reviews Tom’s mental


14+Secondary/Adult continued faculties


are unimpaired, however he can only


communicate this to the reader, which is particularly dramatic when his doctor begins discussions with Tom’s parents about turning off his life-support machines. When his treacherous friend Milo - a consummate computer gamer -unscrupulously inserts a hitherto untested gaming prototype in his ear, Tom’s adventures into a virtual reality begin. He meets Emily-Lady Augusta in her own created literary world-and together they plunge into a conflict-drenched adventure with more than a whiff of Game of Thrones. Characters are many and varied and all scrupulously created, with only the occasional glimmer of stereotyping. Emily does battle for her wild moorland kingdom: Tom fights because it is infinitely preferable to the living death which he has been enduring. The pair fall in love and when, after all their machinations, their battle is lost it is to the Bronte-created kingdom of Gondal they plan to flee. They must first escape from the virtual world in which Miles has placed Tom and this section of the book takes Emily to the future and both of them to the brink of annihilation. The intricate and intriguing plot is driven by drama, by ancient rites of passage and by magic. Tom’s nurse, a shaman since birth, senses that he is leaving earthly realms and draws him back- to the ‘real’ world and an awakening from his unconscious state. With a distant echo of Heathcliff and Cathy, Tom and Emily never forget the ties they knew and her spirit returns to him as a source both of comfort and of loss. This is a challenging book- but a rewarding one too. VR


Only the Ocean HHHH


Natasha Carthew, Bloombury, 272pp, 9781408868607, £12.99 hbk


This book is narrated from the viewpoint of Kel Crow, a troubled teenager who comes from the Swamps, a slum in an unidentified country. People from the Swamps are usually criminals and are in all cases not highly regarded as contrasted with the elite population of the Towers. The two worlds of the Swamps and the Towers never mix. Kel’s family, the Crows, are the most notorious criminals in the crime-ridden Swamps, a family of drug runners. Kel has a medical problem, namely an enlarged heart. She needs treatment and must find the necessary money. To raise the cash, she undertakes a dangerous mission, agreeing to kidnap the daughter of a notorious arms trader. The daughter, despite her sordid origins, is an inhabitant of the Towers. When Kel and Rose, the kidnapped


daughter, are in a stolen boat, they find themselves shipwrecked and must cooperate to save their lives. The novel poses two questions. Will Kel and Rose survive? If they do, how will their relationship change?


The Key to Flambards HHHHH Carthew’s characters are strong


and convincingly depicted. The reader becomes genuinely attached to Kel and Rose. The novel also touches on some critical


issues such as


rape and incest. There is however a purely practical difficulty in reading the book. The story is told in part as a Joycean stream of consciousness. Punctuation is rare. It is too easy for a reader to become disoriented and lose track of the narrative. If this is true of an experienced book reviewer, imagine how much more dislocating the reading experience will be for a young teenage reader. It is possible that some young readers might find the task of reading the book too onerous and abandon it, a fate which Carthew really does not deserve. RB


Impostors HHHH


Scott Westerfield, Scholastic, 405pp, 9781407188225, £7.99pbk


Scott Westerfield is a prolific writer for teens and has made a name for himself with a variety of dystopian series. This book is the first in a new series that follows on in the same world as the series Uglies. Having said this, I do not think that you need to have read his previous works in order to enjoy the current offering, although it would no doubt add some depth to the overall of the worlds and conflicting powers. The central character in this book is Frey, the twin sister of Rafi and her body double. While Rafi has been brought up as the pampered daughter of the leader, Frey has been hidden away and trained as a fighter in case she needs to stand in for her sister; well that time has come and Frey is sent on a dangerous diplomatic mission in place of her sister. However she finds that events are not as simple and straightforward as she would have wishes and her loyalties are stretched, particularly when she meets Col, the son of a rival leader. This is a fascinating story which


takes the idea of a substitute to an extreme. The concept is quite popular in teen fiction, but usually the person is a clone and there is no true connection. However in this story it is only a matter of 26 minutes that separate these two girls and their roles were truly dependent on the luck of the draw. For me, this makes the whole situation even more chilling as we begin to understand that in reality Frey can trust no one, because she is seen as expendable. Westerfield is an excellent storyteller and the plot pulls you along at a fast pace.


You


also develop an empathy with the main character and hope that she will be able to unravel the complex plots that surround her. It I a story about family and how bad that can be, which leads to having to reassess your life and what is important. I look forward to seeing what happens in the following books. MP


Linda Newbery, David Fickling Books, 310pp, 9781788450041,


£12.99 hbk


This book is designed as a sequel to the series by K.M.Peyton known as the Flambards novels. The book is positioned after the end of the final book in the Peyton series. The narrator is Grace Alice Forbes-Russell, a descendant of Christina, Peyton’s protagonist. Grace is aged fourteen, a city girl. She has always been good at running. One day while she is running she is hit by a car. As a result of the accident one of her legs has to be amputated below the knee. The next summer Grace’s mother takes her to a country mansion named Flambards. This is her mother’s ancestral home, now become a retreat for artists. Grace’s mother has been appointed publicity manager


for the project. Unless


she is successful in raising money to support the retreat, the site and its extensive lands will be sold to developers. Newbery’s novel poses two questions. Can Flambards be saved? And how will Grace adjust to her new life as an amputee? The novel has a protagonist with a visible impairment, namely the amputation. This in itself is something of a rarity in YA fiction, where disabled characters usually play a minor role, or none at all. Newbery also depicts an unusual range of sentiments on


Grace’s behalf. Her She learns negative


feelings about life as an amputee are presented with complete candour. For instance Grace’s parents have separated.


that her


father’s new partner is pregnant. Will her father still love Grace if he has a perfect new child in her place? It is a chilling reflection, and utterly convincing. As often with Newbery, there are many references


to war. Grace’s


research into the family history of Flambards brings her face to face with many warriors. One of them is named Fergus. He was a combat pilot, shot down in World War One and severely burnt. Grace finds a recorded interview in which he describes horrified children recoiling from him. His bravery inspires Grace to confront her own condition. One of the Flambards employees


is a veteran of the Afghan war, barely coping with the traumatic heritage of that conflict. His struggle and the impact on his family are explored with care and sensitivity. This novel


can be read at


several different levels, either as a straightforward narrative or a spiritual voyage. It is not necessary that a new reader should have read the Peyton predecessors. The launch of Newbery’s book was held at Copped Hall in Epping, the model for The Shell House. RB


This is an inspired Three Strikes HHHHH


Lucy Christopher, Kat Ellis, Rhian Ivory. Firefly, 368pp, 978 1 9100 8086 3, £7.99 pbk


collection of


novellas since it both entertains and provides tasters of the work of three talented authors. Lucy Christopher’s The Darkness cleverly plays with the modern tropes of self-discovery and reality TV, creating a claustrophobic and unsettling environment in which the


characters are manipulated,


abandoned and left to fall back on their often fragile self-reliance. Kasha feels responsible for the death


of her mentally unstable mother, killed by the device she had made to trap the wild black cat she was convinced was stalking her. When Kasha sees an advert


for The Tribe, a psychological


programme designed to assist in overcoming personal trauma, she persuades her mother’s partner to pay for the course and embarks on it with her best friend Sam. When the programme’s organisers-drug smugglers-vanish and the participants must try to escape we observe the


group dynamics unfold


through Kasha’s eyes. The Twins Of Blackfin opens with


Bo sitting by her friend Sky’s grave at midnight, conversing with her just as she did when Sky was alive. When she sees the town’s four most notorious thugs she hides but then notices their glazed, other-worldly expressions. She is puzzled but puts her observation down to the strange occurences which pervade the town. However, when her twin


brothers’ lives are threatened


she determines to discover the source of the trance which descends on the town’s inhabitants every night and, in so doing, she uncovers and solves the mystery of another set of twins,long dead, but desperate to be reunited. This is a fast-paced, ingenious narrative which avoids the cliches of the conventional ghost story-and, most entertainingly of all, is threaded through with wry humour. Rhian Ivory’s interpretation of Hans Christian Anderson’s The Little Match Girl centres on Nia, whose musician mother was killed when her car hit black ice. Her father, angry and grief- stricken, wrapped up in his loss and loneliness, refuses to let Nia use the formidable talent she has inherited from her mother. After she and her friend Sol were punished for breaking school rules her father, over-protective, terrified he might lose her too, forbids her to go on the Winter Tour which the choir she had worked so hard to get into was about to embark on. To make matters worse, Nia had been given a solo-which she was determined to perform. She decides to earn money by selling her woodcarvings and busking at the market, in order to pay for her own ticket to Innsbruk, where the choir are to perform. When she is mugged and robbed it is the light from the three matches she has with her which illuminate her mother’s memory and invoke her spirit to sing Nia to safety and to the rescuing arms and repentance of her father. VR


Books for Keeps No.233 November 2018 31


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32