This book has a really classic feel to it. It definitely fits in with books I loved to read as a child. I love books for children that are a little bit scary, where the children get to be the heroes. ( )

From the first page The Lost Children takes you into a world, so rich with texture, emotion, and suspense, you never want to leave. I'm so glad that there will be a sequel. ( )

The strongest thing that this book has going for it is its characters. They stand out as real, vivid individuals. And a great deal of the plot is interesting and moves along pretty well. The concept that starts off the book, however, feels unresolved, and the end makes little sense. ( )

The city of Gulm has been ruled by the master, a mysterious child that rescued them from a war by surrounding lands. Since then, all of the children are taken to stay with the Master, never to be seen again. Josephine is just a normal girl from a normal world who has somehow fallen into the world, and while she desperately wants to find her way home, she becomes entangled in Gulm's troubles with her two new friends, Fargus and Ida. Now, together, they have to find a way to save themselves as well as the other lost children of Gulm.

Have you ever picked up a novel and started reading it and got a few pages in and realized it was not going to be what you expected? This is one of those for me. I picked it up and started reading about Miss Josephine and how she lead a relatively inoffensive life, wearing gloves, suffering at the part of her peers, living with her silent father and reading voraciously, and though, "ah, it's going to be a cutesy little story about a girl who goes on and adventure." Half of that thought was right. It is, in fact, no cutesy little story. As soon as Josephine gets through, we are thrust into a dirty, creepy orphanage run by two dirty creepy people. We see her locked in a pigeon roost, dirtier with every description. Then we're introduced to the brothers.

The Brothers are the Master's strongmen, as it were. Well, they would be, if they were men, but instead they are creatures said to come from the Dark World, monsters with spikey fur, gooey yellow eyes and no mouths. This creeped me out just as much as it creeped out Josephine, locked away in her pigeon hole, with no idea as to what the heck is going on.

But yes, this is the dark world she arrives in. All the children are gone and the day is ruled by the brothers, and the night by the fear of the Master. And I really enjoyed it--the tension is maintained well, with disappearances and danger and so on, building and running and falling and stumbling and rushing and then suddenly--blammo. End. Sort of. Actually, for those in the know, it's the denoumount that fails us. But I can't really say more without giving too much away.

Cohagan has three lovely main characters and a few charming side characters [not to mention a moderately terrifying baddie], a couple of subtle cliches worked in well enough that they are inoffensive to any but the most cranky of readers, all rolled into an interesting read. If you're looking for a young, possibly sensitive, reader, though, you might want to skim just a little first. ( )

Boring book. Introduces children to other cultural beliefs such as Native Indians believing that death causes people to be sent to the stars. ( )