Dumped in the River Charon, hunted by an accursed river creature and betrayed by the wicked Matron Pluckrose, Tensy Farlow is in mortal danger. She has no parents. Worse still, she has no guardian angel.
When she is thrown into the Home for Mislaid Children - a gloomy orphanage where ravens attack, Watchers hover over her bed, and even the angels cannot be trusted - it seems that all hope is lost.
Yet could it be that a plucky, flame-haired orphan with a mysterious past is precisely what this dark world needs?
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Wikipedia in English (1)
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Harry, here, is a girl. The kids at peril who need to show their true grit in order to overcome the evil being that needs to make its way fully into the world by destroying the Harry character [pause for breath] are younger than in HP: they're the age just before they should be going to Hogwarts, in fact. Here's some banter to demonstrate this:
'Pluckrose tried to poison me!' said Howard, when he and Polly joined Tensy in the darkened recess. Tensy stared at him in horror.
'It's true,' said Polly, nodding her head. 'She tried to poison him and then Howard kicked her and she fell in a big heap and there was dribble on her chin and we ran!' (p294)
Cute.
The characters all have very distinctive voice characterisations, which makes them clearly differentiated. The text is interesting from that perspective, and is worth a flip through for that if nothing else.
Flipping aside, the great dread for the reader is that this will turn into a seven-part novel deal, and that we'll have to follow Tensy on a journey that we're not all that hooked on, but feel we need to out of politeness. You'll have to read it to find out if that happens.
The novellist has digs in the Abbotsford Convent (Melbourne), and that venue seems to have served as a wonderfully gothic inspiration for the Home. I've crept around some of the scary passageways of that particular place, and it's satisfying to see that it's being put to good use.
It was also interesting to see that Angels are the supernaturals being used as the device to power this, not wizards or vampires or werefolk. Despite the fact that Angels were in this primary role, and it was written in a convent, there was little in the way of religious or ethical overtones in the piece. It's not like they would float in and moralise for us, which was nice, but made it a little strange that they were there at all. The Guardian Angel bureaucracy seems more like a struggling governmental department than a religious intervention mechanism, which might be the way it's supposed to be. I'm not an expert on Angels.
All in all, a rollicking adventure, complete with spooky caves, scary river monsters, and at least one car crash. (