Book Review -The Boundless

The Boundless  by Kenneth Oppel

Read to the 9yo.

Let's take a moment to appreciate that lovely cover art to start with.  Isn't that striking?  Okay , onward!

This is a novel that bridges several genres if there ever was one.  It's set at the time of the Canadian Pacific Railway, and actually opens with the railway nearing completion.  The historical fact is then heavily overlaid with a thick veneer of fiction and magical realism.  The railway is being completed,  but the work has been treacherous because of...murderous sasquatch?  A historical Cornelius Van Horne is almost swept over a cliff in an avalanche during the hammering of the historic last spike...which is made of $200,000 in gold and diamonds?!  It's all so bizarre and surreal and fantastical!   I remember my long, dull Canadian history classes, and this novel tickled my funnybone.  That first chapter sets us up for a jump three years into the future,  where the young boy protagonist  is now a young man, the poor railway worker father is now head of some department, and the semi-mythical Van Horne has achieved his greatest dream - the building of a several MILE long two-storey train called The Boundless.   And on that train is none other than...the entombed body of its creator,  forever crossing the country, clasping the diamond studded spike.  The perfect temptation for the unscrupulous aboard the Boundless on her maiden voyage.

The Bad
The main problem we encountered (as I've mentioned before), is that I'm reading a sensitive 9yo books that were written for the not-so-sensitive 9-12 year old middle school audience.   As you may imagine, this calls for some on-the-ball editing, which I'm actually pretty good at.  However, if you are just handing the book over, some topics might be more...challenging.   Fortunately my 9yo is not at that reading level so at the moment it's a moot point.

Here are some of the things I edited or was careful of: the son leaves town without telling his mother, a bad guy says bad guy type things, someone is stabbed in the woods ( the murder is part of solving the case in the book), creepy legends are told and creepy creatures exist, the protagonist  ( I think he's 14?) sees a boy and girl flirting and kissing, the father and son have a strained relationship,  a boy thinks about a girl's legs and blushes, and so forth.  For a teen reading this book, I don't think anything would fall outside of what you'd find in, say, an Agatha Christie novel, but for a 9yo, I edited.

The Good

History! Magic!

In short - I'd give it to a teen to read on their own, but not to a younger child.  However with a lot of editing you can make it work around age 10.