Ivo Moncrieff is thirteen and a half years old and he’s never been to London. Even before arriving at his glamorous aunt and uncle’s home for Christmas, he’s thrown into the greatest adventure any boy could ask for. As he enters London’s Underground, and waits for a train, an object is thrust into his hands by a wild stranger with an incoherent message. Moments later the boy witnesses the stranger’s gruesome murder, and Ivo is next in line to die if he doesn’t keep his wits about him. Ivo finds out he’s up against the ancient power of the Liberators who, after centuries in the shadows, are impatient to overthrow London. The murderers want the object, they seem untouchable from the laws of the land, and he’s a vulnerable child in a grown-up’s world. As the city approaches total breakdown, it’s all down to Ivo; his two new friends, a boy and a girl; plus an eccentric slightly over the hill adult hero. “Myth and fantasy intrigued me,” Philip Womack states, “I have always been interested in the human…to impose patterns upon what is chaos, and to find meaning in what we find meaningless.”

Review: The Liberators is a book full of rumbustious non-stop action from start to finish. It must be the dream of many boys to be caught up in a fantastic escapade completely outside an adult’s experience and imagination. This is its strength and some of its weakness. Don’t get me wrong, I thoroughly enjoyed the book. It didn’t let up for a single moment, not even when Ivo goes for a cup of tea in a café; I would have adored to have been a customer that day.

Tatler (also, informally, The Tatler) has stated that Philip Womack is "The New Philip Pullman". The book certainly jumps you into the action within its first sentence, and it’s an enthralling tale that attempts to explore what it means to be a child surrounded by adults who have power and authority. It will be popular with boys but will it get them to think more about the world around, and outside, themselves? The story contain twists and turns to help stretch their reading habits, but does it have the Philip Pullman punch? I felt it didn’t go far enough in dealing with the big decisions a child shouldn’t have to deal with, but is often forced to face. To quote the Times Literary Supplement, “'Womack is not simply writing for children, he is, like many of the best children's writers, remembering how it felt to be a child'.” Do the characters develop enough by the end of the book, not quite enough for me, but I still think I’d like to have been in Ivo’s gang, so I would happily agree with the TLS.

2010-01-28