These books have been a revelation to my 10 year old son, whose favourite subject is History. When he started reading them he became hooked immediately, even though he hadn't been keen to start reading the first one, as he didn't like the description of them, especially the fact that there was a heroine rather then a hero! He had been a reluctant though competent reader and now he is an avid reader with a reading age of 15. The books are involving, exciting, and very educational(without appearing to be for the child) and teach a lot of mythology, history, classics and even Greek and Latin words. If my husband or I read a chapter to him at bedtime we are also hooked and end up reading on ourselves. The subject matter can be quite adult though, as in this book, and I would not recommend it for any younger than a mature 10 year old- it hints at dark subject matter like child abuse and deals with kidnapping and other crimes that could give a sensitive child nightmares, for instance in previous books there have been very gory descriptions of killings etc. However this of course is just the thing to hook boys like mine in, as they love reading gory things, and it does seem removed from real life as it is set such a long time ago. We hear that the next book will also be the last in the series and don't know what we will do! Any recommendations for the next book or series to read anyone?
