and that Evie was Catherine the whole time. He eventually finds her talking with a strange vehicle. It's her mother Gwendolyn, who we've learned was from 300 years in the future, had magic powers, traveled back in time in a time traveling car and raised her witch daughter in the absolute WORST time to raise witch daughters. Catherine enters the time traveling car and William jumps inside as well as the pair travel to the 90s and die in a car accident. William's spirit still wanders, wanting revenge, while Catherine has possessed the car and is doing evil deeds. These deeds involving turning one boy named Bryan into a crook to afford the Cataluna and eventually dying of fright during the ride, and a girl named Lauren into a murder committing hit and runs before her stepsister Regina saves her.
So you know by now how these start if you've been following along.. A quick killing of some teens before we start proper. In this case, Chuck Draper, his girlfriend Barbara Thornton and their friends Eddie Weiss and Debbie Fielder are leaving the theatre after seeing a Brad Pitt movie. Which given it's 1995 could be Seven or Twelve Monkeys. Or, if it's an intention 1994 overlap, Legends of the Fall, Interview with the Vampire or The Favor. Gonna guess The Favor. Anyway, it's semantics as the teens spot the Cataluna in the parking lot with the keys still inside. Despite, you know, potential grand theft auto, Chuck and the teens hop in the car to take it for a test drive. They drive for a bit when suddenly the music on the radio gets louder and louder. Then the doors lock in on them. The loudness of the radio becomes so intense it blows their eardrums and presumably their brains blew up from the intensity.
We end the prologue on the POV of Catherine, who gives us the backstory. I guess since we have no reason to jump in and out of 1698, I guess this'll do instead. She reminds us that her spirit has merged with the Cataluna, but she has no idea what befell William, but she promises to bring doom upon his spirit if he shows up. She also notes that, despite becoming a cold-blooded murder car, she's still in the right since, you know, she was treated like shit for being a witch. Which, again, none of this would have happened if they left her the fuck alone, but I digress.
We then shift to the protagonist of this story, Buddy McCloy kissing his girlfriend, Sara Franklin. His brother Sean cuts the romance as their oldest brother Stan is racing in Waynesbridge in what is being dubbed the Doom Car. You mean there really is a Waynesbridge? After all the books of it being an alibi for shit this caught me off guard. Buddy and his brothers are part of th McCloy racing family. Their father was a former race car driver who retired after his mom's passing. He moved to running a body shop where they just so happened to get a unique looking sportscar named the Cataluna. Also, Mr. McCloy specifically bought the Cataluna because of the stories of it having killed a dozen people. Really, that's all? And with the car being brought to Waynesbridge to be shown off, Stan chose to use it to race with as well. A cool four grand total, plus more should Stan win the race. Quite a lot of good luck so far for "the doom car", huh?
Buddy talks with Stan, who gives him the nickname of Gilhooley, a dirt circuit term for a spinout, which I can't find confirmation on, so it sounds like a Stine asspull, but I could be wrong too. Buddy got that for wrecking Stan's dirt track machine on his first attempt. Better than calling him a slur though... unless that's what he's doing. Stan hops in the Cataluna and says that there definitely won't be a crash today and definitely not a crash involving this supposed car of death. He starts racing and it goes well, until he hears the sound of Catherine's laughter, who then freezes his stick shift and steering wheel. The Cataluna goes over a guard rail and a hay barrier and crashes into the stands before then smashing into the power station. So not only does it electrocute and kill Stan, but a whole bunch of innocent people on the stands. Yeah, maybe you shouldn't have raced in something named the DOOM CAR. Catherine is pleased, believing that William was in the body of Stan and she must have totally defeated him, unless he possesses the other McCloy boys.
Some time passes and Buddy's still distraught. Stan's dead, the Cataluna hasn't got a scratch on it, and six other people had died so his dad's in shit for that. I mean, again, YOU BOUGHT A FUCKING DOOM CAR. And now they can't get anyone to buy it, because, again, DOOM CAR. Also Sara is standing him up all the time, so I guess we can blame that on doom car as well. After arguing with Sean, Buddy heads out to yell at the Cataluna, only to hear a female voice tell him to climb inside and go for a drive. Suddenly another girl shows up named Marisol Prince, who just conveniently moved in next door. They talk about the situation with Marisol noting that she too had a brother who died. Consider my eyebrow cocked for the moment. Speaking of cocked, despite telling her about how the car was involved in an accident, Marisol wants to take a ride in the Cataluna, and because Buddy's got the hots for her, he forgoes his hatred of the doom car to take that drive.
But before Buddy can get behind the wheel, his friends Peter Bailey and George Carman arrive, reminding Buddy about the party going on at Gary Brandt's place. Hey, it took a bit but we got a reference to past characters. How long until we see Deena and Jade? More importantly, it means that Sara should be there, so Buddy apologizes to Marisol and heads to the party. Gary has a bunch of TVs showing like Beavis and Butt-Head, Mr. Rogers and a whole bunch of other tapes which is Fifty Oprahs level of strange. Buddy finds Sara flirting with a boy with a ponytail named Will who is new in town. Buddy talks with Will who knows that Buddy's family owns the Doom Car, so he challenges Will to a race. His fast car versus the Cataluna. Buddy at first is against it, but the smugness of Will and the blockedness of his cock is enough to get him to accept a race on the Mill Road. Catherine also realizes that this "Will" must be William Parker, wanting his revenge. I mean, Stine's a bad mystery writer so we already know who Will likely is, but we have about 100 pages (give or take the wasted pages in between part breaks) to get to the fireworks factory. Or, the "Deadly Fire" works factory.
Buddy shows Will the Cataluna as Sara seems to have made herself a prize for the winner as well, which angers Buddy. That night, Buddy sneaks out (after running over a kid's skateboard) and heads to "Racer's Lane" on Mill Road. The two begin racing with Catherine urging Buddy to nudge Will and kill him. But before Buddy can do so, he gets caught by the cops and the race ends up postponed. Which, I mean, we're only on like page 61 so I'd have been shocked if we didn't suffer some padding. He ends up going out with Marisol to the Donut Hole and to the almighty Pete's Pizza. But both Will and Sara are at Pete's Pizza, which causes Buddy to put his hand through the window in anger without realizing it. Despite his hand gushing blood, he confronts the two and says that they haven't finished their race. They'll settle it on Friday night.
Now with a busted hand and no sign of Marisol, who doesn't even go to Shadyside High (Jeez Bob, make it MORE obvious), Buddy talks with Sara, arguing with her over her cheating on him with Will, with her countering that he's been with Marisol lately, so it's not a one way street here. But now filled with more rage, Buddy promises that he'll stop at nothing to win this race. We get a rather decent nightmare scene as Buddy sees shadows floating around him which turn into decayed faces with bugs inside them. More faces inside the Cataluna which then lead to a giant, decayed version of his own face. How was THAT not the cover? He wakes up, quickly thinking that maybe Stan was sending him a warning beyond the grave, but it doesn't matter. He's still racing on Friday and still winning back Sara. The next day, Sean tells Buddy that he knows what Buddy's been up to with the Cataluna and gives him some reasonable advice that maybe it wouldn't be great for their dad if Buddy ended up dying in the same car that took Stan too. Also that he should be with Marisol anyway. But Buddy is still in Sara mode, so he's not willing to listen.
Friday afternoon and Buddy returns from school to find the Cataluna missing. He blames Sean for it and beats the crap out of his brother, nearly killing him by bouncing his skull on the floor. Eventually Sean gives him the keys, saying he parked it at a friend's place. He tells Buddy to be careful because what Buddy just did to him is nothing to what Buddy's going to do to himself. Buddy rushes to the car and gets more visions of the rotting faces, including Sean's which splits in half and starts spinning. He starts to decide against going to the race, but the voice says that he'll be a loser and Will will get Sara, which is enough motivation for Buddy to make the drive to River Road, the location of the big race. We get some more of Catherine saying that she's so close to finally finishing the job and getting rid of William once and for all.
Buddy arrives on River Road, which is conveniently the worst place to be racing on. Marisol meets with him, begging him not to go through with the race, but he's still too focused on it. Will then flips things around. He says that he should drive the Cataluna and Buddy should take Will's Chevelle. They settle it with a coin toss, which wins in Will's favor, so they're switching cars for the race. Buddy, realizing that he may have just saved himself from driving a doom car to his own doom, is cool with Will taking the drive instead. Will drives in the car and Catherine taunts him, saying that she finally has William Parker where she wants him and that this is the end. Will panics, and eventually ends up almost crashing over the cliffside. But he then sees the Chevelle exploding. However, Buddy survives his own crash in the Chevelle. As the car is on fire, he heads to the Cataluna and sees that Will is dead. Catherine is pleased with killing Will, and, of course, isn't done yet with killing.
Buddy tries to get Will's body out of the car as Sara apologizes to him for everything. Suddenly, Marisol heads to the car and says that it's over for Catherine, because Will's been possessing Marisol this entire time. Yeah, ever since the crash, his spirit became a teenage girl. Did... did Stine just unintentionally make a trans character? A trans character in NINETEEN NINETY FUCKING FIVE!?!? This is the most based shit he's ever done! William begins to drive the Cataluna into the woods as he and Catherine argue, with Catherine reminding William that he did kill Jessica Mason back in 1698. They battle over control of the car as it goes out of control, with Catherine sending them plummeting off the cliff. William manages to recover and start running the car faster. Sixty miles to seventy, to eighty five (I was fucking right about 88 miles per hour wasn't I?) Until they speed back to 1698.
William emerges from the car, back in his original form, Catherine back in her own body. She turns into a rat and attacks William, but he gets the upper hand and puts her in a wire cage. He then goes to the Cataluna and begins to smash it with an ax. So, get this. Since Catherine was born three hundred years into the future, and was brought to the past by her mother, and the time travelling car was the reason, by destroying the car in the past, that will get rid of Catherine. Uh... buh... I'll get to it in the conclusion but this smells like we're in asspull territory. Catherine escapes the cage and turns into a bat, attacking and seemingly killing William before he can finish the job. Catherine returns to her normal form and celebrates killing William, then notices someone emerge from the Cataluna. The spirit of Stan McCloy. And Will. And all of the other victims of the Cataluna who circle around her. William's voice rings out, saying that he's won, as the spirits grab Catherine and tear her limb from limb.
William wakes up to his brother Joseph and his father telling him about the exciting news. Yeah, all of this may have been a dream of his. His mother has just had a baby girl. William arrives to see his new baby sister... who has a crescent moon on her temple.
Three books just to end on a "it was all a dream or was it?"
Holy fucking shit, Stine. HOOOOLY FUCKING SHIT what was that? We're really ending the book like THAT? We're doing the "It was all a dream" ending? That somehow William just dreamed all of this happening, including a somehow accurate 1995? Of course, the only other possible spin on this is that this was somehow the last act of Catherine. That before her death, she managed to manipulate the time-space continuum to change the course of history itself so that now she's reborn as William's sister in an alternate universe? I mean, given this trilogy has time traveling cars I can't say I'd be surprised. This may be it. This may be his ultimate asspull. His ultimate realization that he had no idea how to finish this story, so fuck it, ambiguous ending that you can interpret either happened or didn't. Stine, why do you disappoint me yet constantly prove me right about your failings? Although if it were a dream and William still dreamed that he was a girl at one point, still the most based thing Stine's ever written. But it becomes moot because of this fucking ending. YOU ROBBED ME OF BEING HAPPY ABOUT A TRANS CHARACTER, BOB! GOD DAMMIT!
And this sucks more because before this conclusion, I liked this book. I liked how it flowed, how the horror was handled. I mean, it kind of flows similar to the first book with Bryan, only now it's Buddy instead, but I thought the story flowed in just the right ways that it all worked to build reasonings to make you wonder if this was all Catherine's doing or if Buddy was really losing his mind to the point he beat the shit out of his own brother. It doesn't help that the most obvious swerve was obvious. Because you did this LAST Book with the misdirect. Having William in the body of a girl and adding a random boy named Will doesn't work when Marisol tells the audience that she lost a brother, like William did. This is what I mean by Stine's a bad mystery writer. He drops the shoe way too early or makes things so obvious that you can't even enjoy when you get to the finale.
Also, hello? Deadly fire? Where are you? I mean, we get two situations where fire occurs. The death of Stan and several patrons, and the explosion of the Chevelle. But neither are focused on long enough to be the title of the book. And here I thought The Birthday Party of No Return was his most misdirected title, but here we are. I said it in the second book and I'm now 100% convinced in the third, this did not need to be a trilogy. You could have made this a Super Chiller and focused it on one of the three 1995 plots and the 1698 plot and cut out so much. Though I'd argue of the three side stories from 1995, the Buddy McCloy stuff is the best of the batch, so if you had to choose one of the three, it would be that one. And no, I'm not saying that for the trans implications, but it IS points in its favor.
So yeah. I'm not thrilled with how this ended. It feels like the worst cases of wall hitting that we've seen Stine do. Fitting I guess given it's a book involving a car. Giving us one of his worst twist endings ever, that somehow is even worse than when he would do it decades later for Monster Blood is Back. I'll probably blather on this book more in the conclusion, so I'll rate this book and move over to that one. The Deadly Fire gets a D. Can't give it an F because there's a lot I liked before it fell to shit, but yeah. The most D-serving D I've given in quite some time.
The 1698 stuff is frustrating in its own right and it boils down to how the book structures Catherine. In the first book, there is never really a reason for her to be considered evil in her timeline. Other than being the daughter of a shapeshifting witch, she was the one hunted down and blamed for all of the bad luck in West Hampshire. So her killing Joseph and his dad feel warranted as a form of self defense given that they were going to kill her. So from the jump, I don't care about William's arc. And never in the series, even when he's in a female body, do I ever look at William as the hero of the story. He's painted as the hero, but again, he and his family made Catherine into this monster. There's never a moment of self reflection to make me look at William other than a victim of circumstance and not the brave hero of the tale. He also murdered a young girl because of his own lust for the death of Catherine. It's hard, especially by that point, to look at William as a hero you really want to see succeed, even if Catherine's become a psychotic killer.
And that's another flaw with the book, and that's how the book wants the reader to look at Catherine after she starts killing. Granted, her actions do give reason for her to be defeated, but when you take into account the events leading to all of this, I still don't blame Catherine for ending up like this. It feels very in tone with Stine's style of writing when it comes to mental health. It gives me Hit and Run vibes. The idea that Eddie has to be painted as the villain and not the people who turned him into the villain. That a person so deeply troubled is beyond saving. That the bullied ultimately deserve the bullying, which is such a terrible way to present any concept. So by that logic it turns William into a form of Winks and, you know, FUCK WINKS. Though, by the point of the end of the story (not the twist), given Catherine's actions, it's not as easy to just forgive her for it. It's just depressing though to see how a character like her ends up.
This saga's entire plot is up there for stupidest ideas ever. Especially if you're to buy how the book's twist takes things. So, a witch living in the 80s/90s is worried about raising her daughter in the present time, so she decides that "you know what time period would be great to raise a witch daughter? The pre-1700s." So Gwendolyn, what, watched Back to the Future and made a magic time travel car to send herself and Catherine there? Then decided to send Catherine to live with witch-fearing parents who eventually sold her up the river. And in the end, both Catherine and Gwendolyn wind up dead in the worst possible time period to raise a witch. This is what I mean by an asspull. Getting cornered with an inability to make narrative ends meet, so you pull an out of nowhere swerve of a magic time travel car. With Beach House, I can at least buy the idea of a time travel portal because the book doesn't explain its origin to any point where it comes off like an idea that falls apart logically if it was explained in detail.
This is a bad twist. Mainly because it's supposed to be presented as either a dream or a shift of reality. Or perhaps a premonition that isn't accurate. If it's a dream, how in the hell does William manage to dream about 300 years in the future and nail things accurately? If it's a bizarre rewriting of reality, why does Catherine rewrite herself as William's sister? Even if she has powers, what's stopping William from trying to kill her later on like the others? Familial bonds? You really think that'll save Catherine from the gallows once things look bad around town? Inaccurate premonition seems more accurate in that it was a premonition of what one timeline with Catherine as the witch of town could have wound up as. And that's really why I wish this twist didn't happen. You had a strong enough way to end the story with William getting his revenge by destroying Catherine, but Stine needed to get a twist in, so it gets wedged in there horrifically. Though THAT also wound up a mess because he tried to make some sort of time paradox concept with the car that doesn't make sense. Why would the car being destroyed in the past kill Catherine? The events that led to Gwendolyn going to the past would have already happened, so destroying the car wouldn't have suddenly broken what was already a moving timeline.
This didn't need to be a trilogy. Part of me feels it was forced upon Stine to develop this as a trilogy more than anything he had the passion to connect into three stories. This should have been a Super Chiller. Mainly because the stories, save for the third book's for the most part, feel like Superfluous Clay. All filled with generic plots that don't feel too different than a lot of Fear Street stories. Poor romance, obsessed teenagers, death and violence. Stuff that doesn't feel too special for this story other than tying them all together with the Cataluna. The Bryan and Lauren stories could have been cut and the story just stuck with Buddy McCloy and you could have gotten a decent 200 pages out of it. Although even with it being a Super Chiller, the maligned connectivity of 1698 and 1995 would still be enough of an issue to prove how undercooked this idea is.
And if you need proof that a story about a haunted car can work from Stine, look no further than The Haunted Car from Goosebumps Series 2000. It's nothing special as a book, but it tells its story very well and builds its horror just right. And the origins of the one haunting the car work better narratively by setting it around a modern timeline and not oddly choosing 300 years in the past. I doubt that Stine created The Haunted Car with the intent of being a better version of The Cataluna Chronicles but it ultimately does. That this idea which should be a slam dunk to do for a YA audience manages to be written and handled far better in the more kid-friendly version of Stine's work. Maybe that ultimately explains why Stine doesn't pump Fear Street with constant supernatural stuff and more love-crazed teens on a rampage. Because many of those supernatural ideas serve Goosebumps far better.
It's funny. Of the main trilogies, this was the one I was most interested in covering. Mainly for the reason that I think a concept like a haunted car could work so well. Though even I was leery at the idea of being able to stretch the idea into three books. And I was ultimately right on that assessment. Its contemporaries all at least feel better handled in the idea. Cheerleaders keeps the focus on Corky for the majority of the saga, though it falters when the stories spin off past the initial three. Fear Street Saga connects everything to the Fear family and the Goode family and rarely pivots. And even if it's ultimately just a series of tragedies, they all flow to build to the idea of the horrid history of the Fears. 99 Fear Street always keeps the focus on the house and the hauntings within. It has a pointless second part, but does conclude just well enough in its third. Silent Night sucks and so does Reva Dalby, but those books at least feel like they have an idea in them, even if they get horribly redundant. And there's another saga that I'll be talking about very soon and I'll keep my opinions on those a spoiler until then, but it didn't feel like a mess, I'll tell you that much.
But Cataluna Chronicles just feels like the worst of Stine's ambitions brought to paper. And it just sucks so much that it faltered like it did. But when it feels like something without passion to craft a cool idea and feels forced to add a bunch of stuff that hinders said cool idea, then it leaves me wanting more. And I know I'm so harsh at Stine for so much, even though I know that I also do my damnedest to defend him when he gets horrible criticism. But when I read stuff like this, I can't help but agree with those critics who can see Stine's flaws and worst traits better than even I could. No book of Stine's ever feels like it doesn't have at least a germ of a cool idea that he (or his outliners) had on paper, but very rarely do those great ideas ever have a chance to form into something truly special. And this is perhaps the best example of that in all of Fear Street. Because this feels like something that could have, should have been better but never has the vision needed to make it better.
So yeah. I fucking hated this saga. Especially the further it went. When your book ends on a very confusing "maybe it was a dream" ending, while also feeling like it was mostly created with the best excuse for anything in the story boiling down to "a witch did it", and so much of it feels so unnecessary, it ultimately leads to a genuinely frustrating final product. With its only real upside, I guess, being that it allowed me to rant on it. Which is fun to read, but frustrating to write, so thanks for nothin'. The Cataluna Chronicles, as a whole, gets a C-.
IT WAS ACCEPTABLE IN THE 90S: Brad Pitt Movies, Brad Pitt Comparisons, Top Cat, Designing Women, Gilligan's Island, Beavis and Butt-Head, Terminator Movies, Mister Rogers, Chevy Chase Movies
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