Guest Post -- Review : The Carnival of lost souls

Title: The Carnival of Lost Souls (A Handcuff Kid novel)
Author: Laura Quimby
Genre: Fantasy, Fiction
Publishers: Amulet books
Pages: 339
Rating: 8/10

The professor curled his finger and motioned for Jack to move forward. “This Tattoo is the mark of the amazing Mussini, the magician.” It is my passage into the underworld. It guides my steps out of the now and into the dark abyss of the dead.

This excerpt is from when Jack, a boy who loves magic, and his foster parent Professor Hawthorne are talking about the Professors story.

This is Laura Quimby’s first book. It is about a boy, Jack Carr, who is an orphan and from the book I think his age is about twelve to fourteen. His hobbies are magic, especially escaping hand cuffs. Jack is adopted by Professor Hawthorne but the Professor sells Jack to evil magician Mussini. Jack has to travel with Mussini to the land of the dead. Jack is not the only one who is captured by Mussini, there are other children too. Jack thinks that he will be performing magic tricks in front of living people; instead he has to perform in front of the dead, in the Forest of the Dead.

Mussini steals people’s souls away, to make the dead come to his show all the time. Jack wants to get away from Mussini because he doesn’t want his soul taken away. Will he be able to run away from the amazing Mussini?

The main characters in this book are Jack, the Professor and Mussini. There are also others like Jabber, T-Ray, Boxer, Runt, Violet and Mildred. My favorite character of the book is Jack because he is very curious and is really cool. My least favorite character is Mussini because he is really mean to Violet, a girl whom Jack likes.

My opinion of the book was that it was excellent. The book was mostly serious, but had some humorous parts like when Jack tries to act all cool in front of Violet. It was very interesting to read about how Jack did amazing things like wrestling a pig and escaping from handcuffs. But I would say that the book could have been longer and could have had a little more humor. I hope the author makes it a series just like the first book.

I would recommend this book to anybody who likes adventure and mystery.