Rufolo Rants: The Howling Tower - Bear Kingdom#1 by Michael Coleman

Oh Mikey, how did you go from writing Carnegie nominated teenage novels to The Great Escape meets Winnie the Pooh? Actually that’s a bit far, Winnie the Pooh doesn’t deserve to be compared to a book this bad.

So it’s about a boy called Benjamin Wildfire on the run in a world ruled by cave bears who live a bit like how people lived in the middle ages. Yeah, it sounds silly, but I didn’t think it was a terrible idea. This could be pretty intense tale of survival and I had faith in Coleman to make it gritty and serious, without being too vulgar or graphic.

Sadly the story is not so much Bear Grylls as just unbearable boredom; I apologise that was terrible.

No, there’s virtually no forests or wilderness, no thrilling chase or suspense, instead Ben just gets caught almost as soon as he escapes from his bear owner Mrs Haggard – seriously, the names get worse – and ends up in the pound with a bunch of other human children.

Admittedly there is some excitement as they plan their escape, but the book doesn’t have the pacing or writing to make the very dull titular tower interesting at all.

So, the story isn’t great, but what about the characters? Well the main hero is one of the blandest I’ve ever read; there’s just nothing memorable about him apart from his red hair and cool name. This sort of thing really annoys me – never mind whether or not we need more strong female characters, gingers are slowly disappearing! They deserve better representation than this!

The side characters are just as bad. Benjamin basically acts as a guard dog for his bear owner and when he escapes he meets a human girl called Mops who is kept as a pet and is running away out of boredom – something we all feel whenever she starts talking. In fact, this little know-it-all is worse than that, she’s just so vain and irritating and annoying! Mops is about as insufferable as Bonnie Langford in Doctor Who!

Then there’s another side character called Spike with the stupidest voice ever. He’s like the secret lovechild of Catherine Tate and Crocodile Dundee.

As for the actual bears… yeah the names do get worse. They’re called things like Doctor Calcupod and Inspector Dictatum and you’ll probably have guessed that they speak English as well. There’s no language, nothing interesting, they just say English words in the wrong order, that’s it! These bears are so dim-witted and the cheesy childish way they’re written just makes them the least threatening antagonists I’ve ever read.

I know I’m not the target audience, I know it’s a children’s book, but kids deserve better than this. With the bears performing cruel experiments on human children, the story is actually pretty dark, but it’s all just needlessly dumbed down and sugar-coated over when books by the likes of Roald Dahl and J.K Rowling have proved that children’s books can be dark and scary and still be child-friendly, that they can have layers. Apart from a pretty good twist towards the end, The Howling Tower is just an insulting monotonous slog.

So guys, have any of you read the Bear Kingdom series? Did any of you like it? And what would you say is the most insulting children’s book you’ve ever read?

Rufolo Reviews: The Machine Gunners by Robert Westall

Everyone loves the Goonies right? Now imagine it were British and set during World War Two – you’d just about have The Machine Gunners.

All the kids in the northern coastal town of Garmouth collect souvenirs from German air raids, mostly just shrapnel, but when a Luftwaffe pilot is shot down, 14-year-old Chas McGill uses his father’s saw to steal the entire machine gun with over 200 rounds of live ammunition.

 Come on, that’s just awesome! (Well, it is for us British kids, for any American readers that sort of thing’s the norm.)

So Chas and his friend Cem, who’s sort of like an unhygienic socially retarded scarecrow (I’m autistic, so I’m allowed to say that) and a very tough slightly awesome ginger called Audrey end up smuggling the weapon from place to place, outwitting the hapless police forces whilst the school bully starts to suspect and fancies the machine gun for his own collection. Then when Chas and the gang stand up to him to protect a wealthy but lonely classmate, their new friend lets them turn his sizeable back garden into their own gun emplacement to fight the Germans themselves.

Despite being about kids, the book isn’t exactly kid-friendly. There’s some pretty intense action, particularly at the incredible climax and some brutal fight scenes that get bloody serious. I’m nearly seventeen and I found the violence pretty distressing when the perpetrators were so young, but it makes the book realistic and impactful enough to show what war can do to children.

And these child characters are just fantastic. Chas, like Simon in Westall’s other book The Scarecrows, can be quite snobbish and, at times, very cruel, but when he’s so smart, mischievous and conniving, you can’t help but like him and he really redeems himself. He’s brave, he has an enormous sense of justice and is immensely loyal to his friends.

The rest of the gang are just as interesting. They’re not always likeable, but let’s admit it, that’s not always the case with teenagers. It’s not just about them though; there’s time set aside for the adult characters: their teacher, the home guard and the police who are all very entertaining.

Admittedly Audrey starts off as a great tomboy until the boys basically put her in the kitchen, but I don’t think it’s a huge problem. As Westall argued himself, women’s lib didn’t really exist back in the forties and when the story could have been a strictly boys only adventure. With Audrey, any girls reading aren’t excluded becuse she's still strong in her own way.

The only thing I’d say is a big problem is the way the northern accents are written. The dialogue is very realistic as Westall didn’t shy away from using swear words, but with the adults and one boy who’s Scottish, there are quite a few odd spellings for the pronunciations and it can be distracting.

Overall though, it’s damn near perfect, suitably dark and gritty yet a fun and relatable story at the same time. It's a book of high calibre, deserving of its classic status and Carnegie Award and could go down a treat for anyone enjoying Netflix’s Stranger Things at the moment!

So guys, have any of you read The Machine Gunners and if so, what did you think of it? Also, what’s your favourite sort of boys-will-be-boys story complete with a bit of crude language and violence?

Rufolo Reviews: The Secrets of Drearcliff Grange School by Kim Newman

One of the most imaginative books of the year, it would seem that Miss Peregrine's has spawned its own Harry Potter meets X-Men subgenre, giving us some of the best action heroines of the generation.

When fourteen year-old Amelia Thomsett is caught sleeping on the ceiling, her unpleasant conformist mother sends her to a special boarding school so her daughter will be cured of her supernatural powers. However, Drearcliff Grange is a school for unusual girls where they're encouraged to use and improve their unique abilities, but students are disappearing and there are dark goings-on behind the scenes.

The book doesn't disappoint with a wide range of intriguing superpowers that make for some exciting action sequences. The whole novel has a great sense of mystery, dark in atmosphere, but fun and quirky at the same time. The story pulls you in with twists and turns along the way, but this book is particularly strong on character. Amy is probably the best female action heroine I've ever read. Whilst so many heroines in YA are loudmouthed teenage tearaways, a trope growing increasingly grating (Rebel of the Sands, I'm looking at you), Amy is just really polite. In situations where many of us would probably swear, she exclaims "buttered crumpets!" instead and even when she has to be mean to people, she's just matter-of-fact about it. She's not just a caricature though; she becomes so much more confident over the course of the book, going on a journey a lot of readers can relate to and little details like her keen interest in moths just make her that bit more human.
Her friends are great too, including a loveable, more boisterous big ginge and a boxing, smoking Indian princess. The bullies are especially cruel and some of the staff and teachers are very charismatic. Admittedly there are a LOT of characters coming and going in one book and at times it is can be hard to keep track of them all. This goes hand-in-hand with the book's other problem: pacing. It gets off to a good start, giving a brief tour of the school before there's a kidnapping, an exciting rescue and a shocking twist. Over a third of the way through, the pace changes quite suddenly, taking its time to be dark, eerie and psychological. It's done well, but it just feels a bit iffy and then there's the problem with the sheer number of minor characters. I just wanted some of them to have more time to themselves. (Mr Newman please take the hint and write a sequel!)

Despite these two problems, this book is one of the best I've read in 2016 with mystery, style and truly memorable heroines. Unusual, weird and wonderful indeed.