Blog Tour - The Purloined Boy by Mortimus Clay

The Purloined Boy - Book 1, The Weirdling Cycle
Mortimus Clay
Finster Press
Pages - 249
Reading Time: 3.5 hrs

Summary
Trevor is in an orphanage where he meets Maggie and Epictetus. They tell him that his "nightmares" of home are actually memories. Contrary to the Guardians lies, there really are places called "home" and there really are people called "parents". Maggie and Epictetus want to help Trevor get home.

My Thoughts
The Purloined Boy is a fast-paced, action packed mystery. We travel with Trevor as he tries to find his way "home". Time passes strangely in the Purloined Boy. I had a hard time telling "when" things were happening. The humor was subtle but effective. My favorite kind.

"She was wearing the standard white robe of the Guardians, but her immense girth filled it so completely that every fold and ripple of her ample body was outlined for a defenseless world to see." (8)

"Soon you will be take to where you don't want to go. Someplace awful." (25)

Clay used a lot of words that I had to look up and I also looked up many of the names. You should too because the characters names give you insight into who they are. Very clever. There were a few lessons I learned in this book:

"...where there's life, there's hope..." (23) "Stop trying to help yourself! Let me do the work..." (53)

I have a tendency to want to give God a hand. Yes, this is Christian Middle Grade fiction! But the lessons are understated. You take what you need. Leave the rest. So well done.


About the Author
Professor Clay is not given to sweeping generalizations but he has this on the highest authority. When living, Professor Clay was, unfortunately, a dismal failure as an author. Passed over by editors and snubbed by former schoolmates like Charles Dickens, Clay spent his life living like a character in a Dickens novel. When Clay wrote Dickens to this effect in the hope of at least appearing in print as a character in a book even if he could not see his name on the cover of one, Dickens is reported to have said, “Mortimus Clay? Never heard of the fellow.”

To this day Dickens denies saying any such thing. But Professor Mortimus has his sources and Dickens always was so full of himself. It gives one a chuckle to know the old snot has not written anything in over a century and here is his old shoe, Mortimus Clay, as dead as a doornail, still writing after all these years! How absolutely delicious!

While living, Mortimus Clay served as Professor of Arts and Letters at the Her Majesty’s Knitting College for Wayward Girls. After teaching Beowulf and The Faerie Queen to unappreciative knitters for 50 years in the backroom of a Manchester warehouse, Professor Clay died in 1885 a gray and wizened man.

It was the best thing that ever happened to him as his writing took an immediate turn for the better.

Mortimus Clay Links
TLC tour stops
Mortimus Clay website
Finster Press

I'm impatiently awaiting The Quest for the Fey Brand, Book 2 to be published!