The Queen of Dreams by Peter Hamilton (Children's, 11 years +, 9/10E)

2nd January 2014, Random House Children's

304 pages, Hardback

Review copy

Contents: Fantasy, magic, mild violence, tension, time travel

Summary from Random House Children's

Taggie and Jemima are summer holidaying on their dad's farm, when they see a white squirrel wearing glasses . . . and soon after their father is captured and trapped in a faerie world that's fallen to Darkness.

But why would anybody want to kidnap boring old Dad, especially the dreaded King of Night? Could it be that their family isn't quite as ordinary as they believed?

The Mole's Review 

When I picked this up the first thing that struck me from the synopsis was the squirrel wearng glasses. Many synopses focus on kids with special abilities that are making them extra special to save the world but this one focuses on a squirrel with glasses - underlining that with this book you are going to suspend disbelief and immerse yourself in a fun adventure and leave any stress behind you. The bad guys are undoubtedly bad and the good guys are a bit unusual. Normally bad guys are just 'wiped out' of the story - turned to dust, vapourised, killed - but here the good guys go to great lengths to defeat the baddies without loss of life. It's a nice twist but I'm not sure how well it works with the reader as a plot device -what are they going to do with all these bad guys?

A book that will certainly appeal to it's target readers and this is book 1 in the series, so there's more to come.

There are lots  of parallels to other stories - Alice in Wonderland, Narnia, Dr Who and so many others including Harry Potter but only occasionally to do you sense the parallel while reading - it does come over as an original work but readers will certainly find other books, both old and new, on the same themes to enjoy after reading this one.

Nayu here! Thanks for reviewing this Gerry - it looked too scary/weird for me. Glad it's good though!