Zizou Corder - Reviews

Lionboy

The Lionboy trilogy, Book 1
Zizou Corder
Puffin
Fiction, CH Fantasy
Themes: Anthropomorphism, Circuses, Felines, Plagues
***+

Description

Charlie has been able to speak Cat since he was a year old. Only his parents - and cats, of course - know of this gift, and for most of his childhood he has led an otherwise normal life... at least, as normal a life as a boy with two top-scientist parents, moving back and forth from his father's native Africa to his mother's homeland in England, can have. One day, he comes home from school to find his parents gone, kidnapped by someone he barely knows, acting on behalf of an unknown enemy. After giving his own abductor the slip, Charlie sets out to rescue his parents with the help of England's feline population. On the way, he ends up with a seagoing circus that happens to be heading to Paris (like his parents), a circus with acrobats, clowns, dancing horses, bike-riding monkeys... and six lions determined to escape to their homeland in Africa.

Review

"Zizou" is actually a mother-daughter writing team, which shows. The book seems an odd mixture of high ideas and low writing at times, but on the whole it's a fairly well-paced story that only occasionally drags. It works on its own level; though many plot elements wouldn't stand up to deeper scrutiny, they were entertaining at the time I read them, and here and there I glimpsed shadows of deeper concepts. I liked that his parents had some part in the plot, as they dealt with their kidnappers and tried to work out why they were taken. Many children's books put the adults so far in the background that they're little more than plot devices. They may not have always acted as an adult in a similar situation may have acted, but at least they were there. Several illustrations, maps, and musical scores were added, apparently for atmosphere, but they intruded on the text. I prefer such things as maps and music in easily-accessed but less-intrusive appendices. From the sample chapter of the sequel, it looks like several of Charlie's old friends (and enemies) will be following him into future books. I keep meaning to find the next one in the trilogy, but somehow it never ends up as a priority. Maybe someday...