This book is the third in a middle-grade historical fiction\/fantasy trilogy, and I found it a pleasing conclusion to the story of Alfred Bunce, who kills monsters (bogles) for a living, and his various young friends\/apprentices. Each book focuses on a different one of the kids, and at the center of this one is Ned Roach, who’s a bogler’s apprentice somewhat reluctantly. I mean, it’s better than being a mudlark or a fruit-seller, but it’s scary and dangerous and Ned doesn’t particularly think he wants to actually be a bogler when he grows up, though Alfred thinks he has the required thoughtfulness and cool-headedness. But in this book, other options open up for Ned, thanks to Alfred’s position on the newly-formed Committee for the Regulation of Subterranean Anomalies, which is employed by the Board of Works and includes an engineer who notices and admires Ned’s intelligence and interest in all things mechanical\/infrastructural\/logistical. <\/p>\n
As with the other two books, this one alternates between bogle-hunting expeditions and other events, and it makes for a fun mixture of adventure and other aspects of the plot. And as with the other books, the details of Victorian-era London are satisfying: I love that at one point, the characters are looking at a map of all the bogles that Alfred has killed, which they then overlay with a map of the sewer system in a scene that feels like a nod to John Snow’s map of the 1854 cholera outbreak. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This book is the third in a middle-grade historical fiction\/fantasy trilogy, and I found it a pleasing conclusion to the story of Alfred Bunce, who kills monsters (bogles) for a living, and his various young friends\/apprentices. Each book focuses on a different one of the kids, and at the center of this one is Ned […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8335","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-young-adultchildrens"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lettersandsodas.com\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8335","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lettersandsodas.com\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lettersandsodas.com\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lettersandsodas.com\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lettersandsodas.com\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8335"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lettersandsodas.com\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8335\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lettersandsodas.com\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8335"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lettersandsodas.com\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8335"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lettersandsodas.com\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8335"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}