The Deadly 7 by Garth Jennings

"The Deadly 7" is a book of two halves. The first half introduces all the characters and ideas that are essential to the very fast-paced, exciting and adventurous second-half of the book.

The ideas in this book are multiple. There is the "lost chamber of St Paul's", a hidden room that main character Nelson Green finds within St Paul's Cathedral where Christopher Wren has stored many of his as-yet-undiscovered inventions, one of which Nelson accidentally ends up using when he creates the Deadly 7 - seven monsters born from his soul, "one for each of the so-called seven deadly sins". 

Then there is the River of Life - "the water is the pure source of all life"; Bang Stones - stones made from the Big Bang, "if you swallowed that stone and thought of where you wanted to be - bang - you were there," and a pendant that if "you poured all your love and hope into it could save someone's life." So the book is brimming with ideas (those mentioned and others).

Then there is the adventure element. Nelson Green is "an eleven-year-old boy with shaggy brown hair, wide chocolate-brown eyes and a single brown freckle on the tip of his nose." His sister, the "world's greatest big sister, sixteen-year-old Celeste" goes missing at the story's beginning on a school trip in Spain. Nelson's parents immediately go to Spain leaving Nelson in the care of Uncle Pogo, "a nutcase." Nelson is then roped in to finding a leak at St Paul's Cathedral by his uncle where they find the hidden chamber, and where Nelson falls on to a bed of nails that extracts the Deadly 7 from him, although he doesn't know it at first, only when they later track him down at his uncle's house.

The Deadly 7, monsters that only Nelson can see, are born from his soul so they feel his pain. "This pain... It will not go away for any of us until we find her." Thus the adventure begins with the monsters helping to locate Celeste to Brazil using their special power through "divining of the soul." However a trip to Brazil from England for an 11-year-old is anything but straightforward, even with 7 invisible monsters on your side. It is made even harder because "a very large man" with "bulging, milky eyes" is after him too.

So loads of ideas, lots of adventure and a very good story. Enjoy.

Publication date: 15 Jan 2015

Buy from Amazon UK (from £2.99 at time of writing): The Deadly 7

The Altogether Unexpected Disappearance of Atticus Craftsman by Maman Sánchez

Book review: 

"The Altogether Unexpected Disappearance of Atticus Craftsman" is, unsurprisingly, about the disappearance of Atticus Craftsman, a 30-year-old Englishman in Spain.

He had traveled to Madrid, Spain, on his father's bequest to close the family business's literary magazine there, "Librarte", thus putting its five female employees, each with their own back-story, out of work. But whilst there he disappears as a plan hatched by the employees to save themselves comes to fruition.

Meanwhile the local inspector Manchego is on the case, except he doesn't appear to be doing very well as many things conspire against him.

It's only when Atticus's father, Marlow Craftsman, has had enough and goes searching for his son himself, going "into the jungle to save his son from the clutches of the natives who were about to devour him in a cauldron full of Twinnings Earl Grey", that things get resolved, with all ending happily.

Overall then a tale that is mainly farce, what with the clash between "aristocratic, antiquated  and cold Englishness" and the Spanish way of things, plus an inspector who seems incompetent, before all is revealed and love comes to the fore.

Amazon link: The Altogether Unexpected Disappearance of Atticus Craftsman (from £7.13 at the time of writing) 

Release date: 26 March 2015