The Famous Five get in the way
Well, I did not find this particular story as exciting as some of the other Famous Five stories, and it had nothing to do with the complaints that this particular reviewer made, though I am not going to criticise her review, or her opinion of the book, because she is perfectly entitled to her opinion. Further it would make me a hypocrite considering my commentary on Mister Dog.
Anyway, first of all I found that a couple of the covers, such as this one:
which makes the Famous Five look like a bunch of professional skiers, or this one:
which is the cover of the edition that I read, and I kept on looking at it and thinking 'WTF!, what on Earth does this cover have anything to do with this book, and why does it look so incredibly lame, with Dick, Julian, and George all wearing matching track suit tops, and if they are wearing matching track suit tops, why isn't Anne -or Timothy for that matter, considering that he is a part of the Famous Five?'. Oh, and the other thing that didn't work about this cover was that throughout the entire book it was snow, and on the cover there was absolutely no sign of any snow whatsoever.
In the end, as for covers, I think this one was probably the best:
Anyway, enough about the covers, despite the fact that I had to comment on them, and onto the book itself. As for the story, well, all I can say was that it was strange. In fact there were two things that seemed to make this particular adventure stand out from all of the other Famous Five adventures. The first, and main, one is that this, out of all of the stories that I have read so far (including the stories that are similar to the Famous Five but do not involve the Famous Five), is the only one in which our child heroes do not actually solve the mystery. In fact do absolutely nothing to assist in solving the mystery. Not once can anybody say 'if it wasn't for those rotten kids' because, in the end, the only thing they ended up doing was getting in the way.
The other strange thing about this book is that you never find out what was happening. We are told that there were strange noises and shimmering colours, but we never find out what actually causes them (though I would suspect that it would be some mining equipment, but I don't know of any mining equipment that would cause shimmering light like that). Then there is the metal, some strange magnetic metal that can be used to make bombs, and has such a strong magnetic pull that from deep below ground the metal can affect that which is on the surface. The only place that I know where that apparently happens is on a stretch of road near a small town in South Australia call Orroroo, and that is because on that stretch of road a car, if the brake is not applied properly, will roll up the hill (as opposed to down). As it turns out it is all an optical illusion. In reality the car is rolling down the hill, it is just, for some reason, appears to be rolling up the hill.
Anyway, there is not much else I can say about this book, or really want to say about this book, so I guess I will leave it there and hope the remaining four Famous Five books are a little better.
