Wow. Just wow!
It's very rare that I /really/ want to read the next book in a series, but I'm definitely going to be picking up the next of this one!

When I first started reading, I wasn't convinced. You can tell that the author has been heavily influenced by a selection of children and YA novels from the past (I would say I found a lot of connections to Northern Lights, and Mortal Engines, but that might just be because I read them this year. It even had a slight Myst -the video game- feeling to it). As I read on however, I came to realise that this wasn't necessarily a bad thing! Brightstorm itself is its own story; it may have similar strands of plot, setting or imagery, but at no point did I find myself thinking that one or the other was any better. And from a teaching perspective, those links will only help children in branching out to find other books that they may enjoy, and begin teaching them to find inter-textual links.

The characters were wonderfully developed. The morals and messages of the storyline were beautifully placed, and having worked with a lot of children with upper limb differences, I was so happy to see this representation in a main character of an action and adventure story.

The final star for me, was the ending.
I felt that it was perfectly balanced. Loose ends were tied, a happy, yet realistic resolution was found, and the set up for the next book didn't take up a significant amount of time (only really the last 2 pages, yet still enough to make me want to carry on as small hints were left throughout the plot line).

This is a great book for a class reading - it would match well with a selection of cross curricular links and especially a number of science topics (exploration, Darwin, differentiation, engineering, habitats, weather, climate... the list goes on).

And on top of that, the story requires any reader to invest a great deal of emotion, empathy, mystery solving, and imagination.