Book review: The Lost Magician

Book review of The Lost Magician by Piers Torday, a childrens book.

Book review of The Lost Magician

Summary

This text is borrowed from the blurp on the back of the book:

“If you can imagine it, it must exist somewhere… It is 1945. They have survived the Blitz, but when Simon, Patricia, Evelyn and Larry step through a mysterious library door, it is the beginning of their most dangerous adventure yet. They discover a magical world, where the stories of the library are locked in an eternal war. The children’s only hope is to search for the magician who created them – who has been lost for centuries.”

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Verdict

Urgh. This book sucked. I’m sorry but it really did. It was intriguing at first and the children proved promising characters that had room for development throughout the story. But none of them really evolved. At all.

It was a cute story but nothing more. How this book won any prizes is beyond me. It didn’t actually bring anything new to the table and it was so basic. Going into a library where anything you can imagine can be real, imagine that! That’s exciting! And then what do we get? The bears from Goldilocks and a unicorn with self-esteem issues, really? All the events were predictable, too fast and not exciting.

The plot around the childrens’ time in the fairytale world, was more interesting and sadly not much time or energy was spent on it. It felt like it was there to drive some extra depth to the fairytale-world part of the story, but the worlds never really “touched” each other. A lot of things ended up not making sense or being superfluous.

The Lion, The Witch and the… wait

I have never read The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe, or seen Narnia movies all the way through. But this book gave me some serious Narnia vibes. It seemed like a childish rip-off and I’m not even that familiar with the universe. It turns out, I’m not the only one who thinks the author is heavily inspired, if you look at the goodreads reviews. The author even ‘thanks’ the Narnia stories in the back of their book, for inspiring them.

Basically, it’s like Narnia, but for babies/small kids that have only learnt the basics of fairytales. Piers Torday might want to keep the fanfic to themselves next time, instead of passing it off as an original story.

I honestly can’t recommend it; I was so disappointed with this one. At least it’s a super pretty cover. I’m just sad that I don’t even want to read the sequel which sounds a tad more interesting. But if that one is equally flat, it’s not going to be worth it.

Have you read The Lost Magician? Do you think I should read the books behind Narnia?

If you’re curious and want to browse through other book reviews on this page, feel free to have a look at my collection of book reviews right here>>

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