The Charmed Children of Rookskill Castle: Narnia basically

The Charmed Children of Rookskill Castle review

By 

Janet Fox

So there’s a Scottish castle in the middle of nowhere. Said castle is populated by children who are refugees from the London blitz. Oh and it’s haunted by the ghosts of kids who’s souls have been taken by a metal witch. Yes I’ll take four please.

              

     Also the main character’s name is Katherine! And her nickname is Kat! Unfortunately that’s kind of where the similarities end. Still it was kind of cool to see my name in a decent book. Well mostly decent. I’ll admit that the writing was pretty mediocre. Like it wasn’t bad but it wasn’t amazing either.  It made it hard to become immersed in the story and most of the description was pretty bland. Still it was minor complaint. The ghosts and magic easily made up for it.

               Let’s start with the witch shall we.

• ·        She used to be called Leonore
• ·        Properly alive way back in 1746
• ·        Until she started sacrificing fingers and other body parts to this totally trustworthy old guy in a shack in exchange for these magic charms
• ·        Said charm is placed around kid’s necks and it steals their souls
• ·        Leonore started out alright she was just trying to please her husband by stealing kids (yeah that’s not creepy at all) but then she got addicted to the power the souls and her metal bits gave her
• ·        She basically turns into a world war II magical cyborg and it’s terrifying
• ·        Also she lives for hundreds of years

So Metallica the witchy witch starts her children/soul collection and when the Nazi’s start bombing London it’s basically jackpot. She opens up a school and starts taking in refugee children in preparation to harvest seven more souls so that she can own thirteen souls. I think it’s for some magical reason. You know thirteen and all. That finally brings us to Kat.

              

            She and her little brother and sister plus Peter (a friend who is freakin adorable by the way) are four of the seven who end up at Rookskill fleeing the blitz. Montage of creepy/magical things happen which Kat fiercely ignores because she’s supposed to be the logical one. I was getting a total Narnia vibe from them actually. 

              So you know what that means!

Narnia GIFS!

       Like it’s basically Perter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy I kid you not. Anyway eventually the kids start getting picked off one by one and their ghosts/soulless-shells start wandering around the castle creeping everybody out. So of course Kat and Peter have to fight off the resident Metal Monstrosity with some awesome magic.

               I actually liked Kat, and not just because of her name, though I’m sure that helped. Especially her struggle with trying to be responsible and logical while surrounded by magic and monsters. I think everybody has at least once tried to force themselves to be something they’re not because that’s what we are expected to be or want to be or in an effort to be different and unique.

 I don’t know if the book was saying that but that’s certainly what I saw.

               And is it weird to ship twelve year olds? Because I was shipping twelve year olds. Peter was awfully sweet even when he was exasperated by Kat and her attitude. His whole personality was kind of like “oh adventure cool I like adventure”         

               It was a fun little read, not brilliant by any means but if the writing had been a bit more interesting I think it could have been amazing!