I got this book last weekend, during a visit to the bookshop. It is a book written for children, what might be called a middle-grade book. I told myself that I shouldn’t get it, because I’m not a kid anymore, but the child inside me couldn’t resist it and so I got it. I finished reading it today.
One day when Col comes back home with his parents after a weekend family sports competition, he notices strange markings on the street. They look like runes. Later he finds strange people at the next door yard doing suspicious stuff. When he asks them what they are doing, they say that they are installing broadband. But when he asks them simple questions about broadband, they don’t have the answers. This makes Col even more suspicious. He calls the police. But the police believe the strangers’ explanation and Col’s parents are upset with him for his overactive imagination. Next day, Col goes out to investigate and he finds more such strange markings. He also meets a girl called Lucy, who seems to know more about it. Together they decide to investigate and get to the bottom of this. That night, Col discovers that the strangers are digging in his own garden. Now he knows that his suspicions are well-founded and something bad is happening. What happens after this and the adventures that Col and Lucy have and how the mystery is resolved forms the rest of the story.
‘How to Stop the End of the World’ is a fast-paced book. There is no dull moment, there is no wasted sentence. The pages fly as we want to find out what happens next. There are some archaeologist-type people, one of whom is a cool, stylish villain (her name is Draco. It is so hard to resist the comparison with the other more famous Draco, Draco Malfoy), there are Indiana Jones kind of adventures, there are secret tombs and treasures, and there is even an ancient sword with an attached curse. Tom Mitchell’s prose is cool and stylish and is an absolute pleasure to read. His sense of humour is infectious and I was laughing through most of the book 😄
There were passages like this :
“There was the thinnest of thin silver linings to all this drama, however; a glimmer of joy in the otherwise overwhelmingly bad feels : she’d brought ice cream…Three small tubs of ice cream : two for the kids and one for herself. Lucy was already popping off the top and using her fingernails to lever out the plastic spoon embedded underneath, but Col waited and watched. It was only sensible to see if Draco ate her own. Because there was definitely a chance the ice cream was poisoned, even though the tubs were unopened, and there was no obvious reason why this woman would want them dead, despite his earlier fears. True, they’d acted fairly suspiciously so far, but they’d done nothing punishable by death. And poisoning by ice cream was quite a convoluted way to get rid of someone. This was a castle : there were bound to be ancient instruments of torture lying around. Maybe in the far corner of this room, where they hadn’t yet looked.”
And this :
“Collisions are often compared to hitting a brick wall, so much so that the simile has become a cliché. I’m told that good writing seeks to avoid clichés, but (and here’s the thing) running into Ross really was like hitting a brick wall… if the bricks were reinforced with steel and also surrounded by some kind of force field made of diamonds and even more bricks.”
And this :
“Col was a kid. He was weak. An adult, a strong(ish) adult, could do better surely? Why hadn’t Stones tried shouldering the door? People shouldered doors all the time. This was the problem with being a Doctor of Literature : no practical skills; a lack of shoulder use.”
And this :
“You might think that there now follows much description of digging. Well, I’m happy to say that you’re wrong. Look at how many pages remain, for one thing. There aren’t chapters upon chapters to go, each describing another hour of digging. Think about it. And be thankful. As with actual digging, there’s only so much description of digging a normal person can take.”
Did you like these passages? I loved them all, they made me laugh 😄 They sounded better in the context of the story though.
I loved ‘How to Stop the End of the World’. Tom Mitchell has written four more books. I want to read them all now. If you have kids at home, this is a good book to gift them. Or if you are a child at heart like me, you can get it for yourself and enjoy the story 😊
Have you read ‘How to Stop the End of the World’? What do you think about it? Have you read other Tom Mitchell books?
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