Guardian Review - when illustrations give too much away
The Toymaker by Jeremy de Quidt reviewed by Philip Ardagh
The story is pacy, exciting and inventive with strong and interesting characters. It's violent in places too, with threats, torture (fingers snapped "like dry twigs"), and death. The hero, Mathias, seems to be constantly sustaining new and painful injuries. The plot is essentially a race to uncover a secret: a battle between good and evil and shades of grey in-between, but the revelation of the secret is really worth waiting for. This is no MacGuffin, here simply to justify the chase. It is a dark and dirty secret at the very heart of what the story is all about. It's a shame, therefore, that in a number of instances the positioning of an illustration gives so much away: pivotal moments can be seen at a glance, rather than when the writer chooses to reveal them in the text...
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