Necromancing the stone

Overview

"Necromancing the Stone" picks up the story of Sam LaCroix, a reluctant teenage necromancer whose magic puts him squarely in the middle of a supernatural power struggle. Taken in by the Blackthorn pack, a mix of werewolves and fey hounds, Sam finds himself protected but hardly at ease, aware that the safety the pack offers comes with its own debts and dangers.

At the center of the plot is Sam's lingering uncertainty about an old enemy, a fellow necromancer whose fate was left unresolved after their last confrontation. That ambiguity drives much of the tension, forcing Sam to navigate pack politics, personal loyalties, and the practical strangeness of being a necromancer surrounded by shapeshifters who do not fully trust him, or he them.

The novel continues the series' blend of horror-tinged fantasy and comedic banter, using Sam's sarcastic voice to leaven a plot built on supernatural hierarchies, uneasy alliances, and the question of who, exactly, gets to claim power over the dead.

Fantasy, Found Family, and the Price of Protection

Much of the book's appeal lies in how it reworks familiar urban fantasy tropes, the chosen outsider, the pack with its own code, the monster who might be more humane than the humans around him, through a comic lens without losing the genre's darker undercurrents. Sam's necromancy is treated less as a superpower than as a liability he is still learning to manage, and his dependence on the Blackthorn pack complicates the usual fantasy arc of a hero coming into his own.

The series has found a following among readers drawn to its mix of humor and horror, and to a protagonist whose magic marks him as an outsider even among other supernatural beings. Within McBride's body of work, the book sits as a middle installment that deepens the world-building of the first novel while leaning further into questions of belonging, debt, and what it costs to be kept safe by people, or creatures, with their own agendas.

Why Necromancing the Stone Has Been Challenged

The book's premise, a teenager who raises and commands the dead while living among werewolves, has drawn objections rooted in its horror elements and the casual way it treats death, violence, and the supernatural manipulation of corpses. Reviewers wary of the genre have pointed to scenes involving packs of predatory creatures and the implied threat they pose as unsuitable for younger readers, alongside concerns about language and innuendo carried over from the series' irreverent tone.

Objectors have also raised the broader worry that paranormal fiction normalizes dark or occult themes for a teen audience, a recurring argument against urban fantasy and horror-adjacent YA more generally. In the catalog tracked here, the book has been challenged in one state and one district, reflecting a narrower but still notable instance of this pattern playing out in school and library collections.