This reads like sloppy, tossed-off work from an author who should know better. Perhaps the sequels explain some of this, but it's all so nonsensical that it's hard to muster up the will to care. Gwyns grandmother leaves him five gifts: a brooch, a piece of dried seaweed, a tin whistle. This story is pleasant enough while you're reading it, but deeply unsatisfying by the end. She gives him five gifts to help him-a brooch, a piece of dried seaweed, a tin whistle, a scarf, and a broken toy horse. What is magic about these objects? Why does the wind want them? How does the magic work? What happened to Gwyn's sister, why does she come back, why is she changed, why don't her parents seem to mind, why does she have to return again? What is the deal with the supposed evil power, and how does Gwyn know how to trap it? And on and on. The award-winning fantasy trilogy from the New York Times-bestselling author of Charlie Bone On Gwyns 9th birthday, his grandmother tells him he may be a magician, like his Welsh ancestors. Nothing here makes sense, or has any obvious reason behind it, and the reader is left with only questions. Fantasy may not be real, but it has to feel as if it could be. Fantasies can fly as far off the beaten track as their authors can imagine, but they have to have some internal consistency and rules that are discernible and make sense. (Sept.Veteran author Jenny Nimmo knows how to write a story that will keep you turning the pages, but by the end you're likely to wonder what it was all about. Swiftly paced and cleverly plotted, Nimmo's novel fluidly fuses fantasy, suspense and drama. Nimmo demonstrates how unique gifts can set a child apart Gwyn's magic causes a rift between him and his best friend and brings the class bully's wrath upon him. One of the webs contains the image of a girl who strongly resembles his sister-except she is 'fragile and so silver-pale that she might have been made of gossamer.' When the girl in the web temporarily materializes, she brings a peace to Gwyn's family that has long been missing. The brooch turns into a glowing white spider, who weaves intricate webs. The boy first releases the brooch, hoping that the wind will bring him something 'to fill the emptiness' that descended on his home when his sister vanished. His grandmother instructs him to 'give them to the wind' to discover if he is a magician, like his ancestors. On his ninth birthday, Gwyn's delightfully eccentric grandmother gives him five gifts: a piece of seaweed, a tin whistle, a metal brooch, a small, broken horse and the yellow scarf that his older sister had been wearing the day she mysteriously disappeared four years earlier. On his ninth birthday, Gwyn is given a brooch and told. Nimmo (the Charlie Bone novels) launches the Magician Trilogy with this enchanting tale, first released in England in 1986. A spine-tingling magical fantasy trilogy from the author of Charlie Bone, Jenny Nimmo.

The snow spider book