Christopher Uptake by Susan Price

Reviewed by Cecilia Busby

Available on Kindle

"Christopher Uptake" is a curious book. I have an original copy of it, illustrated with a picture of a rather serious young Elizabethan man, bending over some writing in a dark room, illuminated only by a candle. The newly issued Kindle cover has an immediately recognisable portrait of an altogether more confident character, gazing at the viewer with a hint of challenge in his eyes.

The motto on the original portrait (below) is "Quod me nutrit me destruit" - that which nourishes me also destroys me. In Elizabethan times the motto was associated with a torch or candle held upside down - the falling wax causing the candle to burn more brilliantly but also eventually extinguishing the flame. The image reminds me of Edna St. Vincent Millay's "My candle burns at both ends, it will not last the night; But ah my friends and oh my foes - it gives a lovely light!" The lovely light, was, of course, the short but brilliant career of Christopher Marlowe, poet, dramatist, atheist and spy, whose wild living and controversial opinions may have led to his murder at the age of 29.

Christopher Uptake is clearly based on Marlowe - yet strangely that link is not made in the blurb for either the original or the re-issued book, despite the portrait on the front. Nor do any of the Amazon reviews mention it. It seems odd. Uptake, like Marlowe, is the son of a tradesman, a grammar-school boy who wins a scholarship to Cambridge, an atheist who takes to writing plays, and who gets mixed up in the Elizabethan secret service, spying on the equivalent of Second World War fifth columnists: the English Catholics. Yet Uptake is not Marlowe; his trajectory is, finally, very different. Rather than taking to the business of spying with gusto, Uptake is riven with doubts. He suffers from stabs of conscience and from guilt at the thought of what his spying may lead to for the Catholics taken and tortured by the Elizabethan secret police. Uptake is a reluctant spy, caught in a net where his cooperation is ensured by threats to himself and his family. He is represented as a miserable collaborator with a harshly repressive state regime.

It's a long way from the swashbuckling image of Marlowe the dramatist, with the "high astounding terms" of his bravura verse, his reputed love of "tobacco and boys", and the boast that "he had as good a right to coin as the Queen of England and ... meant through help of a cunning stamp-maker to coin French crowns, pistolets and English shillings". I have to confess to having fallen half in love with this version of Marlowe when I was sixteen and first discovered Tamberlaine the Great. In the preface to my secondhand copy of his Collected Works was a reproduction of the infamous Baines Note, detailing Marlowe's supposed blasphemies. That, for example, "all Protestants are hypocritical asses", and "if he were put to write a new religion he would undertake both a more excellent and admirable method" as "all the New Testament if filthily written". Like the later Marx, he argued that "the beginnings of religion was only to keep men in awe", and that "Moses was a juggler". Doubts have been cast on how much of this was really Marlowe's opinions and how much was malicious slander - but I was hooked: by the poetry, the drama, and the blasphemies.

Reading "Christopher Uptake", I wondered whether Susan Price had set out to write about Marlowe and then found that she couldn't make it work. Simply couldn't find a way "in" to a character who was so obviously intelligent and free-thinking and yet came to work as a spy for the government, betrayed those he had feigned friendship with, professed a Catholic faith only to entrap and incriminate others. Perhaps she just couldn't prevent the guilt and the doubt overwhelming her Christopher, unlike the historical one, to the point where he had to become Uptake rather than Marlowe.  It seems curious, otherwise, to stick so closely to the original and yet give her character's story such a different resolution. Certainly the book made me think much more deeply than I have before about what it would have been like to live in the time of Elizabeth I, what it really meant to be surrounded by such a strong network of spies and agents provocateurs, to live in the middle of rumour, plots, counterplots, agents and double-agents. It would have been, I think, a little like living in Berlin at the height of the Cold War. Uptake is a young man who wants to be left alone, doesn't want to do anyone any harm; yet in such times it's hard to stay neutral, and Christopher struggles in the sticky webs laid by the Queen's spymasters.

I was really gripped by Christopher's predicament, by his moral dilemmas and justifications, as well as his attempts to limit the damage he has done. Price does an excellent job of making his world believable, making us care about Christopher, making us desperate for him to escape the clutches of the sinister spy, Bagthorpe. It's a book that lives on in the imagination after it's read, and it certainly made me think again about the real Christopher Marlowe and what he may or may not have done in the service of the unscrupulous Sir Francis Walsingham (pictured).

I think there are ways to understand Marlowe's role as a spy, particularly when you remember that England at the time was a small and insecure island, surrounded by great Catholic powers simply waiting for a chance to invade. It was a crueller time, life was more fragile and more contingent. But Susan Price's Christopher is a fine creation that certainly serves as a challenge to anyone who admires the playwright: what made Marlowe choose differently from Uptake?


Cecilia Busby writes as C.J. Busby
She is the author of Frogspell, Cauldron Spells, Ice Spell and Swordspell
www.frogspell.co.uk

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Song Hunter by Sally Prue. Reviewed by Ann Turnbull

Hands up those lucky people who managed to get a ticket for the current Ice Age exhibition at the British Museum!  The popularity of this exhibition shows how much appeal this vast unrecorded period of history has for us today.

I failed to get a ticket, but I did go to the museum's bookshop and buy a copy of Song Hunter.  Sally Prue's new book is about Mica, one of a small family group of Neanderthals - or stonemen, as they call themselves - struggling to survive as the climate begins to change and an ice age approaches.

Mica is a teenage girl and, like any teenager, she's rebellious, her brain is developing fast and her mind is full of new ideas.  She has always been different from the rest of her group, and it becomes clear that her unknown father was one of the people they call the howlmen.  Her arguments with her family will be familiar to teenagers of any time, and so will the changing nature of the affection she and her childhood friend Bear feel for each other as they grow up.  The dialogue is modern and colloquial, and it works well.

Mica's ideas alarm her people, who are resistant to change - even though change is essential.  Mica hears the voices of the howlmen calling in the valley and finds a pebble etched by a howlman with a drawing of a reindeer.  In the scene where she examines this object we share her puzzled amazement as she gradually realises what exactly the reindeer is: not, as she first thinks, a tiny living animal inside the stone, but a representation of an animal - something she has never seen, or even thought of, before.

After this experience, Mica's mind and imagination expand rapidly, and although there is plenty of danger and adventure to come, this is essentially the story of her growing awareness and understanding, and of the imaginative leaps she makes.  The writing is beautiful, poetic, and full of the wonder of reality.

An attractive cover, clear font and short chapters add to the pleasure of this book.  And there is a satisfying surprise towards the end of the story.



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The Tygrine Cat by Inbali Iserles: reviewed by Gillian Philip

A young orphan who finds himself lost and alone in an unfamiliar world, yet fated to fulfil a destiny that's his alone, Mati comes from an illustrious tradition of children's heroes. The fact that he is an Abyssinian cat won't stand in the way of any human child empathising and rooting for him all the way on this thrilling and beautifully written adventure story.

From the haunting prologue, when his mother the Tygrine Queen sacrifices herself to the Suzerain's assassins to save her son, I was engrossed in Mati's dangerous but fascinating world. She sends him away on a ship as a bewildered stowaway who can remember nothing of his mother, and when he finally slips down the gangplank at London's Cressida Lock his adventures truly begin. It's one of those starts-with-an-earthquake-and-builds-to-a-climax plots that plunges you straight into the action and never lets go until the final thrilling (and spine-tingling) denouement.

The Sa Mau and the Tygrine are tribes that have been at war since time immemorial, but the ancient conflict is still very much alive, and still has ramifications for every cat in the world. Neither Mati nor his new friends, the feral cats of Cressida Lock, know just how important he is, and that puts every cat at a terrifying disadvantage when a deadly assassin, Mithos, tracks Mati to his new home. Mithos is a fabulous creation, and as someone who loves a good Bad Guy, I think he's a splendid addition to the pantheon of villains.

If it's a tough job to create unique and individual characters out of a tribe of cats, Inbali Iserles doesn't show it. Every single cat has not just a distinct personality but an important individual role to play in the story. I loved them all, bad and good: from the leaders of the two warring London clans, Pangur and Hanratty, to the conflicted Binjax and the lost but brave housecat Jess. I especially liked the fact that there's nothing straightforward in the relationships in the story. Domino is a loyal friend - until, under peer pressure, he suddenly isn't. Binjax is a bully and a sneak who can still surprise. Some cats 'own' - and have responsibility for - humans; some will have nothing to do with them. The humans who share the cats' territory and lives are all individuals too. I particularly loved Sparrow, the old eccentric cat who takes Mati under his wing and keeps the faith when no-one else does.

The supernatural world of Fianey and the gods and myths that exist alongside Mati's world are not just entirely convincing, they are beautifully drawn. Inbali Iserles writes like a charm; The Tygrine Cat is one of those books where you can enjoy not just the story but every sentence. I can't imagine there's a young cat-lover - or indeed an older story-lover - who won't be enchanted by it.

The Tygrine Cat was published in 2007 and has a sequel, The Tygrine Cat On The Run. They both deserve a much wider audience.


The Tygrine Cat by Inbali Iserles
www.gillianphilip.com




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There Must Be Horses by Diana Kimpton. Reviewed by Ann Turnbull

As soon as I got hold of this book I wanted to read it.  It looks good, with an appealing cover, soft cream pages and a clear font.

The story is about Sasha, an emotionally damaged twelve-year-old in care.  Sasha and her social worker are on their way to a temporary foster home after yet another placement has failed.  The social worker is tired.  Sasha is stroppy.  She didn't get on with the people she'd been living with, but something good had come out of that experience: she'd been able to have riding lessons.  Sasha loves horses - and now she dreads another change.

But when they arrive she finds that her new foster carers, Beth and Joe, train and rehabilitate difficult horses.  Sasha is allowed to help care for the horses - in particular one named Meteor.  Sasha builds a special bond with Meteor, who has been badly treated in the past and is wary and fearful.  With Joe's guidance, she learns how to get him to trust her.

Sasha longs to stay with Beth and Joe, and she tries desperately to make herself indispensable to them so that they will want to keep her.  But within a few weeks her social worker tells her she has found her a new, permanent home.  Sasha is distraught.  Why don't Beth and Joe want her?  What can she do to make them change their minds?

I was gripped by this story right from the start.  It's so involving, so emotionally intense, that it sweeps you along with it and is almost impossible to put down.  Everything is seen through Sasha's eyes, and the drama comes from the powerful feelings she experiences but can't express.

It's written in a clear, simple style that makes the story very accessible.  And what a refreshing change it is to read something written in the third person, past tense, with no changes of viewpoint and a straightforward narrative.

I think any horse-mad girl (or boy) would gobble this story up.  But you don't need to be a horse-lover to enjoy it.  I'm not, but I loved reading about the horses and learned a lot about how they behave and how to care for them.  There are no villains here, and no unlikely adventures.  It all rings true, and it builds to a tense and highly-charged ending.  I've always said I'm one of those readers who never cry - but I did with this one.

Available from Amazon in a print edition or as a Kindle e-book.



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Waterslain Angels by Kevin Crossley-Holland. Reviewed by Ann Turnbull.

There were once fourteen angels in the hammerbeam roof of Waterslain church.  The carved wooden figures, painted in vermilion, green and orange, were taken down and hidden at the time of the Civil War to save them from destruction by Cromwell's soldiers.  And now - in 1955 - no one knows where they are.

Ten-year-old Annie goes with her parents to a display about the history of the village.  One of the exhibits there is a beautiful carved angel wing, found in the attic of the vicarage.  At the same event Annie meets Sandy - a newcomer to the village but whose mother was a Waterslain girl - and the two children soon join forces and become determined to solve the mystery of the lost angels.

Annie begins to dream of angels, and in her dreams she makes discoveries and gains insights into the secret of where they might be hidden and who else is seeking them.

At a simple level, this is a mystery story with two brave children, clues, a race against time, and a villain who may get to the angels before they do.  But it's much more than that.  For a start there is Waterslain itself, the village by the sea, which holds within it all the history of the people who have lived there: people like John Chisel, the man who carved the angels; the rector who hid them; the people who remembered the story over the years; the American airmen (one of them Sandy's father - an airman, and a wingman) who lived and died there during the Second World War.  Then there is the wider landscape of the north Norfolk coastline.  Annie's world is one of sand dunes, rocks and shining water, shrimps and boats and seaweed, lovingly and beautifully described.

Annie herself is bold and resourceful and lets nothing deflect her from the quest.  She's a great heroine, and imaginative children will be thrilled by this story while responding to the power of Kevin Crossley-Holland's writing.  It's a book for children but adults will enjoy it too, especially those who know and love Norfolk.

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Moon Pie by Simon Mason

Reviewed by Jackie Marchant

This is a lovely middle grade book, about a girl with a hopeless father.  At first it seems like he’s been a little bit off-balance since losing their mother and his antics are amusing, while Martha’s eleven-year-old determination to take charge is endearing.  Her five year old brother Tug is a happy-go-lucky child who brings a lot of warmth and humour.  Things might not be perfect, but you can see there is a strong family bond and they’ll get by, despite the interfering grandparents.

But then things get darker.  Dad’s ‘antics’ become embarrassing and his excuses are no longer acceptable.  He begins to neglect his children, then, after an embarrassing incident, Martha realises that his problems are due to drinking.  She decides to take charge and help her father come off the booze – but it isn’t easy.  Her father now starts deceiving her as well himself and things spiral out of control, until social services are brought in and Martha and Tug go and live with their interfering grandparents.

Although life is much easier now, the two are not happy.  Martha is conflicted about her feelings for her father and Tug is uncomfortable in the new regime of discipline.  The only is hope is that their father can sort himself out, but his behaviour has become so bad that he has a court order preventing him from seeing them.

Despite the bleakness of the story at times, it is still full of warmth and humour, and it will have you smiling happily one moment, sadly the next.  There are some wonderful moments with Martha’s best friend Marcus, a cross-dressing thespian, who is a brilliantly drawn character. 

It is a realistic story about the problems of dealing with an alcoholic parent, beautifully written and a joy to read.  

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THE GHOST DRUM by Susan Price. Reviewed by Ann Turnbull

"In that country the snow falls deep and lies long, lies and freezes until bears can walk on its thick crust of ice.  The ice glitters on the snow like white stars in a white sky!  In the north of that country all the winter is one long night, and all that long night long, the sky-stars glisten in their darkness, and the snow-stars glitter in their whiteness, and between the two there hangs a shivering curtain of cold twilight."

In 1987 Susan Price won the Carnegie Award for The Ghost Drum.  It seems inexplicable that this powerful, original fantasy was ever allowed to go out of print.  Fortunately it is now available once again as a Kindle e-book, with a stylish new cover designed by Andrew Price.

The origins of this story lie in northern legends and folk tales, especially the folklore of Russia.  There are witches and shamans, an evil Czar who rules over a population of peasant slaves, a prince locked in a tower and a young witch who sets out to rescue him.

In the peasants' house where Chingis, the witch-to-be, is born, it is so cold at night that the whole family must sleep huddled together, lying on blankets, on top of the big tiled stove.  Far away is the padded, silent, jewelled world of the Czar's palace - a place of cruelty and fear, where Safa the Czarevich can never set foot beyond the round wall of the tower room where he was born.  Years pass.  Safa's spirit cries out for escape, and Chingis hears it:

"Stepping from her body, her spirit grasped the thread of the cry and flew on it, like a kite on a line, to the Imperial Palace, to the highest tower, to the enamelled dome."

In a passage of extreme tension Susan Price describes the progress of the witch as she makes her way, invisible, through the palace and up the stairs to the locked room where Safa is imprisoned.

There is no sentimentality here.  Good characters are killed, evil ones triumph.  But alongside the real world is the ghost world where powerful spirits await their chance to return to the world of the living.

The writing is beautiful and the pace perfect.  This is a very visual book that leaves the reader with a wealth of images: the snowy landscape, the forests, the witch with her shaman's drum - and her house on chicken's legs that becomes restless when it senses danger, raking up the snow with its claws and banging its door.  The story is compelling, and it's the detail that brings it to life.

The Ghost Drum would be enjoyed by children of about nine and over - and by adults.  Books 2 and 3 in the series, Ghost Song and Ghost Dance, are also available as Kindle e-books.




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The Children of Green Knowe by L. M. Boston. Reviewed by Ann Turnbull

I first read this book when I was thirteen.

It's about a lonely little boy, seven-year-old Tolly, who comes to live with his great-grandmother, Mrs Oldknow, in her ancient family manor house.  There, from time to time, he encounters the ghosts of three children who lived there in the past.  Tolly longs to know these children, to be included in their games and secrets, but he can never be sure when they will appear.  Gradually, his great-grandmother reveals their stories to him, and Tolly comes to feel that he too belongs.

What I loved when I first read this book, and still do, was that trio of elusive, ghostly children: Toby, Alexander and Linnet.  Toby has a horse named Feste, whose presence still haunts the stables.  Alexander plays the flute and sings like an angel - and snippets of old songs occur throughout the story.  Linnet can tame wild animals and birds.  And it all takes place in an old house and a garden full of statues, pools and topiary, transformed by snow at Christmas.

The atmosphere is mysterious and magical - yet sometimes frightening.  The house seems alive.  The rooms are dark, with strange carvings.  Outside, in the garden, is a guardian statue, the St Christopher.  And there is the tree known as Green Noah, which seems to embody evil.  My son, who read this book when he was about nine, says he found it enjoyably scary.

At heart this is a story of desire and longing for something just out of reach.  Here is Tolly in Feste's stall: "He crouched there trying to imagine that the stall was occupied by the warm silky body of a horse, feet stamping in straw, hindquarters fidgeting, tail swishing, and a great rolling black eye that could see backward and forward at the same time, half covered by mane and forelock.  He tried so passionately to imagine it, to see, hear and smell it, that the wonder is that no horse was there."

This is a classic story that no child should miss.

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The Weirdstone of Brisingamen and The Moon of Gomrath: 'reviewed' by Gillian Philip

Way back in the mists of time, my parents took me and my brother on holiday to Alderley Edge. There were only two reasons we'd chosen the place that summer, had insisted on it, and those were Alan Garner's books, set so firmly in the landscape.

We visited The Wizard (too young then to go in for a pint), raced around on the Edge itself, and drank from the Wizard's Well ("Drink of this and take thy fill, for the water falls by the Wizard's will"). My brother and I were emphatic: no water had ever tasted like it. I remember my mother rolling her eyes at my father, and saying, "Isn't it lovely to be young?"

We thought she was taking the mickey, and protested as much. She insisted she was perfectly serious. Now, of course, I know exactly what she meant, and with the benefit of hindsight I agree. It was damned lovely to be young, and immortal, and right there in a place where the enchantment was ready-woven.

I don't want to go back. I believe that these days, should I run three times widdershins round the Devil's Grave, I'd be as likely to rouse Wayne Rooney as a svart. And when I searched for Creative Commons images for this post, I was offered several eyeball-gouging photos of orange women having beauty treatments. It's not exactly the Mara. (But I did find some absolute beauties of the landscape, too.)

I was almost as hesitant about re-reading the books. It's not that I haven't read them several times over the years, but suddenly another visit became more imperative. Now, Garner himself is by some accounts a little dismissive of The Weirdstone in particular: Colin and Susan are notoriously two-dimensional; some of the language is a little flowery; it all belongs to another time, literary as well as linear.

But Alan Garner's BONELAND comes out in August. I can't tell you how excited I am. The Moon of Gomrath ends on what nowadays would be considered an unsustainable cliffhanger - unsustainable for fifty-odd years, anyway, which is how long it's taken Alan Garner to come up with Book Three. We were never promised another book (quite the reverse, in fact), but I always ached for a conclusion. And now we're getting one.

So in preparation, back I went to the books that in large part defined my childhood. Did I regret it? Not for a moment. Do I feel qualified to analyse and criticise at the distance of all those years? Nope. Did I abandon work and my children for two days, just to find out yet again what I knew was going to happen? Hell, yeah.

I'm not even going to mention the plot, either the parts that terrify or the parts that make me blub. If you already love them, you know those bits; if you don't, I'd hate to spoil it.

I read The Owl Service and Elidor, and though I loved them, and can appreciate that they are 'better' books, they didn't grab me by the guts in the same way the Alderley books did. I should really get around to Red Shift and Thursbitch, too. But I doubt they'll ever have the place in my heart Alderley did.

Actually, some day maybe I will take my life in my hands and go back to Alderley. The fact is that, because of the enduring power of those books, I can still almost believe that svarts and palugs and bodachs lurk there even now, in the mines and the woods and the bogs.

And far below the Edge, there'll be those knights and their milk-white mares, waiting out the centuries for their terrible moment.

The Weirdstone of Brisingamen: Alan Garner
The Moon of Gomrath: Alan Garner

www.gillianphilip.com
www.facebook.com/gillianphilipauthor




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A HEN IN THE WARDROBE by Wendy Meddour. Reviewed by Ann Turnbull

Ramzi has a problem.  His dad is sleepwalking.  He comes into Ramzi's bedroom in the middle of the night and searches for a hen in the wardrobe.  He climbs a tree in the garden in his pyjamas while dreaming that he's a snow leopard.

Something has to be done.

The doctor diagnoses homesickness and says it's time Dad went home for a holiday.  Dad is a Berber and his home is a small town in the mountains of Algeria.  It's a long journey, and a big change for Ramzi and his English mum.

Back with his extended family, Dad soon begins to feel happier.  Life in his home town is very different from life in suburban Cinnamon Grove in England.  It's noisy.  There are loud calls to prayer before dawn and parties that go on till late at night with drums beating, women ululating and guns firing in celebration.  At first Ramzi and his mum enjoy themselves.  Ramzi makes friends with his cousins and his Uncle Kader and sees off the local bully.  But before long there is a new problem: Dad wants to stay, but Mum and Ramzi want to go home.

A number of strange remedies are tried, but when at last they do go home it is Ramzi, with the help of his Uncle Kader, who finds a solution that keeps everyone happy.

This is a cheerful, zany story, with illustrations by the author that add greatly to its charm.  It shows people of different races and religions sharing a neighbourhood; parents and children who play games together; and neighbours who look after each other.  There are hints of a darker side.  Ramzi is bullied in both England and Algeria for being 'different'; and at airport security Dad is taken away for questioning for no apparent reason.  But this is not in any way a book that thumps home its messages.  It leaves you with a warm glow and a strong sense of how people ought to live in a community and, indeed, do live most of the time.

This book is the first of a series, and the second one, The Black Cat Detectives, will be published in August 2012.

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Dragons & Monsters, by Matthew Reinhart and Robert Sabuda. Reviewed by John Dougherty

Dragons & Monsters is the third and final part of Reinhart's and Sabuda's Encyclopedia Mythologica series, and I don't mind admitting it's difficult for me to know exactly how to review this book. Do I approach it as an information text, a pop-up book, a work of art, or a feat of engineering?

In truth, I could describe it as any of those. It's certainly informative; each page is packed with information about monsters from legend - classical; European; Eastern: it's all here. It's interesting, and comes in bite-sized chunks so you can dip into it or read through, whichever takes your fancy.

Or, come to that, you can ignore the informative text - I wouldn't, but it won't be what catches your eye immediately. What you'll notice first is the pop-ups. Well - I say 'pop-ups', but that's a little like calling the Taj Mahal 'a building'. Each double-page is dominated by a spectacularly unfolding monster that appears too big to have fitted into the book. 

And this is where both 'work of art' and 'feat of engineering' come into the equation, because I'm not exaggerating when I call the monsters spectacular. They really are. As the book opens, so does Medusa's mouth, displaying her fearsome fangs. On other pages, a great dragon rears up, unfurling its wings; a coffin lid rises to reveal an emerging vampire; an enormous yeti stands tall, towering over the page, and lifts its fists threateningly. They are - as my daughter says - amazing. And if that was all the pop-uppery on display, that would be sufficient such amazement for one book. However, on each double-page at least one and sometimes as many as three of the text boxes are in fact little pop-up leaflets hiding another monster or two, each one skilfully engineered to make children & adults alike say, "Wow!"

Seriously, if you get the chance, grab a copy of this book. It's not cheap - £19.99 in hardback - but considering the craft that's gone into it and the pleasure you'll get from it, not to mention its value as a talking point, you'll consider it well worth it.

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'The Bother in Burmeon' by S.P. Moss - reviewed by Rosalie Warren

 

The Bother in Burmeon is, in my opinion, an excellent children's book. But it's one that you may not otherwise have come across, and I think it deserves wider attention - so here goes!

S.P. Moss's debut novel is aimed at 9-12s. And what a tale it is! Young Billy, staying with his gran, finds a kaleidoscope in a box of toys in what used to be his mother's bedroom. Rather an interesting kaleidoscope as it happens, since, when Billy turns it, he is whisked back to 1962. There he meets a dashing young RAF pilot who turns out to be Billy's granddad and who, in the present day, has been dead for the past twelve years.

In spite of the shock, it doesn' t take Billy long to find his feet (and his wings, as it were) in 1962, and soon he's on the way with Grandpop to the depths of South East Asia, where he pilots a flying boat, rescues a captive tiger, comes face to face with an Indian cobra and pits his wits against a mad dictator...

It's all very real - certainly not a dream - and very convincing to read. S. P. Moss knows her stuff about the RAF (I know - I'm an RAF crewman's daughter) and she has the language of 1962 and the sights and smells of that long-lost age off pat (again, I know... my memory just about goes back that far!)

But in spite of the retro feel there is nothing old-fashioned about this tale - certainly nothing slow and ponderous. Billy's adventures unfold at (at least) Mach 3 - and whatever your age, you'll be chewing your knuckles with the excitement of it all long before the thrilling (and rather moving) end.

Climb aboard, hold tight, prepare for take-off... whoosh! away we go....

With Billy and Grandpop for company, flying out over enemy territory to battle with beasts, baddies and bombs, you'll have tons of fun with no need for screens, apps and computer games.

(And I should add that this adventure is great for girls as well as boys - yet another of those books I wish had been around when I was young!)

The Bother in Burmeon has its own wonderful website, too.

Well done to S. P. Moss and here's wishing her lots of success. Let's hope she has some sequels in the pipeline...


Title: The Bother in Burmeon
Author: S. P. Moss
Age-range: 9-12 approx
Publication date: 2012
Publisher: Circaidy Gregory Press
Price: £7.49 (paperback version); £4.11 (Amazon Kindle version). EPub edition
is available from Foyles, Blackwells and all the Hive Network stores - see publisher's website for detail.

 The Bother in Burmeon is also available direct from the publisher, Circaidy Gregory Press

This review first appeared on my own blogsite, Rosalie Reviews, a few weeks ago.

Happy reading
Best wishes
Ros

Follow me on Twitter @Ros_Warren

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Blogging regularly, with reviews for young and old, at Rosalie Reviews
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