Charlie Bone and the Castle of Mirrors

Title: Charlie Bone and the Castle of Mirrors (Children of the Red King #4)
Author: Jenny Nimmo

Initial Thoughts: mischief :)

I love mischief. Bringing Olivia into the endowed will bring much mischief. Why are there so many talented pianists who seem to have lost their memories? Lyell Bone, Mr. Pilgrim, Albert Tuccini...Do they do it just to throw Charlie off the trial? Mr. Pilgrim and Lyell are both missing and need to be found by the end of the series. Charlie has a good heart, but he is only 11 so I think it's understandable if he's a little selfish and wants to find his dad. Why do they have to keep picking on his impulsiveness and make his one little semi-selfish act into such a terrible thing? Okay, yes, you should think before you act, but usually impulsive decisions from children don't have such terrible consequences unless they're bad decisions. Charlie lets his heart lead him in the right direction, the problem is that everyone is putting the weight of the world on his shoulders so suddenly his actions have serious consequences for everyone else as well. Usually his decisions are based on helping others. This one decision was to help Billy and to help himself and the one time he tries to do something for himself he ends up screwing things up. People do need to be allowed to be a little selfish sometimes, and this wasn't even totally selfish because it was also for Billy and also to hopefully save his dad, yet they make it into such a bad thing. "No, you're never allowed to do anything for yourself, it always has to be for someone else. If you do anything to make your own life better than it was completely selfish and terrible and everything falls to ruin." Like, no, that is not right. He should be able to do something good for himself once in a while without everything falling apart. Anyway, yet again we find Charlie being the focus of everything. He stands up for Billy. He leaves for a couple days and the balance is lost. He has to be the one to convince Olivia to accept her endowment and restore balance. It's always on him. The only one of them younger than him is Billy so why do we rely on the youngest of the bunch to make all the world-altering decisions? Lysander and Tancred have a falling out and it's on Charlie to fix it. That really shouldn't be his relationship to mend. Ta'veren. Seriously. Things just don't make sense around them. Allons-y! On to other things: we seem to slowly be getting a history of the Red King and his children. Now we want to know exactly what happened with Amoret and her descendants. Why was she referred to as the girl no one could protect? What exactly happened? I'm curious.

Rating: 4.5/5 Fun, but little bits annoyed me (see rant above)