100 Cupboards

100 Cupboards by N.D. Wilson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I really enjoyed this book and I can't say that for some fantasy books I've read lately. Henry York is a very different child. His parents are so overprotective (Henry remembers being sent to boarding school with a helmet to wear during P.E.) that he doesn't quite miss them when they are kidnapped. When he goes to live with his aunt and uncle, Henry discovers 99 cupboards that have been covered in plaster in his attic bedroom. From the cryptic comments Henry has with his uncle it is apparent that the uncle knows what is going on. I was surprised that since Uncle Frank surely understood the ramifications of the plaster Henry is carrying outside that Frank didn't intervene sooner. Henry and his cousin Henrietta are soon whisked away on an adventure that I found to be interesting but slightly disappointing. Sure they encounter an evil villainess, and get trapped, and see ghosts but the adventure was so very brief! It is overly apparent that this book is only the first in the series and really just a world building book. My absolute favorite part of this book happened to be the descriptive language used by the author. Some sentences were so completely descriptive that they were as long as sentences in a Tolkien book. Despite my utter enjoyment with the language, I seriously doubt the age range suggested by the publishers to be at all accurate. Older teens and adults would have few difficulties with the over abundance of descriptiveness but 9 to 12 year olds are going to be lost.

View all my reviews