Dark Things - Volume 1 Author:Joseph F. Brown, Royal Fireworks Pr Circa 1867. Ten-year-old Jarrod, loving son and partner of the Great Blackwell, reads minds and creates things out of his imagination. The pair, camped in a meadow on their way to a performance, is jumped by a Confederate deserter. Blackwell is killed, Jarrod escapes into a tunnel that he creates. Circa 1997. The Magellans are computer experts w... more »ho have developed a way to link software. Twelve-year-old Tony is superbly creative and inquisitive and delights in discovering how things work. While testing his rail-racer, a propulsion bike fitted for railroad tracks, he meets Jarrod, who still appears to be about Tony's age and says he?s new in town. The boys' personalities and interests are compatible and a friendship ensues. Tony introduces Jarrod to his family and home. Tony's room is fantastic with a bat cave, high-powered telescope and spectacularly enhanced computer. He is writing and animating a screenplay about a character, a mind sculptor, able to create whatever he thinks about. Jarrod reciprocates Tony's openness and confides everything to him and takes him to his home, a fantastic green, crystal root, which is an extension of his powers. Both boys like to create stories, but Jarrod's creations are real for the time he allows them to exist. And unlike Tony's playthings in horror, which can be turned off, Jarrod's Dark Things have become real and must be contained within the root. When one Dark Thing escapes, Jarrod must overcome it. Parallels between the boy of magic and the boy of computer technology strengthen as the author creates a perfectly balanced story.« less