** spoiler alert **
The Unseen Country by Phillip W. Simpson is definitely geared towards the younger YA group. I loved the character growth within Tom. A great modern bildungsroman with magic. I would have loved to read this when I was in middle school.
My complaints are few. There are several grammar errors throughout and some of them so bad that it jarred me out of the story. Also, there is a lot of deus ex machina going on throughout, which I found a bit boring. It's fine to have one or two moments of a great miracle but this book had about four or more of these instances. For the younger crowd though, they would have been much more accepting of this.
This book is nothing like Harry Potter -- so if you read the review claiming that, just disregard it. Just because a book has magic in it doesn't equate it to HP. That'd be like me saying Bram Stoker's Dracula reminds me of Twilight. The characters are very fun in The Unseen Country. I loved all the different types of faeries and the concept of good vs. evil, but there are no other comparisons with the characters of Simpson and Rowling.
The whole concept of the water poisoning was completely lame, but I loved that Simpson pointed that out in his letter. It's great when an author conveys those things within their writing, which is very British era-esk style, particularly in... BILDUNGSROMAN. It's great to see an author reverting back to those concepts. With a better editor, this book could have been a 5.
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