Rita Wong and the Jade Mask by Mark Jones and Seamus Jennings (Children's, 9 years +, 8/10E)

 

September 2021, Everything With Words, pages, Paperback, Review copy 

Book summary from Everything With Words

Rita Wong leads an ordinary existence sipping hot chocolate in Morecambe. That is until a dragon called Lester Thyme crosses her path. He leads her to a place known as Neon City where the streets are dark with magic. Between the two of them, Lester and Rita become detectives for hire. Their case involves stolen goods, and will see them meet femme fatales, crime bosses and a whole host of monsters. Although amateurs in the crime detection business, Rita and Lester will need to learn fast if they want to survive the week.

Nayu's thoughts

I love a good mystery, and there is certainly one in Rita's adventures. The book starts with meeting the villain who did scare me in how evil he is. I wanted to scream 'no' when he was allowed out of prison because obviously it was a bad idea. My main interest was Rita, who is an amusing girl with interesting observations. Only she would notice a dragon outside the cafe she was in, a dragon who was not having a good time of it. I truly loved how the alternate world in Neon City was, it was mostly similar to ours but with different surroundings and loads of non-human species. I liked how the social security system was explored, because many have to use it in real life so Lester's experience was entirely believable. 

He gets on well with Rita who is forthright when dealing with others, which ends up with Lester getting the detective job and getting an extremely fat sum of money despite not being officially qualified. Lester's experience of life in general and Rita's observations and wit help them be a great pair. The dialogue chats between them and others are entertaining. Unfortunately, it is because of how good a match they are that the book score isn't higher. At times the book felt disjointed with the various switching to other characters. There were several times when Lester and Rita were apart, and Lester did not seem to think of Rita much at all in his thoughts, which seems odd given how close they became. Lester became self-centred and considering how much I love Rita I thought this was odd.

Apart from that the story itself is cleverly woven, with hints at the start revealed at the end which has me looking forward to rereading it and seeing a book 2 in the series. Seamus's illustrations were at key points that faciliated getting a great depiction of certain characters. Familiar character types such as vampires are used in a way that focuses on their stereotype nature in a good way and makes them seem dangerous. As well as the obvious villain there is another lurking in the background which bodes well for future books (well as in there will hopefully be some and Rita & Lester will be in great danger). At times the other world which when Rita is in it means that time doesn't pass in the human world, was a bit too odd for my tastes in an Alice in Wonderland kind of weirdness, but overall I liked it and am looking forward to where Rita and Lester's adventures take them.

 See more from Seamus's illustrations on his website. 

 

Check out a guest blog post from Mark about the book on Nayu's Reading Corner here. 

Suggested read

If you love murder mysteries check out Review: I Have a Hunch by Jeremy Decoursey (Children's, 9 years +, cosy mystery, 10/10E)