Fire Spell by Laura Amy Schlitz

The novel starts in a fog-hit London 1860 and follows orphans Parsefall and Lizzie Rose. They've been taken in by the evil Grisini the puppet-master to help him with his puppet act. Gaspare Grisini is wonderfully painted as the evil, sinister, shifty old man à la Fagin. Theirs is a life of poverty and they are summoned to do a birthday performance for Clara, a 12-year-old child who lost all 4 of her brothers and sisters to cholera. At the performance there is a brilliantly-written scene of the skeleton act that really brings it to life, and Clara really enjoyed it too.

Clara then gets kidnapped and Grisini becomes the main suspect. But when his 2-room rented space is searched there is no sign of the kidnapped girl. That's because she has been magic-ed into an inventive hiding place, with Grisini only planning to return her once he has received his healthy ransom fee.

However things don't go to plan and things take a twist as the cast are uprooted to the home of a witch in Windermere, in the north of England. There lots of things happen, with magic playing a factor.

To me the first half of the book was better than the second. There the grubbiness Victorian London and the contrast between the well-off and the downtrodden came across really well, and the story was more purposeful. When the book went to Windermere loads of ideas were thrown in, some of them good, and others maybe not so good - how did Clara break her magic exactly, and how would it normally have been broken?

Anyway, it is still a well-written book surely inspired by Oliver Twist, and is worth a read. And if you liked it then another clever book with a lot of ideas thrown into it that you could try is A Face Like Glass by Frances Hardinge.

The US version is called "Splendors and Glooms"

(I got this book through Amazon Vne to review. It is listed here.)

Princess Pearl and the Underwater Kingdom by Emma Thomson

This book is beautiful to look at. There is an embedded pearl on the front (not a real one of course) which at the end of the book it says to touch and whisper your pearl of wisdom on so that it stays with you forever. My 6-year-old’s imagination was stirred and she was making wishes upon the pearl before asking me why they weren’t coming true. It doesn't work like that unfortunately.

As well as the story and the beautifully drawn pictures, my daughter particularly liked the bit of the story where Pearl is underwater and all the other sea princesses greet her, there are lots of interactive elements, like a flap to pull to open some portholes on a sunken ship, or a scene with Pearl diving into the water the more you open the page.

On the down side the story is short and the pop-ups are delicate for younger girls with grabby fingers, but you’d probably be aware of this prior to purchasing this product. Also at one point in the story it looks like Pearl is going to stay an underwater princess forever, and she doesn’t seem to have any regard for her parents on land and how they would feel without her, but maybe that is a little deep for such a book, and also maybe my viewpoint as a parent means I'm biased.

My 6-year-old says it is a fun book because you have to do stuff with your fingers along the way (she is so eloquent) so she recommends it.

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

Witch Crag by Kate Cann

I got into this story straight away as the beginning is unique and interesting. Of course it could have been a lot harder to get the interest going given the initial setting so all credit to the author. The novel starts in the hill fort of the sheep men and their life is a grim one of enforced monotonous work with no room for any fun. Their function is to survive. As it says in the novel "Do the work, grinding work. Keep the sheep safe. Collect water. Guards the barricades. Survive."

Meanwhile there are other tribes around like the horsemen, the farmers, the city dwellers and the witches from Witch Crag, but the witches are avoided because everyone is scared of them.

Kita, a teenage girl from the sheep men, has visions and knows she needs to escape from her life with the sheep men. She is drawn to Witch Crag. So she sets about doing this convincing two of her friends to escape with her. Along the way they stumble across the city which is a place in ruins with metallic vehicles left from before the Great Havoc, vehicles called cars. There they are captured before they escape to finally make it to Witch Crag where the witches are not as scary as they had been made out to be. Having done so matters turn to war, with the city dwellers breaking out from their ruins to try and invade all the other tribes. Only an alliance between the farmers, horsemen, sheep men and witches can have any chance to stop them, but who will befriend the big bad witches?

A gripping story about escape, then battle, and maybe coming of age along the way for the young lead characters, that is suitable for teens up.

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

The Universe Versus Alex Woods by Gavin Extence

I was expecting big things from this book as it had been hyped up as a book to look out for in 2013. Alas I was disappointed.

At times the book read more like a non-fiction book than a novel. If I wanted to find out about meteors and meteorites I would have bought an astrology book and if I wanted to know the road layout of Zurich I would have bought a map. The theory of everything and chaos theory also got mentions in sections I glossed over. But the reason for all the detail into various topics is explained in chapter 10 where Alex, in discovering Kurt Vonnegut books (of which many of the plots are detailed in here), talks about Vonnegut's writing and how he explained everything in detail. I am sure that didn't mean slipping in boring bits about non-fiction topics.

So having started the book I was waiting for the good bits to come, and the further I got in the more I felt this must have been the ending as I was still waiting.

At first I thought the layout was that each chapter was part of the universe against Alex Woods. So in chapter 1 it was the police vs Alex Woods, then it was a meteor, then things like Epilepsy vs Alex Woods and School Bullies vs Alex Woods.

At all times it is hard to feel much for Alex. His character comes across as if he is a little Autistic. He takes everything literally (in the book he is called logical) and doesn't seem to feel emotion. He even thinks he knows better than doctors and argues it out with one pointing out that a diagnosis he made is clearly wrong. It was hard for me to feel for him, and he was main character of the book.

A character I could feel for was Mr Peterson, who we eventually meet in chapter 8. He is a US war veteran and now a retired widower. He had a no-nonsense approach and wasn't afraid to mince his words. He reminded me of the dad from **** My Dad Says. Unfortunately Mr Peterson doesn't stay like this. He loses some of his fight later on in the novel as he becomes ill, leading to him trying to commit suicide.

After Mr Peterson tries this for the first time Alex Woods resolves to help him live out his remaining independent years before his debilitating illness takes hold to the point where he is suffering. At that point Alex would help him go to a clinic in Switzerland, thus the get out option would be available only when absolutely necessary.

This is the real crux of the novel but given the preamble it is only the last fifth of the novel where it is finally covered.

There are some good touches along the way though. The meteor that hit Alex is described in great detail as now being in the Natural History Museum, in the vault, 100m from the dinosaurs. This led me on a short lunchtime trip to the museum to try and find it. I couldn't on such a short trip, but this sort of thing can bring life to a novel outside the pages of the book.

Also there was a good high-speed wheelchair chase, a good scene on a school bus, and a good farewell speech by Mr. Peterson as part of the book club Alex sets up. The speech was good because it had a double meaning where it was relevant to the book club, but also about himself.

And then the last few pages, particularly covering the death (and Kurt Vonnegut is used again), are good too.

Covering such an emotive topic will sell the book no matter what, and next time I'll remember not to raise my expectations.

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

Return of the Hungry Hamster (Undead Pets) by Sam Hay

To me the story here was a bit bland. I was reading it with my 6-year-old daughter. The plot plods along and the book doesn't end properly as it sets up for the next adventure in the series.

The plot - schoolboy Joe gets a present from his uncle Charlie who is an explorer. The present is the Amulet of Anubis which allows the user one wish. So far this is ok with a little bit of magic in the mix. Joe uses it to wish for a pet but gets an undead hamster instead. The hamster and Joe spend the next umpteen pages arguing with each other. Dumpling, the hamster, is undead because something on Earth is holding him back, but Joe refuses to help, hence the arguments. Or was this part just for padding out the novel? 

Anyway the thing that was holding Dumpling back was that he belonged to a boy called Oliver but escaped from his cage and got vacuumed up by Oliver's mum, and she replaced him without telling Oliver. Somehow, despite the two hamsters being different colours, different sizes, looking different and behaving completely differently Oliver doesn't realise that the hamster is not Dumpling. Anyway Joe sorts it out.

The plot was straightforward. All the hamster did was eat and eat whilst all the schoolboys were indistinguishable from each other. The actual vacuuming moment was pretty neat because the story changed from novel style into comic style for two pages. And there were plenty of other pictures throughout, all in black and white though, which were my daughter's favourite parts. She liked the picture of the Jackal-shaped amulet that kept popping up through the book to split the text, plus the chapter headings that always featured Dumpling in them. The best picture is of course on the cover of the undead hamster himself, in a graveyard - the graveyard being irrelevant to the plot but making for a good cover to help sell this book.

I know this book is aimed at younger readers but that doesn't mean the plot can't be more exciting.

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