Magic Parcel: The Awakening by Frank English

Young Jimmy Scoggins has a mysterious Uncle likes to visit, one Saturday afternoon Uncle Reuben tells Jimmy about the land of Omni, he gives Jimmy a parcel to take to the Post Office but on the way there imagines himself in Omni and finds that he is actually there. The evil Lord of the Seth is after Jimmy's Magic Parcel and sends his wraith like minions after him and his brother Tommy who has followed him into the land of Omni in order to bring Jimmy home.

This is the premise of Mr English's work; I only hope that it is not his life's work. Loathe as I am to give a low scoring review for a book the author has paid good money to publish himself, I'm afraid that is what I must do. I should really have been suspicious when I received the book and saw the cover art work, however, I wanted to be fair and not judge the book by its unattractive illustrations, I wanted to see if the story was better. I started reading the story; I read it all the way through. The style of writing is as old fashioned as C.S. Lewis and Tolkien; there is nothing wrong with that, we still read Jane Austen after all.

There are some good ideas, but Mr English doesn't give himself time to develop them fully, perhaps he does not have the luxury as he is publishing the story himself. He introduces characters like they’re soon to go out fashion and they disappear from the story as quickly as they appear. The author also repeats phrases with regards to certain characters that many times that it makes the character somewhat annoying. I'm not sure whether anyone from Mr English’s market audience has read this book but I found that it needed be a bit more thought out, but maybe he has as there is the promise of a sequel at the end of this book.

I got the impression that the author had read The Chronicles of Narnia and he might have read or watched The Lord of The Rings and The Harry Potter saga and thought he’d have a go himself. I’m sorry but this book gets a 3 out of 10.

3/10 There are some good ideas, but Mr English doesn't give himself time to develop them fully