Mirrorscape

Written by Mike Wilks

Narrated by Paul English

Melkin Womper is thrilled to escape his dull future as a village weaver and develop his artistic talent when he’s apprenticed to Ambrosius Blenk, one of Vlam’s most famous masters. Mel is especially excited by the colors that he’ll be able to use, since color is a very expensive Pleasure, strictly controlled by the sinister Fifth Mystery.

Mel can’t wait to enjoy the wonders of the grand city and begin his important work for Blenk. Instead, his dreams are quickly crushed by the reality of days filled with unimportant tasks and bullying by the other apprentices.

But when Mel and his new friends, Ludo and Wren, inadvertently stumble into a battle between the Fifth Mystery and the Rainbow Rebellion, an underground band fighting to make Pleasures affordable for all, the trio must step through Blenk’s paintings into the Mirrorscape. In this alternative world, the friends encounter monsters, mazes, talking houses, angels, and more.

Hugely original and deeply compelling, Mirrorscape is a thrilling adventure filled with the beautiful and the bizarre, the fantastical and the frightening. Enter into an incredibly visual, secret world, where the ultimate weapons are pigment, a paintbrush, and the power of imagination.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Brilliance Audio
• Release date: Oct 13, 2009
• ISBN: 9781423384663

Mike Wilks

Mike Wilks is an award-winning artist and the bestselling author of The Ultimate Alphabet and The Ultimate Noah's Ark. His paintings, which have been described as "meticulous and eye-bending," can be found in public and private collections in the US and Europe. Mirrorscape is the first installment in his middle-grade trilogy.

Reviews for Mirrorscape

[bluehighlighter · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Melkin Womper is torn away from his home and village when circumstances force him into the big city as an artist's apprentice. From there, he discovers the Mirrormark -- a symbol used in painting that opens the world depicted to human exploration and habitation.A great idea, right? Yes. The first half of the book is excellent as we explore the world with Mel. The second half, as he and his friends run through paintings and suffer through sieges of ink and paint is a lot less stellar. Though the ideas presented to us are interesting, Wilks' spent more time building up his world than fleshing out his characters. While external events pulling along a character can be interesting, it is not compelling, and this is the key flaw of the book. If you are a reader who prefers character-motivation, this novel is probably not for you.

[eurekas_5 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Despite the three star rating there were some definite strengths in this book. Mike Wilks is an award-winning artist. His sense of color and his use of it in this story are amazing and unusual. The monsters which Mel, Ludo and Wren encounter inside the paintings are reminiscent of something you might find in a painting by Hieronymus Bosch, and some of the characters in the story, Dirk Tot, Mumchance, Adolphus Spute, the Green Man and the Blue Man are zany in the the same way Monty Python's Flying Circus is zany. I also enjoyed the giant clock made by Wren's father for Ambrosius Blenk but I found the main three characters, Mel, Ludo and Wren very two dimensional. Their situations are discussed, how they come to be working for Ambrosius Blenk, however, there was not enough meat to their friendship and despite the fact that Mel is smart, he is oblivious to what is going on with Ludo, even though he knows Ludo can be somewhat duplicitous. Early on there is talk by Spute of rounding up Mel's parents and using them as leverage against him and then this ploy is left to dangle. Also, the very interesting character of Dirk Tot flits in and out of the story on the periphery but is not involved enough. I am not sure whether I care enough about this world to read the second book in the series.