A magical children’s fantasy set in pirate-infested Georgian England
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With a huge quantity of children’s fantasy being published every year, young novelists are under pressure to come up with ever-more-inventive plots. The ‘Hatmakers’ series by Tamzin Merchant – of which The Troublemakers is the third instalment – is no exception.
The heroine of Merchant’s story, set in the days of George III, is 12-year-old Cordelia, whose family are magical milliners to the Crown, creating enchanted hats that exert supernatural powers over their wearers. Thus far in the series, Cordelia has had little time to rest. In The Hatmakers (2021), she thwarted a plot to wage war on France. In The Mapmakers (2022), she enlisted the help of a secret society of London cartographers to track down her missing father Prospero.
By the time the latest novel begins, Cordelia has found her father, united London’s rival magic-making families – “after thirty years of exchanging nothing but scowls, the Makers had begun to exchange ideas again” – and restored harmony in the kingdom. But the peace doesn’t last long. “It was a starless, moonless night. A night dark enough for kidnapping,” the novel begins – and we’re reunited with Cordelia and her father, who are plotting a round-the-world voyage on the family ship Little Bear in order to collect magic ingredients for their hats. “Cordelia loved feeling the tingle in her fingertips when she was making something magical… [She] could not wait to set off.”
But the seas are darkened by fearsome tales of the Troublemakers, a band of pirates who have been kidnapping children out of their beds and wreaking havoc on London. The Troublemakers have never been seen, but rumours about them abound. “Some people claimed they were evil sorcerers, who wore the night like cloaks. Others insisted they transformed into ravens to flee the scenes of their crimes.” As the capital descends into mayhem, Cordelia finds herself wrongly accused of treason, and flees on Little Bear with her father. But when they sail into the pirates’ territory, Cordelia finds more adventure than she had bargained for. Can she clear her name and outwit the Troublemakers’ ferocious queen?
In some fantasy, the writing falls short of the conceit. But there’s no such problem here: Merchant is a sumptuous writer who untangles this rollercoaster drama in prose that feels like a feather-duvet. “Leathery wings unfurled like black sails, and its eyes were dreadful dark pools, deep enough to drown in,” reads a typical sentence. Cordelia is a thoroughly convincing heroine, and less confident readers will be swept along by the brisk plot and cliff-hanger chapters. And – like all the best fantasy – the novel will appeal well beyond its target readership of eight to 12.
The Troublemakers is published by Puffin at £12.99. To order your copy for £10.99, call 0844 871 1514 or visit Telegraph Books
