Book Review- The Toymaker by Jeremy de Quidt

  Reviewed by Katy, posted by Nina because the internet does not work from her house

Title: The Toymaker

 Author: Jeremy De Quidt

Series: N/A

 Published: January 1st 2010 by David Fickling Books

 Length: 368 pages

Warnings: gore, magic

 Other info: This is not part of a series, and is the only novel by the author.Gary Blythe illustrated it.

Summary : What good is a toy that will wind down? What if you could put a heart in one? A real heart. One that beat and beat and didn't stop. What couldn't you do if you could make a toy like that? From the moment Mathias becomes the owner of a mysterious piece of paper, he is in terrible danger. Entangled in devious plots and pursued by the sinister Doctor Leiter and his devilish toys, Mathias finds himself on a quest to uncover a deadly secret.

 Review: An adventure story about a boy whose grandfather gives him a piece of paper, and the responsibility of guarding it from unknown foes. The book felt quite distant in it's narrative style and though the story was clearly progressing, this distance made the book feel slow. Also the author seems to think that the heart is used for thinking. This is not true; the brain does the thinking; the effect of placing a beating heart in an inanimate object so it could move would have the same effect as running it on batteries / shocking a dead body with electricity (But I know that many readers will prefer the heart which is 'disgusting yet bearable' to the pink squishy thing that is the brain. My opinion? The brain is pink, squishy and a scientifically accurate not to mention slightly less aesthetically pleasing to most of the human race so it would be alot better than the heart). I found that the doll that can tell the difference between truth and lies did not have as much of a big part to play in the book as I would have liked. However I thought that Valter was the most engaging character in the whole book and thoroughly enjoyed reading his inner thoughts

Overall:  Strength 2  tea- not to my taste