Charlie Bone and the Castle of Mirrors -- Jenny Nimmo

The Charlie Bone series is about a boy named (shocker coming up) Charlie Bone.  In the first book, he turns eleven and discovers that he has magical powers.  Due to having these powers, he is sent to a special academy with other students that have magical powers.  At the school, there are loads of students, some nice, some not-so-nice.  The not-so-nice ones really seem to have it in for Charlie.

Sound familiar?

For real, this series is NOT a rip-off of the HP books.  There are similarities, yes, but it's kind of more like a combination of Roald Dahl, Enid Blyton, Xanth and the X-Men.  Each magic-user has ONE talent.  As they learn to use their power, it becomes more complex and multi-faceted.  It's a pretty neat magic system.

However.  You may have noticed that I compared the series to Enid Blyton's books.  Coming from me, this is never a good thing. 

Here's the deal:  I've now read four Charlie Bone books.  That amounts to about 1600 pages.  (Okay, okay.  Less, really -- the font is huge and the text is double-spaced.  Call it 600 pages.)  I just don't feel that there's been 600 pages worth of action/revelations/entertainment. 

As the series progresses, it's getting duller and duller.  It's always the same: In each book, there's a new problem -- and that always gets dealt with, but the old background stuff never changes.  I'm TIRED of the mystery surrounding the disappearance of Charlie's dad.  I'm getting tired of the evil Bloor family.  I'm just tired of Billy Raven, period.  I keep reading them, hoping for something to be resolved, but I'm starting to suspect that it's not going to happen. 

Sigh.