The Woven Path

The first in a series of 'Tales from the Wyrd Museum'. Neil and Josh's mother has left and their ineffectual father has secured a caretaker's job in the museum, which is eerily inhabited by three elderly and eccentric sisters. This is a massively long book - well over 400 pages - and suffers from an over abundance of adjectives and laboriously detailed descriptions. The subject-matter is intriguing -time slips, monsters, legends and the struggle between good and evil-but fans of The Deptford Mice Trilogy will be shocked by the lurid descriptions of agonising deaths and grotesque monsters - all too reminiscent of the worst excesses of Stephen King. The ending transparently paves the way for a sequel and I suspect readers will be eager to meet the characters again, despite the book's flaws. Don't regard this is typical Robin Jarvis - this is definitely for older readers with strong stomachs.