Charlie Bone and the Shadow by Jenny Nimmo

Charlie Bone is a gifted boy, descended from two long-ago Magicians. On one side of his family, he is descended from a man called the Red King, and on the other side of his family, from the Welsh Magician, Math Mathonwy. Not only is he descended from the Magician, but he has inherited his wand, a spirit called Claerwen who often takes the shape of a white moth with silver traceries on her wings. Charlie's "endowment", as it is known, is to look into pictures and paintings and be able to talk with the people in them, and even enter the picture and meet the person within.

The story begins with one of the friends of the Red King, Otus Yewbeam, and his son, Roland traveling in the far north. There, he meets an unknown brother of himself, Tolomeo and his own son Owain, an albino. They must give Otus bad news about his wife, Amoret, one of the children of the Red King. The trolls led by Count Harken, an enchanter, were after the Mirror, a gift to Amoret from her father, the Red King, which allowed her to travel anywhere she wished. She died to keep the mirror from Count Harken, and Tolomeo gives the mirror to Otus to protect in exchange for Tolomeo keeping Roland safe from the forces of the Enchanter. Otus is unable to flee and the Count gets the Mirror.

In the present day, Charlie knows the Mirror well, as Count Harken projected himself through it and tried to enchant Charlie's mother into marrying him. But Charlie forced the Count to retreat, and in the fight, the mirror was cracked, rendering it useless for travel. Luckily, in saving his mother, Charlie also rescued his father, long missing and believed dead, from his enchanted imprisonment at Bloor's Academy, where Charlie attends school as a music student. Many of the students there are descendents of the Red King, and have Endowments, but some of them use their powers for wicked ends, unlike Charlie and his friends.

One other friend Charlie has at the school is Billy Raven, a peniless orphan with an Endowment that lets him talk to animals. Billy is close to Rembrandt, his rat, and he often comes home to Charlie's house on the weekends. But Billy hasn't come this particular weekend, when Charlie's grand aunt, Venetia, brings home a painting wrapped in brown paper. Charlie is intrigued by the painting and spies on his grandmother and aunts as they talk about how the painting scares and oppresses them. Charlie waits until they leave the house and goes downstairs to look at the painting.

The painting is of a scary landscape with a huge castle, known as Badlock, and before he knows it or can call on his power, he is sucked in by the painting, where he is chased by trolls and given shelter by a Giant named Otus. But Charlie is not the boy they are looking and waiting for, and he manages to slip free, only for Runner Bean, a dog owned by Charlie's non-endowed friend Benjamin, to be trapped instead. Charlie tries to re-enter the painting to free the dog, but his power is blocked, and Benjamin, angry at Charlie, decides not to talk to him until Runner Bean is freed.

That isn't all that is happening in Charlie's world. The Pets Café, where Charlie, Benjamin and Runner Bean, along with Charlie's friends and their pets, hang out on the weekend, has been closed by the order of the local councilman, due to complaints about the noise. Worse, Mr. and Mrs. Onimous, who own the Café, were in an accident with a motorcycle, and Mr. Onimous is in the hospital, gravely injured.

Charlie, naturally, thinks this has something to do with the Bloors, who own Bloor Academy and will do anything to get power over the other Endowed descendants of the Red King, but he and his friends can't be sure. When Charlie and the others return to school for the week, Manfred Bloor, once Head Boy and now Master of Talents, asks Charlie why he didn't bring Billy home with him that weekend. And Dagbert Endless, son of an Endowed Man and a mermaid, whose talent is drowning people, decides to get the sea-gold emblem that Tancred, one of Charlie's friends, stole from him after he attacked Charlie, back by catching Claerwyn and trading her for the Sea-Gold star.

But Claerwyn escapes after Dagbert gives her to Manfred Bloor, and must make her slow way back to Charlie, who had taken Billy home with him, and Billy was enticed into the painting. Now, he is imprisoned in the Enchanter's castle, and an enchantment being laid over him so that he doesn't want to go home. Charlie, imprisoned in the school for damaging one of the paintings of the Bloor ancestors, cannot prevent Tancred Torsson, an Endowed with powers over Wind and Weather, from dying when Dagbert drowns him with his newly-restored powers. And the painting is gone, taken by the descendants of Count Harken who wish to summon him back to the present and repair the mirror of Amoret to make it possible.

But with Billy no longer wanting to return home, one of his best friends dead, and his Uncle Patel out on a secret mission in a white panel van, scouring the country on a hunt for a secret no one else knows, can Charlie prevent the Count's return and save Billy from imprisonment and mind-twisting? Can he even save himself from a troll from the past who is a gargoyle in the present? And can he save Otus Yewbeam from the Count's Prison and torture for hiding Charlie Bone? And even if he does, what can he do with a giant who once lived 900 years in the past?

I was almost certain that the series was going to end with Charlie Bone and the Beast, as Charlie had saved his mother and father and it looked like nothing could prevent them from being a family again. Well, I was wrong, but I was glad I was wrong, even if it's bad news for Charlie Bone. Charlie's Mom and Dad are building a new house for themselves, and have gone on a second honeymoon, a cruise around the world, to be together. And that, of course, means leaving Charlie behind with his other Grandmother, Maisie, who is employed as a cook in the home of Charlie's Uncle Paton and his grandmother, Grizelda.

And it isn't the end of the wicked plots of the Bloor family or the Wicked Members of the Yewbeam family, either, which Charlie now must foil on his own, with only the help of his friends, and the sometime help of his Uncle Paton. Now, the Bloors want Billy Raven to be gone because Billy, believed to be an orphan, is actually the rightful heir to the whole of Bloor Academy. For this reason, they seem to have made a deal with Count Harken to keep Billy in the past and make him want to be there over the present.

But they want more than that from the Count, and as usual, Charlie and his Endowed friends stand in their way. But can Charlie counter them this time, or is it all he'll be able to do to rescue Otus Yewbeam? This question isn't really answered by the end of the book, and I'm hoping it will be in the next book in the series.

Some people might compare this series to Harry Potter. A bunch of kids with magical powers defending what's right and good from people who are callous and perhaps evil and greedy for power. But if it can be compared, it's Harry Potter through a glass darkly. Bloor Academy is run by the forces of the opposition, and Charlie is one of the few decent people with endowments in his family. A better match for Charlie from the Harry Potter books would be a young Sirius Black.

But really, aside from being about young magicians with powers, there isn't a very good match to Harry Potter. Harry had no friends who were muggles, Charlie has his friend Benjamin and Ben's Dog Runner Bean, and so on, and so on. It's only in superficial things that you could compare the two. But I like both series equally well, if I didn't consider the last Harry Potter book to be such an ill-handled mess that really could have used a competent editor to make the book its best.

So far, the Charlie Bone series has been consistently good, and I recommend it to those who like the idea of Children with Magical powers. Jenny Nimmo also wrote another series in the same vein, The Magician Trilogy, both of which I highly recommend. And I want to keep reading more from this wonderful author.