Old Gods, New Tricks

The main character, Trixie dos Santos definitely lives up to her name and as the story begins, she is getting a final warning from her headteacher and is threatened with expulsion.  At that moment all electricity stops functioning and the world is without lights, computers and in fact anything that depends on this source of power.  As life becomes increasingly difficult for everyone, Trixie decides that it is the old gods who have taken the electricity away an she needs to find a way to trick them into giving it back; the answer is to get the trickster gods to help, something that is a huge challenge, even if she can get them to answer her pleas.  What follows is something of a roller-coaster ride as Trixie and her companions follow the trail that will lead them to the other gods and hopefully success in giving electricity back to the world.

What a fabulous take on the world of myths and legends.  The trickster gods all have their own little quirks and a real sense of attitude, so that we really enjoy their antics and the interaction between them.  We also see these gods develop a real feeling of friendship with our young heroine, which means they start working together as an approximation to a team.  Trixie is a really feisty young girl who learns a lot through the adventures that she goes through.  There is a lot of growing up and an understanding that life does not always change in the ways you imagine when you start on a journey. The author is also a very talented artist and his illustrations for the book really focus on the wide-ranging cultures that are represented; the black and white images really add to the overall sense of foreboding that we feel as the world begins to descend into darkness.  This story also highlights the dependence that this world has on the use of electricity. Even for those of us who grew up without computers, mobile phones and other digital resources, it is still difficult to imagine going back to the days before this source was available.  In a real sense this book provides a call to look after our natural resources and not squander what we have.

Reviewer Margaret Pemberton has more to say about Old Gods, New Tricks in this blog post.