Join the adventure. Break the curse. Find your way home. A magical new adventure from the best-selling author of The Impossible Boy.
Victor is sceptical when Walter Swizwit comes to the village of Rainwater. He's the latest in a string of inventors passing through and no one wants to buy his cheap magic tricks. But Walter doesn't take rejection well and puts a curse on the village.
Only Victor is unaffected, and he must leave Rainwater for the first time in his life if he's to find the cure. Victor's path takes him past other villages that Walter has damaged and he picks up new companions on the way: Elena, handy with bow and arrow, Mo-Lan, a science prodigy and scaredy-cat Mingus.
It's soon clear that they underestimated Walter's power. Only he has the cure for his magic, and he's locked away in his castle a thousand leagues away. But he's not the only inventor out there....
If Victor and his friends can get someone more powerful on their side, maybe they can win: find Walter, break the curse and return as heroes.
After all, there's no place like home....
Ben Brooks is quietly carving out a niche as an excellent alternative to David Walliams. He has the same manic comedy and laugh out loud lines, and I really enjoy the storylines. This one is fascinating, largely because the villain's plan is so clever. It would have worked, really well and for a long time, if a small time crook hadn't stumbled into a tiny, out of the way village.
Although part of it didn't make sense to me - I don't want to spoil anything for anyone, so I'll just say the way that Walter took care of the villagers of Rainwater didn't jive with Polina's later explanation for me - I really enjoyed the story and the journey, literal and metaphorical, that the children went on. I love that part of the focus was on teaching children that traits and attributes other people might think are undesirable can actually be useful and helpful in certain circumstances.
This is a great, fun read, and I'm looking forward to seeing what Ben does next.
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