Mixed Pickles - the Book log 2012

Heaven knows - anything goes
A place where nothing is certain,  and rules change almost at random, the World House is set inside a giant house contained inside a small antique box, whence its inhabitants have been drawn from random places and times when at moments of physical peril.

We follow the adventures of a small number of groups of people - nightclub crooner, twenties flapper, Victorian adventurer/explorer, twentyfirst century small-time gambler, Spanish fisherman, and more, through a seemingly uinconnected set of story-strands which eventually intertwine plausibly to reach an effective and affecting climax.

It is all too easy for this kind of novel to leave a sense of dissatisfaction - when everything can change with the turn of a page, it is tempting to feel no real sense of peril or, indeed, satisfaction when the heroes temporarily escape a plight, simply to be thrown into another dangerous situation.  However, Adams manages to keep a tight grip on everything so that the episodic nature recalls (at least to a long memoried reader like me) the lost "Celestial Toymaker" story arc from William Hartnell's incarnation as The Doctor without at any time seeming to have borrowed in any way from it. 

I await, with interest, subsequent books in the series.

Unputdownability : It's the end of a chapter - a good time to put the book down (or maybe read just one more...)