This young adult (YA) book looks and feels densely packed. It is larger than a standard novel and uses sepia and grey colours and a photo of a levitating child on the front cover. It has very sharp edges. Inside, it continues the sombre colour scheme, intriguingly weaving photographs of children into the narrative. These photos, once you are guided to look at them in Ransom’s way, are clearly weird and unnatural. It’s a great way to reach into young people’s imaginations and challenge perceptions. Together with the story, these photos build a fantastical world.
But, the story begins with a mundane life. It revolves around Jacob, an American teenager with a loving, quirky grandfather, Abe, who is full of tall tales about his past. These all seem to be about a bunch of children with peculiar skills who he met when he was at an orphanage on a small island in Wales in 1940. Abe remembers the children with affection, but he seems always to be worried about monsters hunting him.
As Jacob grows, he begins to doubt the truth of his grandfather’s stories. Then his grandfather is killed. And Jacob spots a monstrous shape in the bushes near the scene.
Jacob’s difficulties in coming to terms with this trauma lead to him needing counselling and eventually he hits on the idea of visiting the Welsh island to learn once and for all whether the place, and people in his grandfather’s stories were real or imaginary. In a bleak Welsh peat bog he discovers a way to reach back to the orphanage of September 1940, and so he meets his grandfather’s friends.
Jacob’s journey from loser teenager to resourceful warrior takes time and resonates with my own teenage psyche from long ago that I can still touch.
The portrayal of British culture and language didn’t convince me. This read as though it were an American novel, which it is. I think there were opportunities to highlight differences in culture, both of place and time, that weren’t taken. This makes the story less immersive for me but it doesn’t derail the growing tension and pace.
The level of jeopardy rises dramatically in the last part of the book and the children, with Jacob, have to deal with the situation without any adult help. Jacob’s journey from a world of ordinariness to one full of extraordinariness and on to a nightmare world with awful consequences is compelling and kept me reading right to the end. After the end, there is an interesting interview with the author that adds to the experience of reading the book.
The story isn’t completely resolved. It leads into a wider world of adventure, quest, discovery and time travel for the children. Book two is promised to arrive in 2014. I must go back in time and get a copy to continue my journey with them.
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