read by Jamie du Pont MacKenzie
The Lost Heir is a charming whirlwind of action adventure, romance and faerie, much in the vein of Harry Potter, but with more pace and threat, and a little bit of Oliver Twist thrown in.
The heir in question is twelve-year-old orphaned Jake, eking
out a living on the streets of Victorian London as pickpocket and regular
urchin, ‘a devilish gleam in his blue eyes, and the survival instincts of a
feral alley cat’. He has the care and love of Dani O’Dell, ‘ten years old, with
chestnut hair, smart green eyes, and a smattering of freckles … the only soul
in this rotten old world that he trusted’. But Jake has some advantages few
others share in this rotten old world. He can see ghosts and can perform
psychokinesis – useful when you are hungry and passing by a market stall
stacked with meat pies.
Pursued by ‘a Sinister Gentleman’ and by the police, Jake
eventually is rescued only to discover that he is the long-feared-lost heir of
a propertied and wealthy aristocratic family, highly regarded by the British
royal family and privy to a secret world of magic, fantasy and adventure, chock
full of enemies and rivals and foes.
This is wonderful hokum, entertaining to both boys and
girls, and delivered at breakneck pace. British listeners may wince at some of
the pronunciations (‘aristocrat’, for example) in what purports to be such an
English landscape, but there is more than enough here to fill long car journeys
and rainy winter evenings.
And there are more episodes to come ...
And there are more episodes to come ...
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