Tuesday 23 October 2012

Muddle and Win by John Dickinson



Muddle and Win:

Muddle is Muddlespot, an ex-wart, ex-cleaner sent up from the depths of Pandemonium to try and do what so many others have failed to do before: infiltrate Sally Jones mind and make her do a bad deed for the first time in her life. Win is Windleberry, the angel sent down from heaven to try and keep Sally Jones on the straight and narrow. But who will win the Battle of Sally Jones? Well telling you would spoil the ending.

This book is full of ideas. The obvious one is the lifetime good deeds counter where each good deed and bad deed is counted up. But spreading out from that are so many more. Like the angels wearing Ray-Bans and tuxedos such as on the cover (the Ray-Bans are because angels’ eyes shine too much) - not your typical angel then! And that inside our brains are little versions of ourselves, together with a devil and an angel there to try and influence our actions. 

The ideas even spill out into the way the text is presented. For example some characters have different fonts, and when fights occur the words are put into spiky bubbles Batman-style.

Yes the ending is slightly below the quality of the rest of the book, maybe because it gets confusing a little when you have to keep switching between the big and small Sally Joneses, and because of all the new ideas coming into the narrative. Even so the ending is satisfying. 

If you liked this you might like The Traitors by Tom Becker which is another book aimed at the same age group brimming with good ideas.

(I got this book through Amazon Vine. It is listed here.)

No comments:

Post a Comment