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Junior
Scholastic
Hardback £12.99
ISBN: 0439963656
Reviewed by Charles Butler
[Armadillo 6.4 Winter 2004]
In Children of the Lamp two young New Yorkers discover, like many a fantasy hero and heroine before them, that they are not the ordinary children they had always imagined. Strange things start happening to twins John and Philippa Gaunt: though only twelve years old they find they each have a full set of wisdom teeth; they gain an inch and a half in height within a few days; weirdest of all, when people wish for things in their hearing, those wishes have a habit of being granted. The truth is that John and Philippa are djinn, and are only now coming into their full djinn powers. It is when they go to London to visit their uncle Nimrod that the adventures really begin, as they become caught up in a battle (and a race against time) to find the seventy lost djinn of Akhenaten before the evil Ifrit, and thus to preserve the subtle balance of good and evil luck in the world.
Despite a strangely slow start (an early chapter is dominated by a seemingly-pointless conversation about renaming the Gaunt family dogs), once the twins leave New York this becomes a fast-paced adventure story. Kerr certainly knows how to keep you turning the pages, although the book overall is marred by wooden dialogue, flat characterization, and slipshod plotting. (One example: Nimrod first contacts his nephew and niece in the dream they share whilst under anaesthetic for the extraction of their wisdom teeth - but what dentist would put both children under simultaneously? The Gaunts should have sued for malpractice.)
A more serious problem is the book's attitude to foreign cultures. Kerr is clearly knowledgeable about Egypt, but this is the kind of novel where foreigners come in just three varieties: villain, comic turn, and loyal retainer. The names are a tip-off here. Contrasting with the Shakespearian/Elgarish echoes of Nimrod and John Gaunt, the Arabs have names like Baksheesh, Toeragh and Hussein Hussaout. But it is the French, represented by Madame Coeur de Lapin (with her two chefs Messieurs Impoli and Maleleve), who clearly rile Kerr the most. According to Nimrod (and his assertions are generally vindicated by the text) they are supercilious, unhygienic, and bibulous, - besides being rather creepy in the way they invade one's personal space. It is hard to avoid the impression that the writer is wreaking a private revenge for some unpleasant experiences with condescending waiters. Perhaps this is a book for our time but its worldview, alas, seems better suited to Rider Haggard's.