Time Twister
As with the first book in this series, there are similarities to Harry Potter, but only on the surface. Filling time during the wait for HP7, the youngsters in my family are enjoying Charlie Bone's stories so far and so am I.
The book is for kids, after all, so it is a short read for adults. I won't give away too much plot but you get to meet old Ezekiel Bloor as a young boy and discover how he used a time twister to seek vengeance on a young cousin he hated apparently because the cousin was brighter than he was.
Henry Yewbeam and his younger brother, James, are temporary guests of the Bloors. Young James is in bed for the night, but Henry slips away from the upper floors to play a game of marbles before he turns in.
The time twister is a small round object the size of a large marble. "Zeke" sneaks up on his cousin, Henry, as he is playing alone with a bag marbles on the floor of the Bloor house's entryway. Hidden, Zeke rolls the time twister across the floor toward Henry, who is immediately attracted to it's luminescence. He picks up the large marble, looks into it and realizes too late he shouldn't have. He manages to leave a scrawled note for his brother on the floor with his scattered bag of marbles. Then he vanishes along with the time twister.
Almost ninety years later, he materializes in front of Charlie Bone - to whom he bears a close resemblance.
In this book we see the Pet's Cafe for the first time, learn more about the Yewbeam side of Charlie's family, get to hear Cook's story of how she came to be at Bloor's, and see further how the Bloors use their position and power to manipulate the students at the academy. Charlie meets his great grandfather for the first time and discovers a new facet of his endowment.
My personal interest in these books is Charlie's reclusive uncle, Paton Yewbeam, and his gradual emergence from his shell. In the first book he met and was smitten with a local bookshop owner, and I read this book mainly to find out where that subplot was going! I haven't been so drawn to, nor interested in an adult character in a book since Potter's Sirius Black. Paton's endowment and the resulting chaos that can come of it is quite interesting to me. I still miss Sirius Black, but Paton is a nearly worthy substitute. Tall dark and handsome are about all they have in common so far. Paton started out as a bit of a wimp, but he is gradually realizing his power, and here's hoping he continues to change as the series progresses.Read full review
