The Nowhere Thief by Alice M Ross
| The Nowhere Thief by Alice M Ross | |
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| Category: Confident Readers | |
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Reviewer: John Lloyd
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| Summary: When an antique dealer's daughter finds the ability to travel from one world to another and back, she thinks it's going to help the pair of them. She has no idea what danger it will also cause, though, in this none more varied and inventive fantasy drama. | |
| Buy? Yes | Borrow? Yes |
| Pages: 256 | Date: March 2023 |
| Publisher: Nosy Crow Ltd | |
| ISBN: 9781839943768 | |
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At last there is new stock in the impoverished yet over-full antiques shop Elsbeth and her mother run in a seaside town. Elsbeth knows this because she has stolen it. She also knows she should be free from worries about being found out, because she has the ability to leave this world, and use an unworldly portal of kaleidoscope colours to enter other worlds, where the sea levels are rising dramatically and the buildings are generally empty of humans and ripe for plunder. With eviction imminent, can Elsbeth nab anything to actually generate custom at the shop? Well yes, is the answer, but the fact a mysterious man knows exactly which items come from these different Somewheres only raises more questions…
This thrusts us right into the middle of the action, and no mistake – almost to the detriment. I never really managed to get as firm a grip on the mechanics of the world-switching as I wanted. Stepping through a shimmer of diamond effects – which the girl finds everywhere throughout her town – takes Elsbeth to Nowhere, where the radiant stargate-thingy seems to be a large sphere, and stepping through into that takes her to the Somewheres – which one depending on the colours present as she walks through. But on returning she's in front of the sphere again, facing it, and not emerging from it.
Quibbles, quibbles. I mean, I can see eyebrows being raised about this fantasy of other worlds not being quite set in our one – this is a timeless-seeming place of crowns as currency and yet phone calls, but also of a big city called Lunden. You could quibble it ought to have started in our existence, I think. But, quibbles, quibbles. What I saw was a creative mind going pell-mell through a compellingly different fantasy, and at practically every step taking us gladly with us.
For one, my plot summary above is just the pleasure given by the first couple of chapters. There is so much else besides. Add in different characters you don't expect to meet, the typical 'is-this-the-baddy-or-not' worry a girl in a strange world faces in such books, and a fully evolved story of destiny, surprises and drama galore, and you have a memorable read. There definitely are elements to this that can be guessed, but a lot that cannot, remaining surprises until they are needed. At one time I was sure this was a stand-alone, then that it would be an open-ended series opener, then…
Make no mistake, I am doing what few people will be doing, at least during the reading of this – I am over-thinking it all. Many members of the target audience will not rest until the finish, and will find no time for analysing any of this. For me, I think it fell into the awkward trap of taking me to unexpected places – just a final nudge towards perfection and I would have loved that, but here I found when it took us down the unpredicted path I was disappointed – not with the result, but with the decision. Until once again a strong action scene or another big reveal proved I was wrong to doubt the author's mazy plotting.
This, then, is full of surprises, has a young girl character learning about the super-powers her legacy has gifted her and yet remaining full of agency, and no end of different corners to be dramatic in afforded by the large scope of this universe. It's an easy recommendation and I thank the publishers for my review copy.
Oddly this put me in mind of The City of Ember by Jeanne DuPrau. For something a bit more recent, we recommend Wished by Lissa Evans for its own take on interdimensional junior rescue missions.
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