Tourmaline and the Land of Elsewhere

Like Philip Pullman’s Lyra before her, 12-year old Tourmaline also starts out overhearing a nefarious academic conversation while hiding in a university museum. Her subsequent search for a much-loved mother who goes missing takers place with the help of her younger friend George. An initially hostile girl of the same age plus a band of feminist pirates also weigh in. But while main characters overcome a variety of dangers they never develop as individuals. Tourmaline’s characteristic scowl stays with her for the duration, and George’s timidity rarely gets by without a new mention.

All works out happily by the end, and there is a further adventure due to appear in Spring 2024. Yet in these days of A1, authors now and in the future will surely have to concentrate even harder on creating and then pushing through their own individual take on their fiction.  As it is, any chat bot would now be quite capable of producing a stereotyped children’s adventures story constructed around a few given names and plot devices. Ruth Lauren is a competent enough writer, but trying to sustain  a constant level of excitement over 357 pages does have its problems. This is where some more interesting character development and the cutting of too many  near-confrontations with disaster could well have helped. More brevity might too have allowed time to think again when it comes to passages when ‘eyes flew open’ or heads ‘snapped up.’

Talking trees, an enchanted island,  a glamorous, loving and successful archaeologist mother and plenty of action  all help establish a pleasant enough and just believable mood of contented escapism. This is fine in itself, but it could also have been a little more demanding or even occasionally challenging.