As readers get to know the peculiar children a bit more in this book, it becomes more and more apparent that there's not much to distinguish one from another besides their peculiar abilities. About a quarter of the way into the book, the author himself mixes up two characters (Horace = top hat, Hugh = bees, not the other way around) showing that perhaps there's not much difference to him, either. Moreover, none of the editors caught this mistake. If neither the author nor the editors care, why should I? 
 Against all odds, I continued reading this novel, and I actually ended up finishing it, mostly because it was a really quick read, but of course there were more irritations to come, mostly gnat-sized, but some that really bugged me. Among the gnat-sized was a misquoting of Shakespeare---it's "once more unto the breach," not "into." Just a minor irritation, although it does come from a major, very famous, oft-quoted speech. It was even in a movie. 
 More mosquito-sized are the two times that men made lewd comments/advances towards Emma. The second time really annoyed me because rather than standing up for their friend after the comment, "All of a sudden everyone was looking off at the paintings on the walls or adjusting their collars," instead of telling the perv off or even giving him a dirty look. Dude didn't have a gun or anything. He was just a dude. These are eighty-year-old children who face down death on a regular basis, and they can't call out sexual harassment when it happens to their friend? What cowards---and completely out-of-character cowards. If the author doesn't see anything wrong with this---which it seems like he doesn't---then I'm angry with him, too. This mistreating of a female character as though she's just an object is bad enough, but it doesn't even move the plot or character development forward, so it really just seems gratuitous, which makes it that much uglier. 
 The big, hairy tarantula of this book is the time travel. According to the rules of the world, someone from an older period of time going into a future period of time will age forward to their chronological age in the later time. So why doesn't anyone have concerns about going forward in time? And even more annoying: why on earth are these children still child-like? They're 80+ years old. Sure, they've not matured physically, but wouldn't they mature emotionally or intellectually? They've had decades to read, study, learn, expand their minds, yet they're still completely, totally children, and they're fine letting the ymbrynes continue to treat them like children. I just don't buy it. It makes me a lot more sympathetic to the wights. 
 But the biggest, creepiest bug of all (probably a tarantula hawk, a wasp that I know about thanks to my friend's eight-year-old) is not knowing why I read this book in the first place. After I finished the first in the series, I didn't feel compelled to read the second, but then I saw it while my kids and I were browsing the YA section at the library and here we all are. So, I'd like to be all dramatic and proclaim that I refuse to read any more books in this series and then flounce out of the room swinging my parasol, but chances are I'll end up reading the third book and then be angry with the authors, the characters, and myself all over again.