Magic Killer Candy

After a couple weeks of supreme business I finally got to get in some good reading yesterday, and by good reading I mean I sat down and devoured two books in one sitting!  To be fair we got a brand new couch (more on that tomorrow) and I was so exhausted I don't think I could have done more than turned a page if you paid me, but still it was nice to have 8 hours of straight up reading time.

The book I am going to ramble on about today is called The Candy Shop War by Brandon Mull.  I loved loved loved loved loved his Fablehaven series (posts about these are coming I promise), and was kind of disappointed in the first book in his Beyonder series, so I was not sure what I was getting into when I started this book.  Turns out it is a fabulous romp through the world of magic candy, think Willie Wonka, with more candy makers and less Oompa Loompas (though there are plenty of henchmen). I started this book Sunday morning and didn't stop until I was finished, it was that good.  So I've noticed my synopsis/plot summations are getting pretty long so I will try and keep it short, but who are we kidding we all know I love to ramble :-)
As always SPOILER ALERTS AHEAD!

Nate Sutter has just moved to the small town of Colson.  He will be entering the 5th grade and soon meets up with some new friends, Trevor, Summer and Pigeon.  The three have a treasure seeking/detective/trespassing club that they invite Nate to join once he shows a willingness to defend the group from three 6th grade bullies by the names of Denny, Eric and Kyle. School starts and Nate, Summer and Pigeon are all placed in Miss Doulin who turns out to be a very strict teacher.  After school they meet up with Trevor and decide to explore the new candy shop that has opened called Sweet Tooth Ice Cream and Candy Shoppe.  They are greeted by the owner and candy maker Mrs. White who shows them all kinds of wonderful treats.  She keeps a jar of penny candy that changes on a daily basis and trades the children treats for work.  The children are all thrilled with the arrangement and work hard, cleaning, stocking, and generally helping in exchange for eggnog milkshakes, butterscotch brownies and other mouthwatering delicacies (I have to admit that I stopped reading here and made a pan of walnut chocolate chip brownies 'cause I just needed something sweet to eat while I read this book).  One day Mrs. White tells the children about some special magic candy that she has made.  She tells them that if they are willing to preform some unusual tasks that she will pay them in magic candy.  The children though skeptical agree.  They go and collect dusk beetle eggs in

mushrooms and receive Moonrock candy in return.  Mrs. White cautions the children to only eat them where they won't be seen and that once you have placed it in your mouth you can not take it out and save it for later.  The kids go to there secret meeting place, eat the candy and then start bouncing around like they are almost weightless.  After the effects wear off (which happens as soon as the candy is gone, or you spit it out) the children are eager to earn more candy.  The next task Mrs. White has for them is simple, pass out samples of her special white fudge, warning them not to eat any as it will diminish the effects of any of the magic candy she will give them.  The kids give it to their parents, siblings and Pigeon (who is quit the smarty pants) gives some to their teacher. The children notice that after giving out the samples, people have become obsessed with the stuff, eating it every chance they get and lining up at the candy shop for more.  On their way to the candy shop for their next assignment the children are approached by a strange looking man who claims to be Nate from the future.  Obviously the kids don't believe him and are even a little scared.  The man wanders away with a final warning, digging up graves is not right.  With this cryptic warning in their heads the kids find Mrs. White who is ready to give them their next task.  The tasks start to get progressively more and more ethically shaky, breaking into museums and stilling artifacts, digging up graves.  She keeps the kids interested by giving them all kinds of candies that help them with their tasks such as Shock Bits that allows the eater to release one shock against a person, or Proxy Dust which allows one to control a little doll.  Eventually she asks the kids to erase

somebodies memory, which overrides any excuse they had been making up to this point. They realize that she is not a good person.  The person she was trying to poison is one Mr. Stotts who runs an ice cream truck and also has magic candies.  He is more willing to share information with the kids, but he still sends them on missions and pays them in candy, like Ironhide jawbreakers that makes the user almost invincible.  On one of these missions Trevor gets trapped in a mirror world and is out of commission until they can figure out a way to rescue him.  A man named John Dart appears and finally tells the children the whole story of how all of the magican's are after a treasure hidden in Colson.  Magic works best if you are young, but the one thing a magician cannot do is make themselves younger (which is why they were using the children to do all of there work).  Hidden in Colson is a draught of the Fountain of Youth, which would make any magician the most powerful in all of the world.  Much chaos ensues and Nate ends up time traveling to the past, future and finally splitting into three people in the present.  They manage to defeat Mrs. White by slipping the Clean Slate memory wiper into the cup holding the Elixir of Youth, making her a child with no memories.  Everything is eventually returned to some state of normal and world is saved.

Yeah so maybe not so short in my synopsis, sorry, but there was so so so much going on in this book, I did not even cover a tiny bit of it!  This book had it all, adventure, magic, candy, fat men who squirted orange goo.  I liked that the story always had something more to tell you, that you felt you had it all figured out and then something else would pop up.  The pacing was good and consistent.  The characters were pretty stock, but it was more about the friendship and group then about the individual characters.  I liked how the author

figured out a way to remove the parents from the role of authority, giving them the fudge and turning them into borderline zombies was a great way for the children to be able to run amok in a semi-believable way.  I also liked how the author showed how scary it was for these kids to not be able to depend on their parents, that they realized that they did need them and missed them acting like responsible adults.  I am a sucker (haha did you see what I did there, I said sucker and this book is about candy teeheehee...ok I'm going to drink my coffee now) for books that...crap....I never know how to describe it.  I like it when you take an ordinary thing like, sewing, cooking, gardening, candy and make it into something magical.  I find candy pretty magical to start with, all of the varieties and combinations, and then you add some magic and voila a happy premise for a good book.  Seriously I could probably just read a catalogue describing all the magic candy available (Harry Potter is a good one for this too, Honeydukes anybody?).  I like how the kids had to choose between right and wrong on more than one occasion, especially when it wasn't always clear.  I like it when a book shows people, especially kids put into these situations as I feel to many books just give the hero(s) carte blanche to do what they want because you know, they are the hero's.  Over all in case you can't tell I really enjoyed every page of this book, right to the very end.  I love this authors style and am totally excited to see that another book in this series just came out.  I give it 9 out of 10 Moonrock Candies.

What is your favorite candy?  Do you still turn into a wide eyed 10 year old whenever you go into a candy store?  What kind of magical candy do you wish existed?