Rating: 3/5
This book was… OK. It quite obviously had a brilliant plot and of course it was written very well, but, I suppose it was just a touch of boringness. A book is meant to be intriguing – like you want to read on and see what happens – at the beginning chapter, and in the second, third, and fourth chapter it’s just a little bit boring, and from then on it’s the most exciting book ever written – but Nesbit hadn’t quite captured that in this exact book. Basically, the first chapter was intriguing; second, third, fourth, they were all a bit boring, with the occasional exciting twist and turn, like a book should be; but then, the fifth, sixth and basically from then on, it was boring with the occasional twist.
So yes, it was a VERY DULL BOOK.
But then there were the funny bits. An extract from the chapter about Being Bandits:
‘We got a sheet of paper out of an old exercise-book, and we made H.O. prick his own thumb [so they could write the address of their letter in blood], because he is our little brother and it is our duty to teach him to be brave. We none of us mind pricking ourselves; we’ve done it heaps of times. H.O. didn’t like it, but he agreed to do it, and I helped him a little because he was so slow, and when he saw the red bead of blood getting fatter and bigger as I squeezed his thumb he was very pleased, just as I had told him he would be.’