The Undrowned Child, Michelle Lovric

The Undrowned Child by Michelle Lovric

Publisher: Orion Books
Pages: 417  including Author’s Notes on Venice (Hardback)
Form: Novel
Series: The Undrowned Child #1

Rating:

Teodora has always longed to visit Venice. And at last she has her chance. But strange and sinister things are afoot in the beautiful floating city.

Teo is quickly subsumed into a secret world in which salty-tongued mermaids run subversive printing presses, ghosts good and bad patrol the streets, statues speak, rats read and librarians turn fluidly into cats.

And where a book, The Key to the Secret City, leads Teo straight into the heart of the danger that threatens to destroy the city to which she feels she belongs.

An ancient proverb seems to unite Teo with a Venetian boy, Renzo, and with the Traitor who has returned from the dark past to wreak revenge. . .

But who is the undrowned child destined to save Venice?

First thing’s first – I adore Venice and so am horribly biased in this books favour. It’s a far from perfect book, and I’ll get onto that later, but it really does capture the magic of the city. Or at least it did for me; how someone who has never visited the place would find it though…I’m not that sure. In fact I would probably only gift this to a child who already had some knowledge of, or better yet had actually been to Venice. There’s a handy map with key locations on at the very start of the book and a fantastic set of very accessible author’s notes at the back, but to get full enjoyment from it I do think the reader has to have at least seen a photo of Venice. Because, putting aside the beautiful and lovingly depicted setting, the storyline and characterisation are fairly standard children’s fantasy fare.