B|t|B: Book Review – The Cornerstone by Nick Spalding

Title: The Cornerstone
Author: Nick Spalding
Number of Pages: 272
Published:  2011 by Racket Publishing

The Cornerstone is the first instalment of the Duology telling the story of Max Bloom, a somewhat typical 17 year old . Like most teenagers, he is Bored with everything and bored with being bored. Then due to a sudden random thought Max decides to enter the local library, shortly after he is debating his sudden moment of madness, as he would never have considered the library to be a fun place at all, I mean he has only ever read one book in his entire life. However little does he know this seemingly random impulse would be a detrimental decision that will change his life forever. While wandering the isles, Max see’s a very odd looking book, upon a bit of hesitant detective work, he finds a hidden note that leads to a magical book known as The Cornerstone. Upon finding this magical tome Max is suddenly transported to a parallel universe where words are a guarded secret, especially books as they contain untold magical power. So in pops a ticked off hormonal 17 year old from a universe where libraries are in every city and there are millions of books, it’s only natural that the inhabitants they expect him to be a superhero, right?.

I enjoyed this book – it does have echoes of Terry Pratchett, who I adore, and I would bet my bottom dollar that Spalding is a fan of too. However he doesn’t quite reach the same level of satirical and dry humour that the disc world series has. It does however adopt the no nonsense approach to comedy similarly to that of Landy’s Skullduggery Pleasant. The plot is relatively simple, travel to mysitcal land, become a hero, save the girl, destroy all evil. but it’s a fun and interesting storyline with a lot of original elements along the way. What you have to bare in mind this is definitely a YA book and is written as such, it’s not particularly articulate, but it gets the job done, and if you are a big kid like me, you will get on fine with it.

All in all, this was a fun story, and I would be more than willing to read more of Mr. Spalding’s work in the future.

If you are interested in reading The Cornerstone, it is currently Free on the Amazon Kindle Store.

Until next time, read more books!…