Review of House of Massan
- Rebecca De Figueiredo
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Review of House of Massan
Title: House of Massan
Author: Karl Loveridge
We are pulled into young Micah's world right from the start. The reader is taken into this adventure, full of magic, time travel, friends, foes, and family. Micah is unaware of what will happen in the world around him, but even before the book's first quarter is read, he finds himself in a world of the supernatural.
Micah has lost his sister, Mariam, and is grieving. He discovers a locket, which he recognises as belonging to her, and sees a ship or galleon (these ships were used to transport enslaved people in the seventeenth century), and the story begins to take form. At this point, we meet Penelope and Twitch, the crows.
As I have mentioned, the book is full of magic and time travel, which will conjure up colourful images in any child's mind, so I found it a tad underwhelming in atmosphere. There was an opportunity to exemplify the supernatural and magic with fantastic descriptive prose and take the reader to dizzy heights of imagined thoughts and imaginings, but I was a little disappointed. Never mind, the book is still an exciting read for youngsters. I am thinking of stories such as 'Fantastic Beasts' and the Harry Potter books. There could have been some full-page colour illustrations. It would be good for a child to know what a galleon ship looks like, or what the school might have looked like in the early twentieth century when it was built.
I found the editing fine. Karl Loveridge has a talent for writing this book genre, and it draws the reader in right from the start. It develops well, with more and more aspects added as it goes along, creating a heightened magical atmosphere. The prose was kept simple and nonverbose, which is easy for an older child to read.
Despite having a few suggestions, I enjoyed this book and will award it five out of five stars.
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House of Massan
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- Williams Jaden
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