The City of Spirits

The final book in the ‘Printer’s Devil’ trilogy continues to draw on the adventure and thrills of its Victorian setting and what had seemed like an older style of story-telling. Now, it’s off to Calcutta, to the origin of the story and the twins’ birth in search of the marvellous but cursed diamond that has been owned by the twins’ family and might help to save them from the debt that threatens the wealth they seemed to have inherited. There’s no hanging around and with high warp speed we are carried through the dullness of journeys straight into the heart of the action trying to get to the diamond before the evil sea-captain. On the way there is the magical Indian setting and the possible presence of the twins’ father, Damyata. It’s plain, exciting plotting with a packed-full larder of adventure ingredients, including a wonderful assortment of creatures, elephants, snakes and crocodiles amongst them, as Mog and Nick engage in desperate scrapes to find the sensational diamond and answers to the mysteries of their past.