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Mariah Mundi: The Midas BoxBy G.P. Taylor
Published by Faber and Faber
ISBN 0571238351 / 978 0571238 354Tagline: superior and gripping thriller, rich in tension and spooky plot twists.
What's it about? Teenager Mariah Mundi has just left the orphange where he's been brought up and is travelling to a seaside town in Northern England to begin work at the Prince Regent Hotel. We are in Victorian England and orphans like Mariah are packed off to emplyment when charity organisations have done their job. The Prince Regent is a massive, rambling edifice with hidden rooms and secret passages burrowing deep into the cliff on which it stands. It is a forbidding place with more shadows than a graveyard at midnight. Mariah soon learns that the boy who worked here before him vanished under mysterious circumstances. Something very weird is going on at the Prince Regent. No-one here is to be trusted, least of all the hotel itself. Before long, Mariah is lured into the slimy caverns under the hotel where he discovers the hotel's deadly secret.
Is it any good?
This is a terrific, fast paced and gripping read. If you enjoy novels cloaked in a thick, spooky atmosphere, "M. M: The Midas Box" will not disappoint. Much more subtle and believeable than some of Taylor's earlier books, this first title in a promised series of seven is unputdownable. It is a dark masterpiece that draws you into its damp clutches from page one. Not since Stephen King's "The Shining", has a menacing building played such an important part and come so threateningly alive in a work of fiction. Mariah Mundi is the most intriguing new character to arrive on the youth fiction scene since Harry Potter. He should better known than he is. Arrange a meeting with him at the Prince Regent Hotel and you will quickly discover his spooky pulling power.
SpudBy John van der Ruit
Published by Penguin
ISBN 978 0 141 32356 5
Tagline: Manic parents, crazy teachers & bizarre friends star in hilarious rites of passage book.
What's it about?
It's 1990 and things are changing rapidly in South Africa. The country's president has legalised the once banned African National Congress Party and the black political leader, Nelson Mandela has been released from prison. Saddled with a pair of dysfunctional parents and a set of very odd friends, young teen Spud Milton is struggling with the problems of growing up as well as all the changes going on around him. But using his wits, Spud manages to keep his head above water even when his parents send him to a boarding school where the teachers are a very eccentric lot and chaos rules over education. SPUD chronicles the often laugh-out-loud life and times of one confused adolescent. Spud's experiences at boarding school are wild and hectic, but he manages to keep his head by using his wits whilst everyone around him is losing theirs.Is it any good?If you enjoy a well written novel packed with laughs (some of them a bit rude!), you will enjoy meeting SPUD. It's a long book coming in at three hundred and ninety pages, and at times it's a dense read, but the central character is so appealing that you certainly miss him when it's all over. Van de Ruit works hard to make sure his novel is much more than a parade of whacky characters and a string of disjointed acts of mayhem. The whole book is held together by the well-rounded personality of Spud himself. Sometimes confused, sometimes at odds with the chaos around him, sometimes desperate, Spud Milton is an excellent creation. Here is a school novel for young teen boys or for anyone else brave enough to want to know what makes thirteen and fourteen year old boys tick. SPUD is a school-based novel with an hilarious difference.
The Amulet of SamarkandBy Jonathan Stroud Published by Doubleday ISBN 0 385 60599 4 / 978 0552550291Tagline: gripping & electrifying fantasy thriller for all agesWhat's it about?
We are somewhere that feels familar, but isn't quite. The U.K. is, in fact, governed by magicians instead of politicians. Underwood is a minor magician in the Houses of Parliament and the time has come for him to take on an apprentice. The powers-that-be assign a young boy called Nathaniel to Underwood's care, but Nathaniel isn't your ordinary apprentice who bows and scrapes to his boss. Nathaniel has his own agenda, spending every waking moment cramming as much magic as he can into his head so he can use it later for his own purposes. One day, a magician called Simon Lovelace crosses Nathaniel, and this sets the boy off on a path of revenge that will lead right to the top of government. Nathaniel conjures up a djinn called Bartimaeus to help him destroy Lovelace, but things don't go as Nathaniel plans and soon boy and djinn are entangled in dangerous mayhem they can't control.Is it any good?
THE AMULET OF SAMARKAND is the first book of THE BARTIMAEUS TRILOGY, a witty and classy tale of a young boy training to become a magician. But comparisons with any other series about a boy and magic stop before they start. AMULET is a fresh and streamlined mix of mayhem and magic that is confidently its own box of tricks. Stroud effortlessly builds up an intriguing backgound and lets his story rattle along at breakneck pace. He cleverly divides the narative into alternate chapters telling the story from the different points of view of the two main charcacters, a boy who is not quite to be trusted and a wise-cracking djinn who is resentful at being called into service. THE AMULET OF SAMARKAND is an intelligent and mesmerising novel of the hightest order. And there are already two more adventures to enjoy when you've been gripped by this one. Wonderful!
