Thai Pham Pham itibaren 8292 Limbach bei Neudau, Austria
This book hit me as lurking somewhere in between the brilliant and the unsuccessful. What I loved about it is the sheer whimsy of the story and the setting. It might rather be annoying to some people, but decks of card soldiers, travelling by looking glass, foods of the jollyjelly variety and worlds powered by imagination are my kind of thing. Not to mention a giant crystal heart as the centre of the kingdom's power and a multi-coloured band of prophetic caterpillars. Unfortunately some of this wasn't very well realised. The caterpillars - presumably intended to be funny - came across more like Bill and Ted. Some of the dialogue feels borrowed from an American teen TV drama, which is a shame in a book that's borrowing from a very English nineteenth-century classic (and parts of the story are set in London at that time). And above all of that, some peculiarity about the writing made it difficult to get close to the story or the characters. Instead of feeling caught up in the action myself, I felt like a distant spectator. On balance, then, it's one of the most colourful and whimsical books I've ever come across, and those are two words I like. But the execution let it down. That said I'll be giving the second book a try sometime; perhaps it's one of those series that will mature as it goes along.