Synopsis:
Nine is an orphan who lives as a pickpocket in the Nest of a Thousand Treasures. She’s desperate to escape and find a better home than the one where she steals on behalf of greedy, manipulative Pockets. Then one of Nine’s stolen treasures turns into a house.
Nine meets a young wizard called Flabberghast, who has been waiting for someone to knock at the house’s door and to free him from a dreadful curse that turns everything in the house into nonsensical wonders. Nine might be that person – if Flabberghast can pay the right fee.
Both have reckoned without the challenges posed by the house – and by the witch who placed it under a curse in the first place. They engage in a series of magical challenges in an attempt to learn the magic words required to break the curse.
Review:
Imagine a house as memorable as the one lived in by the Addams Family. Replace the spookiness with comic and light-hearted magic. Add a troll housekeeper, a talking spoon, the greatest hopscotch player of all time and a stack of pancakes and you’ve got the feel for The House at the Edge of Magic. This story is going to be a hit with children who are a bit young for the darker themes of the middle-grade market but want something more challenging than younger fiction titles offer. It is also going to remind adults of Diana Wynne-Jones and Eva Ibbotson’s fantasies.
Nine’s story grabbed my attention. It is impossible not to think of Oliver Twist and the pickpocket gang, but what Sparkes has done is highlight that the Fagan-like Pockets is motivated entirely by greed. His love of interesting objects is contrasted with his lack of empathy for the children he employs as pickpockets. Nine’s desperation to escape drives the story and informs many of her actions.
Flabberghast’s introduces one of the most entertaining fictional rivalries of recent years. To say more would be too much of a spoiler, but Flabberghast’s certainty that he is world champion everything certainly plays a part. He’s a great character – I’ve always wondered what some of these great wizards were like as children and Flabberghast’s story puts paid to any ideas that they were all diligent little scholars with no time for childhood.
Fresh, funny and fantastical – The House at the Edge of Magic will leave you searching for magical corners in your own home.
- The House at the Edge of Magic by Amy Sparkes is available now from Walker Books. RRP. £6.99 (My copy of the book was provided as part of a promotional blog tour)
