The Castle in The Attic

The Castle in The Attic (Book Review 4)

By: Elizabeth Winthrop

“The Castle in The Attic” was a great and interesting book. This book is nearly completely fictional, but it is still a joy to read. It’s a book about betrayal, and avenging your fallen loved ones. It’s a book about, a castle, a knight, and much more.

            The book starts off with the main character, William Edward Lawrence, finding out that his favorite caretaker, Mrs. Phillips, is moving back to her family in England. William, not wanting her to leave, tries everything to get her to stay. He keeps trying, and trying but, alas, he fails. Finally, Mrs. Phillips decides to give William a fare-well gift, a castle.

            When Mrs. Phillips shows William the castle he gets very excited, but then he gets increasingly depressed as it is, a fare-well gift. After a moment of silence Mrs. Phillips starts showing William every part of the magnificent castle. She shows him the dining hall, the master bedroom, the stable, and even how the overly complicated drawbridge worked. However, one piece stood out from the whole collection, a single, silver, lead knight. When William asked about it, Mrs. Phillips told him about the history of the knight, and how it holds a legend, but no one in her family has been able to discover its secrets.

            Later, when William is supposed to be in bed, he goes up to play with the castle, and take a closer look at the knight. However, when he grabbed the knight, it was warm and wrinkled. Scared to death, William dropped it and jumped back. Then the knight slowly rose and asked the “giant”, “friend or Foe?” William said, “Friend,” and began talking to the knight with great interest. They became quick friends as the knight, who calls himself Sir Simon, answered all of William’s simple questions.

            However, after a minute of talking, William asked how the little guy got where he was, and Sir Simon answered, boy did he answer.  He told William all about how a wizard, named Alastor, came to his father’s castle wanting a job.  Mercifully Simon’s father, the King, said he could employ him. However, shortly after Alastor’s arrival, the King got terribly sick, but Alastor quickly “healed” him. This healing made the King confused, so he trusted no one, but Alastor. Later Simon saw Alastor holding an amulet while shrinking things and growing enlarging things. So, doing what he thought was right, he jumped in and grabbed only half ofthe mystical amulet. However, after Simon grabbed the amulet he turned to lead, leaving him to where he ended up today. Now Sir Simon, and William must find and get the other piece of this dangerous amulet.

            I loved this book, but it did have small details that I didn’t like, or thought wasn’t appropriate for this type of book. Even with its flaws I thought it was a great book. I’d recommend this book to people who like high levels of fantasy. I hope they’ll make some sort of sequel to this book, because I honestly thought it didn’t have a lot of closure when I got to the end.