I giggled and gasped at how imaginative this crazy story is. Full of puns and clever humour, I chuckled at Empurrer Alexander, six-year-old prince who is turned into a cat by a young alchemist, Teresa. It could have been a CATastrophe; instead it was purrfect.
I know lots of people would not recommend this book to children; I wonder whether I would have enjoyed it as a child, for there are parts that are gloomy, other parts that are gory, and still others that are gruesome. Yet, I enjoyed the book. Sam Gayton’s imagination is incredible!
The first book I read by him was Lilliput. I loved it, but somehow ended up writing just a one-line review. I later read The Snow Merchant, which I enjoyed too, though not as much.
His Royal Whiskers was a roller-coaster ride for the imagination, with every twist and turn as plausible as the previous one, but as gasp-worthy. Teresa and Pieter are geniuses, who must overthrow the Czar (why the ‘c’ is silent is part of the story too). Teresa is an alchemist with a wacky imagination. Pieter, a mathemagician, is the perfect partner, for he is a tallymaster, superb with numbers. (When he is terrified, for instance, he assesses numerically how terrified he is and then keeps calculating the square root of the number until his terror feels miniscule and surmountable.)
Teresa comes up with a secret plan ‘Operation: His Royal Whiskers‘. Unfortunately, the Czar’s top spy is superb and the plan goes horribly wrong. And then it gets worse and worse.
But when things don’t add up, who could be better equipped than a tallymaster to handle the situation?
| Title | His Royal Whiskers |
| Author | Sam Gayton |
| Genre | Fantasy |
| Rating (out of 5) | 4.5 |
| Age-group | 11+ |
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