P. G. Bell - The Train to Impossible Places - Mr Ripley's Enchanted Books Review

The Train to Impossible Places is a fast-paced adventure starring 12-year-old Suzy, a science-loving realist who wakes one night to find a grumpy troll building a railway track through her hallway. Moments later the Impossible Postal Express, in all its physics-bending glory, thunders into the hall. Of course, Suzy has to jump aboard! She becomes a postie charged with delivering a package to the sinister Lady Crepuscular of The Obsidian Tower. Of course, the package is cursed. And of course, the fate of the Union of Impossible Places depends on Suzy. And so a magical fantasy adventure begins for Suzy...and all in her second best pair of PJs. 

The Train to Impossible Places is the debut middle-grade book by P.G. Bell. It will arrive into the impossible world and beyond with full steam ahead on the 4th October 2018. It is being published by Usborne Publishing (UK) in a brilliant hardback format. The book has been lovingly decorated with illustrations by the talented Flavia Sorrentino. It's an actual marvel, you only need to look at the dust jacket for it to get your attention. However, take a moment to also remove the dust jacket and marvel at the amazing piece of artwork underneath - it just needs to be seen and admired.

The book started as a bedtime story for Peter’s young son, who demanded ‘another amazing story’ the night after they’d finished reading Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Inspired by that story, The Train to Impossible Places grew into this epic story that will be loved by many people for many years to come. It's a story packed full of imagination that will instantly transport any reader into the fantastic plot. 

It's a beautiful engineered story full of whimsical characters and industrious landscapes that would not be out of place on the set of a magical film. The start of the book for me was slow going, just like the train, but it soon gathered pace until I was hanging on by my fantasy fingertips for the next page. You will hurtle through explosive amounts of action and arrive with brilliant bouts of humour. I especially loved the scene with the underwater ghost pirates fantasy gold. I think they should have their very own spin-off story. 

The book is littered with little cameo moments that are loaded with irony, just like the rails the Postal Express train runs on. All of these moments turn the narrative into a phantasmagorical dream making this one of the best creative MG fantasy stories for any dreamer, this year. 

It's full of magic, mayhem, mysterious marvelousness and endearing characters. As part of your journey, you will encounter some over-excited retired postal trolls and a frog trapped in a snow globe. You'll battle hard with a sorceress and an army of deadly stone statues. These are just a few of the examples that Suzy Smith (main character) finds herself facing. Written well, rich in detail and full of postal mayhem and exploding bananas, yes you will need to watch out for them all. 

This story once finished will leave you out of breath and will have you hungry for more. It's a surprise package with more to come in the next installment - I literally can't wait! What a brilliant book - it's a family read full of fun, wonder, and pure delight. 

New Brand Release: Tom Percival - The Spell Thief /The Great Troll Rescue (Little Legends) - Mini Review

Welcome to Tale Town, a faraway kingdom, full of extraordinary children that you might literally recognise. Pop all of the fairytale characters you know and love, and whisk them together slowly to make new epic adventures. This is a wondrous world full of dragons, fairies and talking trolls, where magic and mayhem and mystery crackles through the air. It is a fantastic new series by the multi-talented Tom Percival. 

The first two books have already been published and are aimed at a younger audience for age 5+. The third book, Genies Curse, will hit the shops in fairytale land on the 28th July, 2016. These are fantastically written, exciting stories that have a classic fairytale feel style and wonderful eye-catching illustrations by Tom.

The idea for Little Legends was developed by Tom Percival and Made in Me, a digital creative studio exploring new ways for technology and storytelling, to inspire the next generation. The brand will launch simultaneously a physical paperback and ebook, and a interactive game for children available from the App Store.  It is a great  family entertainment package, ready and waiting for you all to access! Check them out Here!

Jack (of the beanstalk fame) and his magical talking chicken, Betsy, have always been great at making new friends. But when Jack spots Anansi, the new kid in town, talking to a troll in the Deep Dark Woods, everything changes. Everyone knows that trolls mean trouble, and Jack will do anything to prove to the rest of his friends that Anansi is a troll spy. Even if that means using stolen magic!

What starts as an adventure ends in disaster when Rapunzel, Anansi and Jack and his talking chicken, Betsy, are captured by a wicked witch and locked up in a tower! It's up to Red (the sustainable woodcutter's daughter) to save the day. With the help of the witch's servant, Ella, and her magical fairy god-brother, can Red save her friends and all the other magical creatures the witch has kidnapped - including a fearsome troll?

Book Review: Daniela Sacerdoti - Really Weird Removals.com - Published By Floris Books (Kelpies)

                                                  

Whatever your supernatural dilemma, call the Really Weird Removals company!

If you don't live in Scotland or anywhere near then there is a good chance that you may not have found or discovered this book yet. However, never fear, as I'm going to point you in the right direction once I've told you how good it is! This novel is a product of the annual Kelpies Prize and was shortlisted back in 2011. Some time on, it's now finally being published for all of us good beasties to read.

This is a great family read, both for the grown ups who want to be transported back to their childhood, or for the child having it read aloud on a dark winter's evening. It could even work as a book to share with a class - many children could be engaged and involved in this story.

The book is narrated by a brother and sister (Luca and Valtentina) who really do present themselves as real children rather than characters. When Uncle Alistair turns up out of the blue, the children soon find themselves on an adventure of a life time. Uncle Alistair has a strange line of business (pest control) but he doesn't really get rid of rats or other pests. Instead, the 'Really Weird Removals Company' catches supernatural creatures, and features a fantastic array of memorable creatures such as the Zeuglodon, stone fairies, Selkies and a singing troll! It's a full scale assault of the paranormal in a world full of danger and secrets.

The story is told amazing well - it will have your imagination stretched to the very fullest. Each chapter of the book has an entry from the Paranormal Database which leads very skillfully into the next section. The story is both funny and poignant. It is brimming with the full flavour of a  Scottish adventure. It has a host of likeable characters, all of whom are set in a fantastical back drop of Eilean, an Island off the West Coast of Scotland.

My favourite part of the story was when the children were attacked by malicious kelpies and hungry vampires. This made for great reading especially under-the-blankets reading when it's well past bedtime!

Family life and folklore all collide into one memorable story. I'm pleased to say that I enjoyed both aspects very much. The fast paced story and character driven plot will have you wanting much much more.  

Published by Floris Books of Edinburgh. Check out the brilliant book trailer.

Katherine Langrish - Guest Post Creating World( West of the Moon blog tour)

Welcome to the fifth stop of the extensive Katherine Langrish 'West of the Moon' blog tour. Today, is actually the official publication date for the release of "West of the Moon". This book combines all three of the original Troll stories, in just one handy, Troll-size book. Although it has been adapted slightly, just a few tweaks here and there, it still retains the magically captivating story, but with a fresh new look and feel.
Today's post is all about creating worlds. Read about Katherine's interesting musings into the many different worlds that have been created. 


All fiction is about creating worlds, of course, and each of these worlds is distinctive, personal.  Take Charlotte Bronte and Charles Dickens. Their versions of Victorian England are quite different, even when they’re talking about the same kinds of thing. Dotheboys Hall in ‘Nicholas Nickleby’ and ‘Lowood Institution’ in Jane Eyre are both highly unpleasant schools – both even contain abused, tubercular pupils who befriend the main character and later die in their arms – but they inhabit totally different fictional universes. You can’t imagine taking a journey from Bleeding Heart Yard to Thornfield Hall.  Mr Rochester’s mad wife is no Miss Havisham.  And no matter how I try, I can’t imagine Jane Eyre meeting Mr Micawber.  

So all fiction is about creating worlds – but fantasy writers come straight out and admit it.  We don’t even try to deceive you.  How could we?  You know that unicorns and dragons, werewolves and vampires, orcs and trolls and elves, do not exist and never have existed.  So what’s the point of it all?  Why on earth do we write it?  Why do some of you – quite a lot of you, actually – want to read it? 

Surely because fantasy is no more and no less a pack of lies than any other type of fiction. Or to put it the other way around, the truths of good fantasy are exactly the same as the truths of all good fiction: emotional truths about characters, about situations, about life. 

And because it’s fun sometimes to leave the mundane behind, to stretch the imagination a little further, and to say not just, ‘What if there was a boy, and one foggy day he met an escaped convict in a graveyard and was terrified into helping him’ (you can argue the case for a strong fantasy element in Dickens) but also, ‘What if there was a hobbit, and one day in late summer he found out he owned the most dangerous object in the universe – a ring of power – and had to leave his comfortable world behind and journey to destroy it?’ 

It’s fun to try and create self-consistent secondary worlds, in much the same way as it’s fun to construct a model railway with diminutive hills and valleys, bridges and cuttings and stations, and to put little people on the platforms, holding rolled up newspapers, and briefcases, and handbags.  It’s fun, and then it becomes serious, because in fiction you can bring the little people to life.  You bring them to life, and watch that man help that woman get a smut out of her eye, and before you know it, they’re falling in love and holding agonised discussions over cups of tea in the station café, and breaking one another’s hearts and parting forever.  

You can have emotional truth in a secondary world even when that world is full of impossible things.  When Aslan dies in Narnia; when Ged, in ‘A Wizard of Earthsea’, summons the spirit of Elfarran from the dead, and we know that he has done an abominable thing out of arrogance and pride; when Lyra finds out the terrible truth about what happens to the children and their daemons in the Bolvangar Experimental Station – these are not lies.  

In my own fantasies, in my own way, I too do my best to tell the truth.  In ‘West of the Moon’, (the new omnibus edition of my ‘Troll’ trilogy set in the Viking age), I wanted a hero who wasn’t in any sense the Chosen One.  Rather, Peer Ulfsson is a sort of Everyman.  He has no particular talents, apart from being a good carpenter.  He isn’t a great swordsman or fighter.  He can’t do magic.  He’s good-looking, but nothing out of the ordinary.  What he does have is tremendous integrity and a basic goodness – which can get him into trouble.  

The Viking age was a violent one.  The Icelandic sagas are full of ‘heroes’ you really wouldn’t want to have living next door to you – real leaders of men, good with swords, equally good at quips and jokes and off-the-cuff poems – charismatic multiple murderers who today would be locked up in high-security prisons.  Reading the sagas, I wondered at our ability to romanticise not just the past, but the present too. A sword is no better than a gun: both are meant for killing.  

How, I wondered, would Peer – or any of us – cope, if he were to meet a real ‘hero with a sword’?  From this was born my anti-hero, Peer’s nemesis, the handsome young killer Harald Silkenhair.  Why do we admire warriors – heroes like James Bond, whose message seems to be that you have to fight fire with fire, ruthlessness with ruthlessness?  What is the nature of this romantic obsession we all have with violence? In ‘West of the Moon’ I found myself seriously exploring some of these questions.


I'd like to thank Katherine for providing a fantastic post for this site. I'd also like to thank everybody who's visited this post as part of the blog tour. I hope you enjoyed the opportunity to gain an insight into the creation of so many different worlds.
The next port of call on the blog tour is  scribblecitycentral.blogspot.com 

Katherine Langrish - West Of The Moon Blog Tour - 2011

                                                                           

                                        
Katherine finds her greatest work come to life in one new book as the great "Troll Trilogy" is now told in one seamless story. This book will be published through HarperCollins and will be out on sale (officially) on the 3 March 2011. To commemorate this occasion, the author will be visiting some of us through the good old blogger sphere. Therefore, why not take a trip on the Moon blog tour and follow the author as she talks about her book, her writing career and other related topics . There may even be a giveaway or two along the way......

WEST OF THE MOON BLOG TOUR  Feb/March 2011 

Friday 25 Seven Miles of Steel Thistles - steelthistles.blogspot.com 

Mon    28 Reclusive Muse - reclusivemuse.blosgspot.com 

Tues   1   Scribble City Central - scribblecitycentral/blogspot.com

Wed   2    Mostly Books - mostly-books.blogspot.com 

Thu   3  Mr Ripley’s Enchanted Books 

Fri    4  Scribble City Central - scribblecitycentral/blogspot.com

Sat    5  As A Mum Booktopia - asamum.blogspot.com  

Mon  7 Wondrous Reads -  wondrousreads.com

Tues   8 Bookwitch - bookwitch.wordpress.com

Wed  9 The Bookmaven - bookmavenmary.blogspot.com

Thu     10 MG Harris - mgharris.net

Fri 11 Scribble City Central - scribblecitycentral/blogspot.com

Sat 12 Heaven Hell & Purgatory -bookreviews.co
Mon  14 The Bookette - thebookette.co.uk