For ten years, Charlie Bone thought he was an ordinary boy - until he started hearing voices from photographs. Suddenly, his nasty grandmother and broody aunts take
an interest in him, forcing him to attend the elite Bloor's Academy for "endowed" children: those who, like Charlie, have peculiar gifts or rare talent. Charlie doesn't
want to be special, not if it means having to abandon his best friend Benjamin and rub shoulders with unpleasant people like the Bloors... but somehow he's become caught
up in a decade-old mystery involving a missing girl, a mystery that itself ties into the centuries-old history of the Red King and his squabbling descendants.
Review
Hidden mages in modern times, a special academy, a boy with perpetually unruly hair discovering a secret family legacy... The comparisons to Harry Potter are
hard to avoid, though they are most likely creative coincidence. Charlie's not as dynamic a character as Harry, being almost agonizingly slow on the uptake at several
points (his unendowed friend Benjamin's even a little quicker on the draw), and Nimmo's world feels darker, nastier, and less inviting than Rowling's invention in many
respects. Not all "endowed" people are bad apples, but the majority seem to be, with cooperation and friendship seeming like rare exceptions. With most characters lining
up about as one expects from the first meeting and relatively few twists, a strong sense of pulled punches and deliberately-blunted edges, plus a finale that (skirting
spoilers) doesn't involve the main character as much as one might expect, the story overall didn't feel especially satisfying. That said, there are some nice ideas and
images here, and younger readers will likely enjoy it more. I guess I'm just a little too old and jaded to succumb to Charlie's simpler charms.
uthor Jenny Nimmo presents two fantasy stories: The Dragon's Child: The young dragon Dando, a late bloomer, cannot fly, and is accidentally left behind when the others migrate
north... just when vicious monsters known as Doggins approach through the dark woods, and a ship full of dangerous humans arrives. The Night of the Unicorn: A magical night full of shooting stars brings an old unicorn to the fields near young Amber's farm
and starts an epic quest by aging chicken Hennie, a journey that will have consequences for the entire farming community.
Review
As the descriptions likely imply, this pair of stories is fairly light in tone, cozy bedtime tales with some peril, some heart, and some
whimsy. The Dragon's Child was the stronger of the pair (though I may be biased, as I'm more of a dragon person than a unicorn person),
telling the tale of a little underdog dragon who has to find a reason to grow up before he can fly - a reason he finds unexpectedly in a
girl prisoner of the invading humans (who aren't quite ordinary humans), and the leader's spoiled princeling son. There's a hair more depth
to everyone, even the baddies (except for the Doggins, of course), than one might expect in a fairy tale. The Night of the Unicorn underplays the titular unicorn; it's more about the brave little chicken whose quest to find the old
rooster William inadvertently weaves together many lives, human and animal. The result feels a little overlong and scattered and doesn't
deliver the payoff that the first story offered, though it's generally enjoyable.
In a world that rushes headlong toward the future, eleven-year-old Dinah looks only to the past - a far more interesting and stable place than her chaotic life,
dragged by her drifting mother Rosalie from house to hovel, shelter to back room. She's used to the loneliness by now, but she longs for a place to call home for
more than a few months. When she arrives at their latest dwelling, a run-down old house loaned by Rosalie's latest boyfriend (and now employer) Gomer, Dinah is
determined to stay. She even names the place: Griffin's Castle, after the crumbling stone griffin she finds in the front garden. But Gomer has other plans for the
house and for Rosalie - plans that don't include Dinah. Then she finds a stone lioness from a castle wall following her home - and realizes she may have a way to
defend herself and her newfound castle, especially when more beasts come to the garden of Griffin's Castle. But are her shadowy companions protectors, or something
more sinister?
Review
This book straddles a line between fantasy and horror. Dinah's a misfit who always seems to be in the wrong place or say the wrong thing, an inquisitive girl born
to a mother who can't reliably remember to sign her up for school or buy groceries. It's not simple, childish play that makes her imagine the past and future glories
of Griffin's Castle so fiercely, but an unspoken rage and deep longing to belong somewhere, even if that somewhere's in another time. How is she able to summon the
spirits of stone animals to life? Even she doesn't know, balanced as she is on that knife-edge between childhood and adulthood, between the power of magical thinking
and cold reality. Having managed the feat, she learns that these beasts, much like her own building resentment and anger, aren't quite so easy to control as she first
thought. Two boys from her new school, scrawny bookish Barry and oddball giant Jason, try in their own ways to help, each wrestling with their own flawed lives, but
Dinah's so used to being on her own that she can't or won't understand that she doesn't have to go it alone... a blindness with potentially dire consequences. The tale
has some interesting layers to it, with nobody being quite so flat and simple as they seem at first. With chilling overtones, the tale of Dinah's unraveling life and
increasing reliance on, and imprisonment by, her shadowy stone companions unfolds in a struggle between past and present, isolation and companionship, even despair and
hope. The ending's a little sudden and neat, but it ultimately fits the story. Considering that I found it for a buck at a clearance sale, I'm more than satisfied.
