So I’ll be honest – the big draw for this book was the fact that the lead character was called Daniel Holmes. This also happens to be the name of my twin brother. It was also set in Glasgow which is the city my Grandad came from; it just had to be read. I had seen the sequel in a shop not so long ago and liked the cover (yes I am influenced by a cover!) so downloaded it.
The basic premise of the book follows Daniel, an orphan boy attending a school he hates full of people he doesn’t like and who bully him a lot. One day, running away from this lot, Daniel runs inside the first shop he sees – which happens to be The Nowhere Emporium. The store is full of strange sights, strange people and various curios. Daniel meets Lucien Silver who dazzles him with magic and magpies. As Daniel leaves he says he’ll return – to be told no one finds the Emporium once they leave. But guess what? He does! Bet you didn’t see that one coming? And that’s my problem with this book. Once I got past the opening that I felt like I had read a million times before, I then met characters I’d met a million times before…
The idea of the Emporium lies in the Book of Wonders. In this book, Lucien can create anything he likes – rooms that give people experiences and memories and fun. While they are there, he steals a little bit of their imagination just to keep things going. The Emporium travels through time and space and ends up in different eras and different cities. The problem I had with that is that it didn’t seem to have any impact on the story. They don’t go outside enough to take advantage of this! Lucien trusts Daniel enough, very quickly, to become his apprentice and begin writing his own wonders. Daniel does this – but again there’s just not enough in the rooms to actually really know what’s going on!
We have a villain in the shape of Vindictus Sharpe, a magician that trained Lucien Silver to begin with, who wants the Book of Wonders for his own gain. To protect the book as well as the emporium and all in it, including his daughter Ellie, Lucien disappears. In the wrong hands the emporium begins to crumble leaving Ellie and Daniel on a chase to find Lucien and stop Vindictus.
The trouble I am having with this book is that I just didn’t enjoy it that much. It felt too similar to other books I have read. I know that this happens a lot and yes I know that some genres are limited to the styles and variations they can take, but it just didn’t excite me. I don’t feel like I really know what the emporium is about and what people do in there. Daniel leaves his life behind and there are no traces of it ever again after the first couple of chapters. Other characters and staff are there but once again we don’t really know what they’re about. I’m just left feeling a bit “meh” about it. I wanted something fantastical and delightful and circus like – what I got just didn’t do this. After reading the amazing Cogheart and Moonlocket I was hoping for something on the same lines; this isn’t that.
It’s not a bad book by any stretch of the imagination. But I’m afraid I struggled to remember a lot about it when I finished and I didn’t care enough about the people in it at the end. It could have been better with more character development, more magical fantastical things and some fun. It just lacks on all parts for me…