Author: EG Foley
Publisher: Foley Publications
Rating: WORTHY!
This Xmas novella started out rather sadly, but quickly picked up for me. We have a hero named Jake which is only one step away from the highly detested "Jack" - the most clichéd trope "hero" name of all time. As if that's not quite enough, he has a red-headed friend who is a motherly girl, and a male friend who is super smart. Jake appears to be something of a rip-off of Oliver Twist: he's an orphan who later discovers (over the course of a series of novels) that he's heir to a noble family estate and lives in a very magical world. Jake is, it turns out, an Earl.
The novel is set in Britain, and the author(s) (EG Foley is a pseudonym for two writers: romance writer Shana Gorian and her husband) does a good job with this, but unfortunately they don't know the difference between a Union Jack and a Union flag. It's only a 'jack' when it's flown from a ship, but pretty much everyone makes that mistake, and it's a Xmas story so I was willing to let more slip by than I normally would. In the end it was a wise decision because this novel really took off for me. I loved the punning chapter headings.
So with a few complaints out of the way, I have to happily relate that this novel launched from a really interesting premise. There's magic in the air - and it's of a little more substance than purely the magic of Xmas. Jake and his pals Archie and Dani are out Xmas shopping, and they discover two neighboring bakeries, the one upstairs a patisserie, the one downstairs, an English bakery.
They're run by rivals, who used to be intimates, but who are friends no longer. There's a good reason for this as you'll discover when you read. British Bob has the English bakery and he and his ex, Madame Marie, are running a competition to see whose gingerbread creation is the best. There's something rather weird, though, about those gingerbread villages....
This novel is, of course, set in Victorian times because that era, especially when experienced in England, is somehow seen as the best that Xmas has to offer, despite the wars and the appalling treatment of women and children. Oh, and did I mention that Jack the Ripper was a Victorian? Go figure! But again, it's an Xmas novel so I guess this is why everyone lets that slide.
Jake isn't your usual Victorian guy, though. He has a secret power of telekinesis: he can move stuff with his mind! This doesn't help him when he espies something curious flitting around the shop at great speed. He has seen fairies before, but never one which leaves a sparkly trail of red and green. Just as he thinks he can trap it, it causes a huge pyramid of pastries to fall and Jake can't even save the day with his power because it would expose his ability in public. "Crud!" thinks he as he realizes he must take the blame!
He resolves to have his revenge for this besmirching of his escutcheon by exposing this fairy, and along with his gryphon pet named Red, a friend named Archie, and a royal fairy of his acquaintance, he sneaks into the shop that night (his pick-pocketing and general criminal life of yester-year pays off here). The trouble is that it's not a fairy. It's a creature about whom Jake has neither experience nor very much knowledge, it turns out, but he's about to learn!
This new-found knowledge precipitates a road trip, and Jake and his friends (Archie, Isabelle, Dani, and Red) try to return this character, named Humbug, to his roots, and collect a reward. This also precipitates a lull in the story-telling unfortunately, as the group is held captive in a castle at one point and the story drops into the doldrums, but they soon escape. There are some oddities, too. At one point we get the nonsensical folklore that the Inuit ("Eskimos") have fifty words for snow, but it isn't true. They have no more words for snow than does any other culture.
There's also a strong religious thread running through this novel, the purpose of which escaped me. Perhaps it's just that the author is religious? At one point when someone mentions Xmas, we hear, "That's Baby Jesus's birthday!" which struck me as really odd. Baby Jesus's birthday? Why not just 'Jesus's birthday'? But this was spoken by a ten-year old, so it's perhaps explicable that way.
Head-scratching moments like this were more than offset by the writing at other times which I loved for the most part. One example, in chapter thirteen occurred when Jake said something which struck the others as dumb, and one of them asked, "Are you nickey in the head?" I almost lost it after reading that. I don't know why but it was so absurd a thing to say that it really caught my funny bone and spritzed my brain with all kinds of ideas and concepts for which I thank the EG's Foley heartily. Of course, I'll probably have forgotten everything I thought of then, if I ever sit down to try and incorporate said ideas into a story!
Like I said, some parts kinda bogged down, like the ice princess and inexplicably, the time spent at a certain workshop north of here (north of everywhere, come to think of it), but there were other parts which really got me laughing or made me really interested in turning the page. One of these, which I dare not forget to mention, was in Madam Marie's bakery, where Rollio and Juniette, the gingerbread star-cookie-cutter-crossed lovers were in dire peril of drowning themselves in a pail of milk, but it all worked out sweetly in the end!
I highly recommend this middle-grade novel. I loved it and I am sure the intended age range will adore it.
