The Winter Freak Show

The Winter Freak Show: A Penny Dreadful Review

            A boy called Toby escapes the cruelties of the Workhouse and nearly freezes to death on the December streets of London. He is rescued by the proprieter of a Freak Show so fantastical that is must be magic. Every year, the Winter Freak Show travels the world, entertaining children and families with incredible feats. They end their tour in London. This year, though, something is different. Someone is kidnapping children, and suspicion falls on the freak show’s proprietor, Nicko.

            The Winter Freak Show is a fun little Christmas adventure by Daniel Parsons. It’s an excellent choice for readers of chapter books, though I wish it had some illustrations. Some parts of the adventure I felt needed some elaboration, and some parts were so sweet and poignant I almost cried.

            Overall, I would give The Winter Freak Show three gears out of five and a round of applause. According to the cover, it is the first in a series entitled Twisted Christmas. I would love to find out what happens to Toby in book two!

            The Winter Freak Show is put out by the whimsically named Onion Custard Publishing and is available in select stores and online (of course).

Your Correspondent From The Bookstore,

Penny J. Merriweather

The Adventures of Alan Shaw, Volume 1

The Adventures of Alan Shaw: A Penny Dreadful Review

            I do love an exciting adventure story. The plucky hero defeats overwhelming odds and outwits a horrible villain. This sort of dashing tale is close to the heart of Steampunk. There are often deranged plots to foil and airships to clamber aboard. Therefore, Craig Hallam is to be applauded for creating The Adventures of Alan Shaw, Volume 1. If one likes adventure, one will like Alan Shaw.

            Craig Hallam’s exciting book is a collection of novellas detailing a few of the scrapes of young Alan Shaw. Alan Shaw is an orphan escaped from the workhouse and surviving on the streets. He’s clever, resourceful, and a silver-tongued little devil. In his first adventure, he stops a bomber and is adopted by a police constable, whose son Simon teaches him to read. In later chapters, a growing Alan encounters a shadowy organization, gypsies, a mechanical squid, a mad scientist, and a fishing boat. Alan is everything a man of action ought to be.

            Not all of Alan Shaw’s adventures turn out to have happy endings, however. Sometimes the bad guys win, and sometimes the good guys get hurt or killed. Alan doesn’t always have all the answers, and he is maneuvered like a pawn more than once. This gives the stories depth and seriousness that one would not necessarily expect from a book whose cover depicts a dashing young man swinging from an airship. I rather like this dimension to the adventures, but it might not be for everyone.

            I give The Adventures of Alan Shaw, Volume 1 four gears out of five. It is a lot of fun to read, and I look forward to seeing what other scrapes Alan Shaw talks (or shoots) his way out of.

Your Correspondent From The Bookstore,

Penny J. Merriweather