I forgot how much I enjoyed this series! I don’t think I’ve ever read them in their entirety, though I do have them all. Very much like “Harry Potter,” these books have an overarching plot for the series while each book has its own singular plot. So fantastic and I can’t wait to read the next one! I love reliving my childhood favorites as an adult and look forward to saving these for my daughter in the years to come!

DNF at 12 %

I don’t support J.K Rowling. But please stop comparing this to Harry Potter

Well that was quite a waste of time. I only read beyond the first couple of chapters to learn what the point of the whole thing was, and there really isn't one.
This was obviously Ms Nimmo's attempt at a Harry Potter type story. It's not an exact copy or anything, but it's pretty difficult to miss that she was hugely influenced by Rowling's world. Unfortunately, this is nowhere near as good as Harry Potter. It's barely even coherent. If I had to guess, I'd say it's probably because it was a forced attempt to cash in on the Harry Potter craze.
The writing isn't great. It's choppy and awkward. Ms. Nimmo likes to jump around suddenly with no natural transition. You'd be following Charlie for nearly an entire chapter, and then suddenly be focused on Billy or Fidelio right as Charlie is doing something. Several times, I had to stop and and go back and reread to find out what the heck just happened.

As for the story itself:
*Slow and uneventful.

*There is absolutely no point to Bloor's Academy. At least not one that makes any kind of sense.
It's supposed to be a school for geniuses. Okay, sure. There wasn't much to indicate that anyone there was actually very smart, but alright. But then, it's also a school for the "endowed" kids. Why? What purpose does it serve to have any of those kids there? There's no training for any of them, and there's no management of their powers at all. Well, other than their endowed only homework session. Not any special homework, of course. They just all have to sit at the same table, work on whatever they have, and not talk. It was entirely pointless.
There wasn't even a point in keeping them separated from public school because apparently no one cares if the world knows they have special powers.

*Speaking of pointless, most of their "gifts" were totally useless outside of the wacky non-plot of this book. (Can you say 'contrived'?) I mean, making light bulbs explode? Hearing voices in pictures? "Feeling" things from the person whose garment you're wearing?
Very practical, useful powers...sure... I was waiting for the kids to pop up, who could hear colors or speak to doorknobs.

*Where are the police throughout this whole thing? Police are mentioned later in the book, so we do know they exist in this world, but where the heck have they been all along? Kids have gone missing and been traumatized in their "ruin game". In any kind of reality, the ruins would have been condemned. There's no way something like that would be allowed to exist in the middle of a school, and there would have been investigations into the missing kids. For a while at least. In reality, the school would have been shut down long before Charlie had a chance to go there.
And speaking of missing kids, the entire premise of Mr. Tolly giving Emma away was ridiculous. I get that it's a kids book and all, but even kids aren't naive enough to believe people can just hand off their babies on a whim and no one would care.

*The big drama to get the birth certificate back was stupid. Perhaps they hadn't heard of a little thing called DNA? It would have been exceptionally easy for the authorities to prove that Emma was related to her aunt through a very basic test.
But somehow, it was super easy for them to tell that the signature on the adoption papers was a forgery. Um....what? They care about that, but not her physical DNA and who her actual family is? Or how she came to be in the care of her adoptive family?
Then at the end, Emma and her aunt don't want to bother with the details, so they stop caring that Emma was imprisoned her entire life and that her father was murdered. And Emma is perfectly happy to return to the school that is run by her captors.

*Emma being hypnotized was totally unnecessary and pretty stupid. A two year old has no clue what their true identity is. If a child is kidnapped at that age and raised away from their family, they don't remember their family. Emma "waking up" was just stupid. What was she waking up from? It's the only life she ever knew. Crappy maybe, but not something she'd see as being wrong just because some switch was flipped in her brain.
On top of that, her involvement in the story had basically no purpose at all.
She was kidnapped as incentive for her father to get the thing in the case working - for some unknown reason. Once he failed, they had no reason to want to keep the baby. After he died, they really had no reason to keep her. Not even as some sort of punishment. Cuz he's dead and no longer cares. It was far more inconvenient for them to keep her because they were paying her fake family lots and lots of money.

The plot literally makes no sense whatsoever.

*Charlie, his mom, and several other people in this story are incredibly dense. Charlie would miss painfully obvious thing after painfully obvious thing and I'd just shake my head. Apparently Ms Nimmo thinks kids are idiots.
The best was when he writes off the strange (and exceptionally talented) music teacher in the tower, who seems to be in a trance. After learning that his father was still alive. After learning that he was lost and likely hypnotized. After learning that he was an exceptionally talented musician.
I mean, it was like a week(if that)after he learned all of that, yet he never stops to go, 'hmmm'.

His mom was either incredibly stupid or incredibly lazy.
Her excuse for forcing Charlie to go to Bloors was that she didn't have any money. That after his father 'died', he left them with nothing and so they had to rely on his hated grandmother for everything.
She has a part time job though. Where is that money going? Why doesn't she get a full time job? Why isn't she looking for other work? Why isn't his other grandmother doing anything?
Just how lazy are these people?
Rather than getting a real job, she'll rely on the woman(and her sisters) who she's pretty sure murdered her husband (their own son and nephew), just because she doesn't want to work 40 hours a week?
And then you've got the opposite in Ben's parents who are so busy working, they barely even remember they have a kid. Um, CPS?

On top of all that, there's no indication that Charlie's grandma or any of her sisters have any kind of power. It's stated that they're powerful, but there's no power actually mentioned or even alluded to. They can't even figure out how to get into Ben's house to look for the case they want (for some reason) - four supposedly powerful adults can't figure out how to get past a relatively gullible 10-12 year old kid who is perpetually home alone.
Why exactly is Charlie and his mother so afraid of them? Why is Paton? And why does Paton feel so empowered after deciding to embrace his light bulb bursting power? Are they afraid of bursting light bulbs?
And why do they want Charlie to go to Bloor's anyway? Aside from there being no point in the endowed kids going there, (I'm guessing here) they must know his father is there.
So, they want him to think his father is dead for some reason, but they decide to send him to the one place he can bump into him. The one place he will meet other kids with oddly specific gifts to lead Charlie right to his dad.
Not that he's smart enough to catch on of course.

All that aside, there were some pretty random and stupid things that jumped out at me.
*What the heck is with the capes? Why do they need capes at all? Why are they color coded? And why do people freak out if a kid doesn't have one?
*What's with the various cafeterias? There's a large cafeteria they all use for dinner. It's clearly big enough to hold everyone. What's the point of the other cafeterias? Lots more work for the heck of it?
*Why aren't kids allowed to talk practically ever? Olivia falls and she gets in trouble for making noise.
*Why aren't they allowed to swap the food they won't eat with a kid who will?
*What's with the "Mom's don't exist here" line? It would have fit if they made fun of Charlie for wanting his mom or something, but why the ominous and fairly idiotic statement?
It's never explained.

It was like the author just wanted to make it a weird place without putting the effort in to have any of the weird things make any kind of sense.

Other incredibly stupid things that stuck out:

*Ben magically being able to play the flute.
I play the flute. Unless someone is extraordinarily gifted -and I mean with magic - they aren't going to be playing the flute in a time span of ten minutes. It takes quite a bit longer than that to get any kind of sound out of it at all. Sometimes it can take kids days of practicing through frustration to get their mouth positioned in the right way. Forget learning the notes and fingerings.
But in this story, Ben picks up the flute with no prior experience and "Sure enough, in less than ten minutes, Benjamin was playing the flute."
Um, sure.

*When Dr. Bloor sees Charlie.
He approaches him like a psycho, says his name ominously and that it's a pleasure to meet him, before walking away. Then after everyone's done eating, he makes him stand (again ominously) and gives him bland instructions that he easily could have given him before.
No point, yet again.

*When Ben thinks Fidelio "just looks musical", and offers no explanation as to why. How does someone look musical?

*The names! Fidelio, Eustacia, Dorcas, Manfred, Lysander, Tancred...
A few odd names are fine in this type of story, but this was getting ridiculous.

*When Olivia giggles while hiding in a closet that is literally full of skeletons, when they think they're about to be caught and possibly killed by a psychopath. There's no indication of her finding anything funny, but suddenly she has trouble stopping her giggles.
Is she nuts? Bipolar maybe?

I'm sure there's lots more I could go on and on about, but I'll stop there.
Suffice it to say, I will not be continuing on with the series.
How anyone past the age of 8 thinks this even comes close to Harry Potter is beyond me.

I read this series as a kid and wanted to re-read it as I had never finished the final books. Charlie is a well-written character and this book serves as a wonderful introduction to the world of Bloor's Academy.

entertaining! I have a number of gripes which basically amount to "it seems like this book was written for children". It was a bit darker than I expected, given that it was in fact written for children.

WHY is Olivia Vertigo wearing stilettos? She's ELEVEN

Ugh I love this series with all my heart. This is my Harry Potter series.

Just finished my FOURTH reread of this book. Probably one of the very few books I ever reread. The audio is fantastic.

I love the magical system and the mystery of it all. I’m intrigued because I forgot what happened since my last reread and I hope to listen to the whole series.

Charlie discovers his powers and gets involved in several mysteries and makes new friends. These books are such easy reads and I can picture the school setting so well with the long hallways and creepy towers. We get introduced to quite a bit of characters but it's easy to know who's who by the end of the book. Everyone has different powers and all of the personalities are so different.

I loved the multiple mysteries that get introduced in this first book. The missing child, the mystery of Charlie's father and what is going on with those aunts?! There's also a bit of a love story when it comes to Uncle Payton. Not even to mention the magical cats (love the astrology reference there) and good old Runner Bean. It's easy to get caught up in this mysterious and wonderous world.

I highly recommend this to those who loved Harry Potter and other YA magical tales. It truly is such an underrated series. I’m still hoping for this to become a movie or a show!

This was a nostalgic read (well listen) for me. I read this series when I was younger and loved it and when I saw the audio book available for it I thought it'd be fun to revisit it. I still very much enjoyed the book and yes it's definitely for younger readers but it was still entertaining as an adult. Not a ton action wise happens in this first book, but it's definitely setting up for more interesting storylines later on. I remember later books having more happen and mysteries solved. Overall a solid read and I plan on continuing to listen to the next books and revisiting this fun series.

This reread was super fun! I read these books as a kid, so its fun to reread them. 5/5 even with its flaws because of its nostalgic value for me.

Pros:
-One of the things I love is these group of kids who come together to help a girl get reunited with her Aunt. It’s a lovely story and I just love each character so much.
-The magic system while a bit underdeveloped felt appropriate for the first book in the series. It gave enough to imagine with for the first book and gave enough questions that can be Answers later in the series.
-One of the things I liked in this middle grade was the combination of trustworthy adults and non trustworthy adults. It really captured those relationships well, and even the adult relationships were charming.

Cons:
-I wanted a little bit more from the descriptions in this book. Especially the people of color in the book were often described as dark or just African in Lysander’s case. I love these characters, but I would have loved more attention paid to their descriptions. Often, I think a lot of the white characters get more detailed description of the clothes they wear etc. this was something I noticed a lot more in this read through, and I think its important to keep in mind in how we describe all characters.
-For the first book, there are definitely a few issues with pacing of the plot where certain areas felt a bit convenient or bogged down.

Overall, despite its flaws, this book still has a special place in my heart and I look forward to rereading the rest of the series.

People often approach the Children of the Red King series as a Harry Potter rip-off; which, you know, fair. Nimmo was definitely trying to get in on the Rowling craze of the era. But stopping there, only reading it as a derivative work, is so disingenuous and would break ten-year-old me’s heart. And, past “magic school” and “newly discovered magic” I really don’t feel like there are as many similarities as people like to claim. I feel that magic in Nimmo’s work reads a lot better through the lens of class and the quasi-caste class system in England than the racial tones lining Rowling’s work. But that’s just me!

ANYWAY!! This book is definitely written for kids (as I said, I ate this UP at age ten) and, as many a review will point out, it reads as such. “Blah blah, simple sentences; blah blah, see-thru plot”; congratulations Einstein, you’ve deciphered children’s literature. A tiara for your lofty head will be doled out in two to three business weeks. People always attempt to read children’s literature through adult eyes rather than appreciating the fact that what it’s trying to do does not necessarily align with what we (adults) typically look for when we read. Children’s literature wants to be somewhat transparent, it want to introduce child readers to themes and archetypes (the outcast child, the big screwed-up family, the tight-knit friend group) that continue to appear in our literature as we grow up, as well as allow children their own “a-ha!” moments. I don’t know, I just wish people would take children’s literature seriously AS children’s literature, not as “literature for mini adults, what do you MEAN this author DARED to use a pared down sentence with only ONE big word!” Like…bffr. Go read Ivanhoe then, Mr Big Man on Campus.

Don’t get me wrong: this is far from a perfect book (content-wise I think it’s pretty top-tier, but style-wise, even with it being a children’s book, it’s lacking some of the OOMPH the people want). But it also sets up the series in a way that feels really genuine and interesting (once again, as a child I read this one weekend and took home the rest of the series from the school library the next Monday) and ENGAGING!!! Like, THIS is what children’s literature is about!!! As one of the ten-year-olds I hang out with sometimes says: “frick the haters”. And if you dislike this book you’re a certified hater.

This is a good book, or if you speak emoji,

I got less than half-way through this book and had to put it down.

How this came to be a successful series I don't know. The writing is god awful, the story as unoriginal as you can get, and the characters are all unbelievably dense.

Love rereading old childhood memories.