The Secret of Platform 13
Aug. 11th, 2007 06:15 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sawylNot content with reading the first of my nephew's holiday books, I also read his second one. My excuse? I couldn't help myself. They were both in the same physical volume, I was bored and prepared to read almost anything.
Tucked away in the gent's cloakroom King Cross Station's long forgotten platform 13 is a gump — a route between the everyday world and a mystical island full of monsters. Most of the time, the gump is closed to traffic, but every nine years it opens for nine days, allowing creatures to travel to and from the island.
Unfortunately, one of the gump's periodic openings coincides with a royal birth. The baby prince's nannies, a group of triplets, get nostalgic for some authentic English fish and chips and take their charge to London for what is intended to be a brief visit. Once there, they run foul of Larina Trottle and her nurse, Nanny Brown, who switch the prince for a doll and disappear off to Switzerland so that Mrs. Trottle can pretend that the baby is her son.
The islanders are shocked by the loss of the prince and spent nine years preparing to rescue him. When the gump reopens, they send a rescue party composing of Cornelius the elderly wizard, Hans the invisible ogre, Gurkintrude the fey and Odge a young, not particularly haggish hag. Making their way to Trottle Towers, they see a child performing various menial tasks and immediately assume that he is Raymond Trottle. Imagine their horror when they discover that the nice boy is Ben, Nanny Brown's grandson, and the spoilt brat screaming upstairs is Raymond, their new prince!
In an attempt to convince Raymond that he's a prince, Cornelius puts on a great gala featuring all the mythical creatures currently living in London. When Raymond reports this his mother, Mrs. Trottle assumes that he has been drugged as a prelude to a kidnapping and does a runner. After much searching, the islanders eventually track the Trottles to a hotel in London and come up with a complicated plan to abduct their missing prince. Inevitably, the plan goes horribly wrong and they end up leaving empty handed.
After failing in their task, the rescuers are forced to accept help from some of the island's less attractive inhabitants: harpies and hell hounds. They intercept the helicopter that is supposed to be taking the Trottles from their hotel to their Scottish hunting lodge, and carry Raymond off in triumph. While the rest of the rescue party return to the island, Odge decides to remain in London for a little while longer in order to persuade Ben to come to the island with her, but Ben is reluctant to abandon his dying grandmother.
Mere minutes before the closure of the gump, Ben learns that his grandmother has died. When Odge arrives at the hospital, he finally agrees to go with her to Kings Cross. In the taxi to the station, he opens Nanny Brown's final letter to him which reveals that he is the changeling and that Raymond really is the son of Larina Trottle. Odge and Ben return to the island in truimph and Raymond is chucked back through gump just before it closes for another nine years.
I liked Platform 13 but, being well outside the target demographic, I guessed Ben's secret from the first moment he appeared, cleaning a pair of shoes. That aside, the plot is good, the characters are fun — the appallingly spoilt Raymond is the natural heir to Verruca Salt — and things gallop along with enough pace to hook a flighty six year-old.
Tucked away in the gent's cloakroom King Cross Station's long forgotten platform 13 is a gump — a route between the everyday world and a mystical island full of monsters. Most of the time, the gump is closed to traffic, but every nine years it opens for nine days, allowing creatures to travel to and from the island.
Unfortunately, one of the gump's periodic openings coincides with a royal birth. The baby prince's nannies, a group of triplets, get nostalgic for some authentic English fish and chips and take their charge to London for what is intended to be a brief visit. Once there, they run foul of Larina Trottle and her nurse, Nanny Brown, who switch the prince for a doll and disappear off to Switzerland so that Mrs. Trottle can pretend that the baby is her son.
The islanders are shocked by the loss of the prince and spent nine years preparing to rescue him. When the gump reopens, they send a rescue party composing of Cornelius the elderly wizard, Hans the invisible ogre, Gurkintrude the fey and Odge a young, not particularly haggish hag. Making their way to Trottle Towers, they see a child performing various menial tasks and immediately assume that he is Raymond Trottle. Imagine their horror when they discover that the nice boy is Ben, Nanny Brown's grandson, and the spoilt brat screaming upstairs is Raymond, their new prince!
In an attempt to convince Raymond that he's a prince, Cornelius puts on a great gala featuring all the mythical creatures currently living in London. When Raymond reports this his mother, Mrs. Trottle assumes that he has been drugged as a prelude to a kidnapping and does a runner. After much searching, the islanders eventually track the Trottles to a hotel in London and come up with a complicated plan to abduct their missing prince. Inevitably, the plan goes horribly wrong and they end up leaving empty handed.
After failing in their task, the rescuers are forced to accept help from some of the island's less attractive inhabitants: harpies and hell hounds. They intercept the helicopter that is supposed to be taking the Trottles from their hotel to their Scottish hunting lodge, and carry Raymond off in triumph. While the rest of the rescue party return to the island, Odge decides to remain in London for a little while longer in order to persuade Ben to come to the island with her, but Ben is reluctant to abandon his dying grandmother.
Mere minutes before the closure of the gump, Ben learns that his grandmother has died. When Odge arrives at the hospital, he finally agrees to go with her to Kings Cross. In the taxi to the station, he opens Nanny Brown's final letter to him which reveals that he is the changeling and that Raymond really is the son of Larina Trottle. Odge and Ben return to the island in truimph and Raymond is chucked back through gump just before it closes for another nine years.
I liked Platform 13 but, being well outside the target demographic, I guessed Ben's secret from the first moment he appeared, cleaning a pair of shoes. That aside, the plot is good, the characters are fun — the appallingly spoilt Raymond is the natural heir to Verruca Salt — and things gallop along with enough pace to hook a flighty six year-old.
