Fourth book, The Day of the Djinn warriors, in the Children of the Lamp series will take us this time to China to meet the famous Terracotta Army.
Our story starts precise there, where the third book ended. Methuselah curse placed by Layla on her husband, so their children wonʼt try to get her back from Babylon and her role of the Blue Djinn.
I find these novels by P. B. Kerr very educational for young readers; there entail almost all the time some small fun facts and knowledge that can be a really good starting point for extending oneʼs horizon. Not to mention that one can brag with those facts. The first chapters were reminding me of the famous movie Night at the Museum with Ben Stiller, where supernatural things are happening. Not to mention possible ghost roaming in the corridors. Sad to lose Mr. Rakshasas, who was always the calm and experienced one of the group, but he died the noble way by protecting the twins. Night in the Museum was not the only movie I was reminded during this novel. It was also the horror movie House of Wax, as Groanin was describing and comparing the wax figures in the museum to real people under the huge amount of wax to achieve the highest possible reality. Not the kind of genre for kids, but it still was fitting. I must point out the nice relationship between Groaning and the children, even thought he was a grumpy older man, he still was courageous and able to put aside his fears to help John and Philippa on their adventures.
We also got short mentioning of Samael and his biblical fight with Jacob. Sometimes I found myself lost in the plot of the novel and was concentrating just on the facts and the educational part, where I was googling the authenticity of them. Which is not bad, but can be bit complicated for young readers. We were traveling from Italy to Ireland to endure the final battle in a far eastern country, China.
The author is positioning the main characters against hard life decissions and events: saving of Faustina, fighting with ghosts, loosing a close person, to some kind of betrayal of a good friend, Dybbuck. I found the events with their mother a kind of cruelty, after losing her to the role of Blue Djinn, getting her back just to be burned by a volcanic exploration indirectly caused by Philippa is really something tough things for twelve years old. Ok, the ghost of their mother saved herself, but the body would never be the same again. I suppose it should have been a moral lesson than not even a good wish is without a payment. In that moment I was asking myself how they want to explain the society the disappearance of their mother but exchanging her role with the housemaid. I am curious how the author will fight with this topic in the next book.
The ending of the novel was good, bit exciting and we finally got rid of the bad Djinn Iblis. Hopefully we wonʼt meet with him anymore. Not that he was that a great and horrible enemy, it was just getting boring to fight most of the time with the same villain again. I am excited to read where the next book will bring us and what kind of mystery we will fight against.