Review: Intriguing to the end
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 02 19, 2013
We follow Fred and George, Fred who is the thinker or Philosopher and George who is the Engineer, but the totally unique and endearing thing about these two totally lovable characters is that they are in fact Guinea Pigs. But not just your average guinea pigs that eat lettuce and live in a cage, they are Princelings and they live in a castle, contribute to its fine tuning and banter with the humans.Fred and George remind me of an English cartoon that is currently showing on Australian television called Country Mouse and City Mouse, which I recently realised is a retelling of Aesops Fable.The two mice are intelligent adventurers who travel around, but they have different likes and dislikes, strengths and weaknesses which help them along in their adventures.Similarly, Fred and George are brothers with very different talents and interests but they work together on their adventures, that's until they get separated and have to work apart to solve the mystery of the Energy Drain.I enjoyed this book very much and I was intrigued the whole way, itching to find out the answer to mysterious energy drain. I won't spoil it but there may be some wibbly wobbly timey wimey shenanigans ( sorry that is a Dr Who quote which I realise if you aren't a super nerd like me, Yes I own a Tardis, you won't have a clue what  I am talking about lol.) I loved the reference to Wozna Cola which sounded an awful lot like a certain dark coloured liquid that has taken the world by storm for about 4 decadesThis was a clean read, with no violence at all which I think is such a credit to the author as I feel quite passionate about this very topic when considering if a book is for a Middle Grade audience. I would recommend this to 10+ plus due to the intricacy of the plot and there is quite a cast of characters to follow. I  also feel that this story would be more appealing to boys than girls.I like the cover, but I do wish that it had pictures of Fred and George as I think that would totally appeal to kids to help them visualise these completely adorable guinea pigs.I am looking forward to reading the further adventures of Fred and George.