Mortification Scale: 3 Tomato Faces
- 1 TF for being a children's book
- 2nd TF for being a sci-fi/fantasy novel
- 3rd TF for an embarrassing cover
- DWF is English and we all know that English writers are smarter. :)
- Recurrent theme of selfishness in children being rewarded. NOT an idealized view of childhood.
- Weaves in quite a bit of Welsh mythology
Two children who belong to the royal court of an alternate universe England, discover a conspiracy among a few of the greatest mages of the court. The earthmage and the Merlin (a title) have ensorcelled the court for some nefarious purpose. With the help of assorted adults and a teenage boy from another world, these children save their world and the multiverse (multitude of universes). The story takes us through a few different worlds and revisits a couple of characters from a previous Magid book. Not bad though not DWJ's best effort. I do enjoy children's books that do not worship childhood. It's fun that the moral lesson seems to be: be selfish (but grow out of it eventually) and quest for knowledge. In my opinion, not bad lessons for children to learn. I remember reading some Swedish fairy tales a few years ago in which one of the moral lessons was, be clean. Seriously, a boy somehow triumphed over evil by virtue of his cleanliness. Interesting.
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