🥗 Amuse-Bouche — The Prelude: Someone Set the Mood and I Was Not Ready
Before Chapter 1 even introduced itself, ML Hodder had already taken my wallet. The prelude opens with someone going after Nick Crumple's research in a rainy, suspense-soaked sequence that felt less like a middle-grade fantasy opener and more like the Winter Soldier going after Tony Stark's parents. That kind of dread. That specific flavor of oh no.
The atmosphere — dark, wet, urgent — pulled me in immediately. And that last line, Nick asking Charlie for help, landed like a gut punch. Why Charlie? Of all people — why this kid? I needed to know. Immediately.
🍽️ I'm already hungry after getting the appetizer.
🍞 First Course — Chapter 1: Oh. He's Dead.
Six months later?! What happened to Nick?! Is he alive? Captured? Was it the men in black?!
The chapter opened swinging with questions I desperately wanted answered — and then answered the biggest one almost immediately: he's dead. ☠️ At least, that is what we are meant to believe. The flying carpet and magic wand references on Charlie's school report snapped everything into focus with a click — suddenly the cover art made perfect sense, and the reason Nick was killed crystallized cleanly. He made those things. That is why they came for him.
The teacher was a jerk. The bully, Jared, was a bigger jerk. Charlie's grief and family situation were laid out with care and without melodrama. The time-warp moment at the chapter's end had me genuinely curious. We are going somewhere. The kitchen is warming up.
🍽️ Enjoying the first course.
🍲 Second Course — Chapters 2–5: The Inciting Incident Has Entered the Building
After a quietly devastating mother-son argument running on pure grief subtext, Charlie is thrust into a magical adventure at Talisman Inc. — a company that supplies magical artifacts to the heroes of the fairy tale economy. The freshness of this concept cannot be overstated. This is not your average "child discovers magic." This is "child discovers magic is a supply chain operation with vendor relationships, competitor drama, and a mole problem."
We are transported via a ship that materializes out of what appears to be a Kleenex box — which is exactly the kind of detail that earns a book its place on the shelf — and we meet:
- Leda — the wooden figurehead attached to the ship, instantly charming
- Bernie Stockton — a dwarf who escorts Charlie to the factory, instantly suspicious
My only gripe with this course: Charlie's insistence that everything around him was "special effects" went on just a beat longer than I needed. There is a talking wooden woman on the front of the ship. Special effects have their limits, kid.
Then the Talisman Inc. vs. Merlin Tech tension arrived, served fresh off a Wall Street Journal front page. A tech company supplying villains across the story world, attempting a hostile takeover of the heroes' supplier? ML, I see exactly what you did. And that last sentence of the article — the wink? I winked back.
🍽️ WOW. This is getting tasty. I'm certainly not walking out of this table. I intend to eat the whole meal.
🥩 Third Course — Chapters 6–7: Meet the Staff. Suspect Everyone. Especially the Nice Ones.
These chapters are pure foundation — lore delivery, character introductions, world mechanics — and what could have been an overwhelming info dump is instead handled like a tasting menu: small portions, distinct flavors, no rush.
The factory crew is a delight:
- Security Mike — gargoyle head of security. Professional. Intimidating. Probably has a "World's Okayest Gargoyle" mug on his desk.
- Yorg — German cyclops physicist with an emotional core. A scientist with feelings. Deeply relatable.
- Fjlar and Galar — dwarf duo in charge of building Zeus's lightning bolt. OSHA would never recover.
- Grace — grumpy gnome. No-nonsense. Trusts nobody. Respects nobody's feelings about it. She is the Mace Windu of this story — she does not believe Charlie is the chosen one, and honestly, she has historical precedent on her side. Anakin did become Darth Vader before he brought balance to the Force.
- Buckshot — Texas cowboy faun. I do not have adequate words. What a combination. I am fully convinced this man knows both the magical arts and the exact location of the best Buc-ee's brisket sandwich in the story world.
- Axl (a name that was slightly on the nose) — the robot administrator. Efficient. Methodical. Definitely sends passive-aggressive calendar invites.
- Bran the Blessed — a giant floating head who is the brain of this entire operation. Of course he is. This was the weirdest dude of all.
My suspects at this stage: the faun — too friendly — and Uncle Gervais — too conveniently positioned in Charlie's life. I filed both for later. Much later.
The end of Chapter 7 locked in the stakes with precision: if Merlin Tech completes its hostile takeover of Talisman Inc., the balance of all stories tilts permanently toward evil. Happy endings cease to exist. The world becomes one run by villains — permanently, structurally, by design.
🍽️ I took a small bite of that brisket appetizer. I would like to explore those flavors, ML.
🐂 Fourth Course — Chapter 8: No Bull. Literally.
Enter Big Dave — the minotaur in charge of quality assurance. A creature built like a small building, with the voice of Michael Jackson doing an Arnold Schwarzenegger impression. The contrast is majestic. His "No Bull" T-shirt is peak corporate mythological humor, and I want it on record that this shirt absolutely should have made it onto the back cover art. That was a missed opportunity. Please have someone call the marketing team and schedule a meeting about it.
On the subject of corporate humor: the dwarfs refusing to work for "those jack—," the "think outside the box" energy floating around the factory floor, the general atmosphere of magical middle management grinding through another Tuesday — ML, you have clearly survived corporate America and emerged from the experience with material. It shows. I appreciate it.
Charlie's role begins to clarify here. His young, unjaded imagination gives him MAGI — Magical Amulet Genius Instinct — the unfiltered wonder of a kid who has not yet been defeated by quarterly performance reviews. His role in this story is not just plausible. It is earned.
And Grace continues to be the Mace Windu of this operation. She doesn't believe in the chosen one narrative. I respect her consistency. Anakin did eventually bring balance — but nobody in that council looked great in the process.
🍽️ Had to remind myself I'm eating fantasy cuisine. Not a sci-fi space opera. Shook my head accordingly.
🧹 Fifth Course — Chapters 9–10: Sabotage, Medusa, and a Constellation That Cares
We have been sabotaged. Dun. Dun. DUN.
The magical waste-processing equipment is tampered with, spewing chaos across the factory floor. Enter Jack Kroaker — cynical, unpleasant, and radiating "obvious villain" energy so aggressively that I immediately wrote him off as a red herring. Nobody who is actually the saboteur works this hard at looking guilty. I'm not falling for this.
Then — Medusa in the cafeteria. Running the lunch line. Nearly turning Charlie into decorative stonework before Tess sweeps in to save him — our second protagonist, exactly as the cover promised. Tess is immediately compelling: her parents are story-world tour guides, she knows the lore, and her presence unlocks a deeper layer of the world. The Shelf, the story-world passages, the human-disguise enchantment on the way out — all of it elegant and logical.
Also filed under "perfectly normal workplace details": Sheila is a red razor dragon used for armor testing. Naturally.
Chapter 10 closed with Charlie doubting himself in the dark — and then the constellation of Sagittarius shooting an arrow toward Capricorn, leaving a starry trail across the sky. Like the universe itself offering a small, quiet word of encouragement. That landed.
🍽️ That's some sweet ice cream to finish the meal.
🔍 Sixth Course — Chapters 11–15: The Stakes Rise, the Suspect List Grows, and Dad Is Definitely Not a Burned Steak
The sabotage is now officially Charlie's problem. His fingerprints are on the box cutter. The investigation leads to the service elevator as the key to movement between floors — and a suspect list that reads like a factory directory:
- Medusa ✅
- Dunker the Troll ✅
- Dan Slipski, Engineer ✅
- Chef Soufflé ✅
- Bernie Stockton ← My money. All of it. Every chip on the table.
- Jeffrey the Yeti ✅
- Jack Kroaker ← Obvious misdirect. I am not falling for it.
Charlie and Tess team up. Charlie gets exiled to the graveyard shift by Kroaker — obstacle added, tension increased. Princess Jezi's story world is now threatened by Baba Yaga, a witch bent on destroying happy endings and aligned with Merlin Tech's goals. The layers are stacking.
And then — late-night sleuthing delivers a crucial detail: the accident records mention no body was recovered. No body. A burned scene with no remains means one thing to me: Nick Crumple is not dead. He is somewhere. And I intend to find out where.
🗝️ Seventh Course — Chapter 16: The Attic, the Tree, the Twist, and the Force Ghost I Was Not Prepared For
The magical attic. A genealogy tree with a conspicuously absent Uncle Gervais. Vintage video game consoles — including, I noted with some indignation, a suspicious omission of the original Atari console. I was prepared to file a formal complaint.
Then I learned the room represents Charlie's mind.
ML, I give that back to you, sir. My sincerest apologies. The Atari complaint is withdrawn. I might have given up my age in the process. 😬
But none of that mattered once I got to the mannequin.
HIS DAD IS THE MANNEQUIN IN THE ATTIC.
Nick Crumple is not dead. He is a force ghost, trapped in another dimension by dark magic, residing inside a mannequin. This is simultaneously the most heartbreaking and most unhinged twist in the book, and I very nearly choked on my metaphorical dinner.
What follows is the Obi-Wan scene — force-ghost-Dad tells Charlie to leave the quest, speaks in deliberate half-truths, warns him that he must learn to sacrifice himself for others (a lovely Christ-like foreshadowing that lands with quiet weight), and offers just enough information to be useful without solving a single thing. As a reader, I was impatient. As an author myself, I understand the craft behind the restraint. As a human being, I wanted to shake the mannequin until more answers fell out.
The safe opens with Charlie's own magical essence. Inside: the sketchbook, a PTSD-healing talisman, a riddle, and an encrypted message.
And then, four villains show up at the end of the chapter.
🍽️ I almost choked. Then I started salivating. Riddles are my favorite dessert. I'm salivating.
⚔️ Eighth Course — Chapters 17–22: Villains Arrive, Suits Are Built, and the Food Gets Heavy
The villains have finally shown themselves:
- A Skeleton
- A Werewolf
- Captain Hook — a pirate, as advertised
- Malevora — the Horned Sorceress from Sleeping Beauty, wisely renamed to avoid a cease-and-desist from a certain mouse-based entertainment corporation. Smart move, ML. Litigation is not a good look in a debut novel.
"Foolish boy," Malevora said — and I do not know what it is about that line, but it worked. Classic villainess energy, perfectly deployed. Charlie barely escapes thanks to the security forces. The magic carpet event is set up beautifully. The constellation scene between Charlie and Tess felt like sweet sprinkles on ice cream — a brief, quiet exhale before the next course.
The design process for Charlie's magical Iron Man-adjacent suit and contrastaff is where ML's Nike background earns its place in the story. The man knows what a real design process feels and sounds like, and it shows in every failed prototype and every heated specification argument. That sequence hit the spot.
Then the pacing settles. Not badly — but noticeably:
- A Charlie/Tess/Talismiths montage of suit-building
- An out-of-character, angry Uncle Gervais confronting Bernie (suspicious — or misdirect?)
- A vaguely ominous Kroaker conversation hinting at the engine room (misdirect number two)
- Kroaker... singing on the roof. What? This was unexpected.
🍽️ The food is getting heavy, and I'm feeling sleepy.
🏇 Ninth Course — Chapters 22–23: The Picnic, the Plan, and the Awkward Unmasking
The company picnic. The grand scheme to expose Kroaker as the saboteur. The confident execution of said plan. The discovery that Kroaker is, in fact, primarily a singer.
The magic carpet race gave me strong Harry Potter Quidditch energy, and I wanted more of it. It came and went far too quickly. I wanted a full chapter plus more. I wanted stakes on those carpets, tension in those turns, consequences in that race — especially given it is front and center on the book cover. I filed another formal complaint. This one stands.
The suit-building scenes were genuinely interesting. The positive/negative ingredient system is clever and makes the whole invention feel unstable in a believable way — nothing works the way it should because the characters in the story world stopped following established patterns. And Bran's decision to serve as a teleportation ring test subject was equal parts brilliant and baffling — his disappearance via red mushroom clue raised the stakes just when the story needed the push. The brains of the operation didn't really think this through, but if this is mirroring corporate America, history has shown us that those heads have their share of blunders.
🍽️ Left the table a little hungry.
🐉 Tenth Course — Chapters 24–25: Dragon Poop, Secret Passages, and the Witch Behind the Curtain
Kroaker's revenge arrives in the form of a dragon poop collection assignment. I am not editorializing. That is what happens. The poop is described as streaming volcanic balls, and I have to say — visually and logically — it tracks completely. The dragon chase that follows delivered genuine middle-grade tension. I felt it. ML did his job there.
And then the pace shifted for real.
Charlie discovers the secret hallway — the Shelf — lined with doors to every story world in existence. He follows the princess, wearing a dark Jedi robe, through one of them and uncovers the truth that changes everything:
The princess is Baba Yaga. Senator Palpatine was really Darth Sidious. The red mushrooms are her trail. She is working with Merlin Tech and plans to grant them access to the Shelf — the ultimate distribution channel to every story world simultaneously. Control the Shelf, control the narrative of every fairy tale ever told from a villain's perspective.
Charlie is captured. Literally Hansel'd — trapped in a candy house jail, with Bran already imprisoned inside, the witch having been behind his disappearance from the start. Baba Yaga, in a moment of magnificent villain carelessness, leaves the teleportation ring on the floor. Hansel and Gretel themselves provide the distraction. Charlie executes his escape, and poof!
🍽️ I picked up the popcorn.
🌑 Eleventh Course — Chapter 26: The Darkest Hour Before the Dessert Cart Arrives
Time in the story-world pocket dimension runs faster — Charlie has lost five days. The Merlin Tech board meeting is imminent. The contrastaff design is incomplete. Half the team has quit mentally, if not physically.
Charlie refuses to fold. He rallies everyone for one final heroic attempt. Avengers! Assemble!
And then the riddle cracks open: BST is not Bernie Stockton. It was never Bernie Stockton. It was Blood, Sweat, and Tears — three non-perishable ingredients. The formula is solved. A new pattern of a trio of magical ingredients is added to the lore. The heroes need to physically contribute a sample of each to power the contrastaff.
I need to address something here directly. The blood element gave me pause. I understand the craft — the wordplay is clever, the underlying message is pure (hard things require hard work is a genuinely good message for young readers), and ML's intent is clearly not sinister. But the physical act of drawing blood in the context of a magical ritual carries associations that my brain could not fully separate from darker territory. I see the pun. I respect the cleverness. I raised my eyebrow. The rant is over. Moving on.
🍽️ I choked on my food. Then I cleansed my palate and kept going.
🏛️ Twelfth Course — Chapter 27 Onward: The Boardroom, the Telenovela, and Thanos Gervais
Charlie arrives at the last minute. He solved his father's riddle. He activated the counterstaff. He made Nick Crumple proud from whatever dimension Nick is currently stuck in.
And then Atticus Gray and his crew storm the boardroom.
The saboteur is finally, officially revealed: It was Bernie all along. I knew it. Then I doubted it. Then I was right again. His motivation? Better compensation and employee health benefits. A dwarf has to look out for number one. It reads strangely in a sentence, but in the context of the story, it is entirely believable, and I respect the specificity of the grievance. Good health insurance coverage is important.
The battle is epic. A dwarf dies, raising the stakes. The Valkyrie board member summons her army at the last possible second and saves the heroes from certain destruction.
And then — oh no.
Uncle Gervais appears, wielding the staff.
The twist I had hoped would not happen, but suspected might. I had invested in this man. He felt like family, because he was family. And the whole time he was in cahoots with Bernie — the real architect behind everything, including Nick's "accident." He needed Charlie specifically to retrieve the sketchbook and secure the final design. He used the boy he claimed to love as a retrieval tool (or corporate pawn).
Then the villain's monologue began. Mandatory in this genre. Not a critique of ML — it is part of the menu.
What came out of it:
- Gervais secretly worked with Merlin Tech and uncovered that their financial banking institution was funding villains.
- Nick discovered this and threatened to sell his stock on principle, which would have doomed the company.
- Gervais framed this as protecting the company from his brother's idealism. Corporate greed dressed up as pragmatism. Classic.
- Gervais is in love with Charlie's mother. What???
...I beg your pardon?
🍽️ This dish just morphed from Italian cuisine into a Spanish telenovela.
This man is actively positioning himself for a "Luke, I'm your stepfather" moment, and I was absolutely not emotionally prepared for it. Then it escalated further: Gervais is adopted. He is an evil stepbrother. The family drama has reached altitudes that require supplemental oxygen and a slap in the face (those familiar with telenovelas get it).
Gervais — now fully Thanos in my mind, except with a workplace grievance and a complicated family tree — is about to snap the story universe out of existence when Charlie remembers the prophecy. He must quit to win. He must sacrifice.
Quitting breaks the contrastaff's spell. This was the design flaw of this Death Star magic system. Charlie smacks Gervais. Gervais tackles back. Tess appears literally out of nowhere — and this is not a narrative convenience, she was actually invisible — recovers the staff, and knocks Gervais unconscious with it. BOOM! Thanos is defeated.
Justice arrives in a peculiar form: Axl casts a spell that transforms Gervais into a British servant, flipped to his exact opposite. It is an interesting moment that brushes up against a real ethical question. Should you use mind-altering power to transform someone purely evil, just because you have the ability? Professor Xavier wrestled with that question. It edges toward playing God — but for a middle-grade fairy tale with this mythology's DNA, it fits the genre's internal logic well enough. The menu called for it, and I can stomach it.
🍽️ Should I force my kids to eat steak because I like it, or let them eat fast food? A philosophical question I'll leave for another meal.
🍰 Dessert — Chapter 33: Sweet, Sweet, Sweet
The tension is finally released. Tess commits her life to becoming a Talismith. Charlie's mother arrives. Full-time summer apprenticeships are offered. The factory that almost fell now stands a little stronger than before.
Charlie's arc lands exactly where it should: a boy who began this story in grief, suspicion, and quiet rage ends it in something approaching gratitude. Not the forced gratitude of a lesson learned on command — but the real kind, earned through everything he just survived.
The final paragraphs set up Book II with masterful restraint. We did not find Nick Crumple in this book — and that is right. There were enough threads closed here. The search for his father deserves its own full meal, its own full table, its own full story.
I will be there. Reservation confirmed.
🍽️ Sweet, sweet, sweet dessert.
⭐ Final Recommendation
👍 4.3 out of 5 — Flavorful Dish 😋
The Talismiths: The Secret Saboteur is a must-read for middle-grade fantasy fans — and quietly, secretly, for every adult who has ever sat in a corporate meeting and thought: this would be significantly improved by a cyclops. ML Hodder has built a world with what appears to be limitless story potential. By anchoring his setting inside the entire supply chain of fairy-tale mythology, the ceiling for this series is as high as imagination itself.
My standing complaints: more magic carpet racing, please — that sequence deserved the climax it was teased to deliver. And the BST abbreviation, while brilliantly resolved, carried some unintended associations on the way to its reveal. Context saves it. But the eyebrow was raised.
None of that changes the verdict. This is a Flavorful Dish that left me genuinely hungry for what comes next.
Book II: The Talismiths — The Search for Crumple.
ML, the table is set. The reservation is made. Do not keep us waiting too long. 🍽️
