Charlie Bone and the Castle of Mirrors

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Charlie acts so awkward in this one. It is so hard to stand. ( )

I'm still waiting for the series to sweep me off my feet, but it has yet to do so. While I loved reading the book and seeing certain characters develop, the story was very jumpy. So jumpy, in fact, that it became confusing. Highly climatic scenes were quickly described and brushed over in an attempt to keep the story moving. I really wish the author would have elaborated more and smoothed out the plot that seemed to get more and more tangled as the story continued. The book is enjoyable, but I don't see any improvement from the previous novel. ( )

Is this series going anywhere? My son highly recommends it, but so far it's doing nothing for me.... ( )

In some ways this installment is an improvement over the previous three. Nimmo actually seems to have anticipated aspects of the plot earlier in the series, and to be looking ahead to future volumes. However, it is still disappointing. Characters who are no longer needed for their one plot point simply disappear, objects of great attention in one book never reappear, and it is still the case that any new information about a character is quickly shown to be a vital plot point. Charlie Bone and the Invisible Boy ended with an incipient visit to Sparkling Castle. However, the castle, Ollie, and Mr. Boldova are not even discussed in the present volume. Christopher Crowquill comes out of nowhere and, his utility outlived, he disappears from the action. Inconsistencies and discontinuities abound. For example, the endowed can usually identify each other, but Cook has never been identified by the Bloors. A character whose endowment flowers in this volume is similarly not identified by the other endowed. We learn late in the book that a shapeshifter has the people he is impersonating held captive. There is some implication that this is not just to keep them out of the way, but to "borrow...the mind" of the person. Should we then suppose that Yolanda had a little blonde girl locked away somewhere earlier in the series? Charlie now speaks enough Welsh to command the wand, though we haven't seen him study the list Uncle Patton gave him. An evidently stupid endowed child puts on a cape, even knowing that various poisoned-clothes makers are about. There is much to-do about the child's rescue and how important it was to circumvent the staff of Bloor's; later, however, said child is recouperating in the Academy's infirmary, presumably vulnerable to the Bloors' influence, but no one cares about this. Why do the prisoner's captors sequester him at the castle? It seems pretty labor- and capital-intensive to do so. Charlie and some of the other endowed children remain at Bloor's Academy to keep the balance. Other endowed seem not to have this compulsion, either as children or adults. The endowed seem for the most part to be remarkably disorganized. The characters' lack of curiosity troubles me. The adults remain generally inadequate. Troublingly from a humanitarian perspective, Uncle Paton has received an inheritance, which he spends on gourmet food. Given that Amy Bone is under Grizelda's thumb because she lacks the economic resources to have her own house, Paton's behavior seems remarkably insensitive. In addition, there's something that rings a little racist to me in Lysander's repeated reference to his ancestors as "my African ancestors." If I were an endowed person from my own ethnic background, would it be necessary for me to refer again and again to invoking the spirits of "my Jewish ancestors"? "Don't worry, Charlie--I'll call upon the powers of my Jewish ancestors"? "Don't worry, Lysander--I'll call upon the powers of my WASP ancestors" Poor editing dogs this series. This volume again reprints the introductory page about the Red King and his Time Twister, which has no bearing on the events in this book. The family named de Grey was referred to in the publisher's promotional materials as "O'Gre." While O'Gre makes more sense than de Grey, it was apparently changed after promo materials went to booksellers and others, lending confusion to the enterprise. Finally, and I hope that this is not too much of a spoiler, the Castle of Mirrors has relatively little to do with the book, and is an inaccurate title for that reason. ( )