Charlie Bone and the Invisible Boy + Charlie Bone and the Castle of Mirrors by Jenny Nimmo

I start too many of my blog posts with “oh, I loved this book(s).” So I won’t, even though I did. But yeah, the third book, Charlie Bone and the Invisible Boy, definitely stands out as the best book in the series so far. This book just had so many nice plots and side plots that all tied together neatly at the end, it really felt like I was reading a sort of a harry potter book. It was just beautiful, really. It’s been awhile since I read this but yeah, Paton is mysteriously gone, Tancred is getting all angry and hiding out in the Thunder House and upsetting the balance, Ollie is the invisible boy hiding in the attic and needing to become visible, there’s the mysterious blue snake which ends up being important, the usual evil aunts’ antics, and some other stuff I forget. Anyway, Charlie ends up going on a quest for some plant he needs, thereby curing Paton of his odd disease-thingy and burning down one of his evil aunts’ houses in the process, which is just an excellent way to end a book, really.

Nimmo has stopped going overboard on mentioning that omg, Billy is albino. Um, let’s just say, thank god. So sick of that. All, as I pretty much predicted, Billy becomes “good” or good-ish in this book. He’s only 7, which is really young in general for him to be doing the stuff he does in this book, but it’s also too young, in my opinion, to have clear ideas about good and evil. Billy has certain desires and goals - like wanting to have parents, and not be stuck at Bloor’s all the time, that, really, how can you blame him? It’s not a good way, but Billy sees working with the evil guys as a means to an end, so he wavers a bit. It makes the story interesting. Plus, the adventure with Billy and oaths was just great - I mean, flying deadly oaths! It’s just great. Reminds me of the over-zealous howler-thing Mrs. Weasley sends Ron in Harry Potter. Paper being evil is just cool in general.

For the most part, I liked the Olivia plot in the fourth book. Yay for Olivia having a secret and needing to accept her true self (note to author: Olivia needs to be a lesbian next. Cause that would be just cool. Yay, metaphors.) Though, really, I don’t understand why Nimmo presents being “endowed” as a bad thing. Who wouldn’t want to have cool magic powers? Well, apparently all the characters in her books. I don’t get it.

The new student, Joshua Tilpin, who’s endowment is magnetism. Oh, brilliant. I kept thinking of “animal magnetism” when I was reading this, because that’s really the type of magnetism he had. Everyone loves him, if he wants them to. As such he hooked Tancred into wavering to the wrong side (ooooh, Tancred cheating on Lysander with Joshua! Fanfiction, where are you?)

Just to play around a bit with one of Nimmo’s premises in the book, let’s talk about balance. So, let’s first say that I actually rather like this, but the premise is that there needs to be a “balance” among the Red King’s children at Bloor’s academy - a good and evil balance, pretty much. So we have, normally, Charlie, Emma, Tancred, Lysander, Gabriel, occasionally Billy, and the new one, Olivia. When Charlie and Billy are gone and Tancred is being all chummy with Joshua in the fourth book, the balance tips and so, apparently, does Cook’s floor (Cook is the undercover mentor at Bloor’s and she knows stuff. When the author needs to give Charlie information, she turns to Cook) in her secret room, which I thought was rather unusual, and Charlie has to bring Tancred back and bring Olivia into the fold in order to right the balance. Anyway, my whole point with this, is, what if the balance tips the other way - you know, a dearth of the good side instead of the bad. What happens then? They make such a big deal about the balance, but seriously - you know the good side always wins, not the least because there’s no scary coercion, and in the end you like that. But anyway, that was my rather pedantic food for thought of the post.

Ships: nothing any different than what I’ve said before, but I’m still vacillating between Charlie/Emma and Charlie/Olivia, which both have potential - although, Emma/Olivia, why not? And the ever-present Tancred/Lysander. So canon. Oh, and again with the I-know-these-are-children’s book’s thing, and these being for the future, and that I like analyzing personalities and what not. Just the standard disclaimer.

Kids’ Books are Dirtier Than You Think: Yep, I’m adding a new section to most analyses, in which I mention the euphemisms that you’d only pick up if you were older. And not necessarily “dirty” by the way - just somewhat unkosher, etc. In this book, it’s yay, incest! This is a theme with kids’ books, have you noticed? yay, incest! Yeah, Billy’s parents are second cousins - see, they both had the same last name, and so doubly giving Billy his speaking-to-animals powers. And then there’s the whole thing where all the king’s descendants are technically related though really, not by very much at all. But yeah, this amused me because it made me think of the Harry Potter books and how much not-so-suble incest there is in those books too (Possible Tonks/Sirius, for instance. Plus all pure-blood families.)