The Servants
M.M. Smith
233 p.

HarperCollinsPublishers, 2008.
(first published by Earthling Publications, 2007.)

Back cover blurb:

Things are unreliable. Things break. Things fall apart.

Even at 11 years old, Mark knows this all too well.

By the time he moves out of London to the wintry Brighton seaside, the situation is already bad. His mother is ill, and Mark hates his new stepfather. There’s nothing to do and the new house feels nothing like home, filled with odd sounds and hidden rooms … and a strange old lady in the basement.

Shadows are soon gathering, as life goes from bad to worse. Mark knows he has to do soemthing, but he doesn’t know what. And the only people who might be able to help him … may not even exist.

This book was really expensive and I bought it without even being sure what it was about. Okay, so first I thought I wouldn’t buy it, but after picking up a less expensive book, I just turned around and picked out the book out of the bookcase again. What can I say? I am a very impulsive book buyer, as well as drawn to pretty things. And this was very pretty.

As I often do, I believed the story was set in the nineteenth century. When, on the first few pages, the boy talks about his skateboard, I started to feel a bit suspicious. Obviously it was not set in the nineteenth, but in the twentyfirst century. There were, however, bits of the nineteenth century in it. Through that, I was not at all disappointed. (which I often am, following these misbeliefs.)

And oh, it was such a pretty and homely book. Or, maybe homely gives the wrong impression. In many ways it was unsettling, but it had an atmosphere which felt very safe and at ease. So to speak. The story, about a boy whose mother has cancer, was obviously sad, but everything worked out and, somehow, I knew that would happen all along. It’s a hopeful book, and it is lovely.

Charmed Life
Diana Wynne Jones
252 p.

Collins, 2000.
(first published 1977 by Macmillan Children’s Books.)

Back cover blurb:

Welcome to the worlds of Chrestomanci where magic is as common as mathematics - and twice as troublesome in the wrong hands!

Everybody says that Gwendolyn Chant is a gifted witch with astonishing powers, so it suits her enormously when she is taken to live in Chrestomanci Castle. her brother Eric (better known as Cat) is not so keen, for he has no talent for magic at all.

However, life with the great enchanter and his family is not what either of them expects and sparks soon begin to fly…

There’s a badge on my copy of this book proudly saying Hotter than Potter!. I assume Collins added this badge to sell more copies, and seeing as my sister bought this novel eight years ago, I guess it worked. However, if they did it in order to make children actually read the novel, they have failed dramatically. This novel stood in my bookcase for eight years, merely because of that badge. Being a Potter fanatic during the turn of the millenia, I believed anything which claimed to be greater than Harry Potter must be awfully bad, because, obviously, Harry Potter was the best. This was the reasoning of a ten-year-old, mind you.

Admittedly, if it wasn’t Diana Wynne Jones who had written this book, I doubt I’d ever have read it. I have, since getting to know who she is, held in quite high esteem, even though I never have read anything by her before. Although many of my friends have read many of her books, I have never really got around to it. When I, in preparation of the summer, looked through my bookcase, I found this book, placed under W, as it should be. I thought that, seeing as the greatest Potter-era is over, I might as well read some children’s fantasy. Actually, it is here I admit that I in a way prefer children’s fantasy, because they are rarely as pretentious as adult fantasy often is. They are also a lot more fun to read, I think.

So, to begin with, I wasn’t very impressed with the book. I was vaguely interested during the first two chapters, but not much more. After the slow start, however, the book became more and more exciting. I spent a lot of time flailing because I disliked Gwendolyn so, and even more time cooing because I found Chrestomanci so amazing. He was so charming! The last few chapters I read with unbearable excitement. Magic! Gardens! Animals! Stuff! The magic teacher! I can’t really remember his name, but he was pretty awesome as well. This autumn I’ll have to read some more Wynne Jones. Maybe I should read Howl’s Moving Castle, so I can let my family watch the film some time…

Biggles Sees It Through
(in Biggles’ Big Adventures)
Captain W.E. Jones
186 p.

For Decades ‘08.

Prion, 2007.
(first published 1941)

Back cover blurb:

none

Biggles and his boys are in Finland, trying to do away with intruding Russian troops. Then they meet a Polish scientist, who has made great scientific advances about the atom bomb or something like that (all I understood is that it is something Very Important, and after getting the mission they don’t care about what is in the papers, really.), who has hidden away these papers, but must be retrieved by the British, so the Russian or German troops can’t get to them. Biggles, Algy and Ginger jump onto this chance like a crocodile jumps onto its food. Unfortunately, they don’t do very well. In the end they get the papers and they even survive, but before that they have won and lost the papers a number of times, of course to the evil von Stahlhein. They lose an unbelievable amount of aircrafts, but that is part of the charm. While trekking through an icy lake, Algy exclaims ‘D’you know, [...], I remember the time whn I used to do this sort of thing for fun. We called it a picninc.’ (354-355) This quote more or less sums up what happens in this novel. It is a very failed picnic.

But it hilarious. We have double-agents, smoking, Ginger stealing food, planes being lost, Biggles being chased by a bear. Could it be better?! Alright, maybe it could. Sometimes, the story trudges on quite slowly, and I, as a reader, am impatient to get on with the story. It is maybe my impatience, or perhaps some flaw of W.E. Jones’. Despite this sometime slow language, it is a hell of a story.

Biggles in the Baltic
(in Biggles’ Big Adventures)
Captain W.E. Jones
211 p.

For Decades ‘08.

Prion, 2007.
(first published 1940.)

Back cover blurb:

none

Biggles! Biggles, Biggles, Biggles. When I was young, the only proper series of childrens’ books I read was the Nancy Drew novels, which admittedly weren’t the most fascinating things ever, but they managed to pull me in, at least. Having read Biggles now, I feel that I ought to have spent my childhood reading those books. Not only would it have suited me much better as a person, but also they are better novels, with more rounded and convincing characters. Biggles? Pretty cool. Algy? Hilarious. Ginger? So cute. And an evil Nazi! It felt so remniscent of all these modern films where there are evil Nazis, Communists, etc., except this was from the time where the Third Reich was actually going on! Oh, I haven’t read much Second World War fiction, but I feel that a childrens’ novel from that time is good enough.

And everything was so British! And no one swore, even though people smoked quite a lot. The only thing I can say against this novel is that they had so much plane terminology which I’m not familiar with, but seeing as they are about planes, it isn’t that strange. Hopefully I will learn.

Plotwise, this novel is hilarious. They are hiding in a rock and doing raids on German places now and then. I think they lose about five planes, and later they steal a German plane and people get stuck on the rock and everyone loses everyone else, and it is just brilliant. So over-the-top! When you think the novel should end, because everything is fixed, you realise there are another fifty pages, and something will go horribly awry before the novel ends. And, I think, because of all these crazy stuff that barely seems plausible, it is an extremely good story.