In G.P. Taylor’s Mariah Mundi: The Midas Box, Mariah Mundi has ended his time at the Colonial School without a family to go home to. His parents are missing, presumed dead, somewhere in the Sudan. So Mariah is sent to take up employment at the Prince Regent Hotel, a fabulous place filled with inventions and luxury. Mariah is to be apprenticed to the Great Bizmillah, the magician at the hotel’s theatre. It doesn’t take long for Mariah and his new-found friend Sasha to discover some unwelcome secrets about the Prince Regent. Previous boys sent there from the Colonial School have all disappeared and to where, nobody knows. Mysteries and intrigue are hidden around every corner and in no time at all, Mariah and Sasha are caught in the thick of it all.
But in whom can they trust? Definitely not in the hotel owner, the narcoleptic Otto Luger, or his girlfriend Monica, who never removes her hands from their silk gloves. The Great Bizmillah isn’t a good option – he is seen in furtive conversations with the mysterious Isambard Black who follows Mariah about in a very suspicious way. Even Captain Jack Charity doesn’t seem to be telling all that he knows.
The Midas Box is dark, dense and exciting, but at times I found it confusing and difficult to follow. Set in an eerie sea-side town in Victorian England, the narrative is a combination of fantasy quest and whodunnit. You’re never quite sure in whom to trust or that characters are the people they claim to be, or even the people they actually were in the last chapter. There is a lot going on – sometimes I felt like too many things at once, with the story skipping around in space and time – but in the end, I read it quickly so I could get to the end and figure out who survived and what the final outcomes were.
- Posted by Cori