Hartley, A.J. Darwen Arkwright and the Peregrine Pact.Darwen has moved from Manchester, UK to Atlanta, Georgia to live with his aunt who is very business oriented and not used to having a child around. After a strange encounter with Mr. Peregrine at an odd dusty shop in the local mall during which Mr. Peregrine gives Darwen a mirror, Darwen finds that he is able to travel into Silbilica, another world were there are fairies by also a powerful evil arising. Powerful evil might also be used to describe his new private school-- while he does find a few friends, he also runs afoul of some of the school bullies. The archaeology club interests him, and he feels that he can tell the friends he makes there about Sibilica. He and Alexandra go to the world together and have to face the scrobblers, who are managing to come into Atlanta more and more. Who is helping them to do this? Can Sibilicabe saved? While some of these questions are answered, there is room for a sequel.
Strengths: Magical realism and a strong school story ala Harry Potter will make this one appealing to my hard core fantasy fans.
Weaknesses: This has been sitting next to my chair since an early November book look. Just couldn't pick it up. Cover art seemed especially blah to me, and nothing about the story sucked me in. I'll put it in the library collection, since I have a copy.
My teen liked it as well (7th grader). I agree that the cover doesn't really give a sense of the book.
ReplyDeleteI didn't notice any time slips, but it's been a while and maybe I forgot.
I read Darwen ages ago, and then it languished before I wrote my reivew--so my memory is fuzzy and I am deeply curious to know if there really was real honest a goodness time travel (which I don't remember at all!) or if you were thinking more of the scrobblers (or whatever they were) scrobbling worse every time he goes to the land through the mirror (which does seem like accelearted time).
ReplyDeleteI had a hard time writing my review, because it wasn't really a book for me, personally, although I enjoyed parts of it, but I was pretty sure there would be readers who would like it much more than me! Like Surly Teen Boy.
It seemed like some time ravel, but you might be right about the alternate dimension with the scrobblers. When they went to the other dimension, I think time did elapse differently. I have such bad fantasy amnesia most of the time that I can no longer remember, either. Ack.
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