It's not a bad little book; in fact, if you're very young and you don't have to constantly shoot yourself over the coincidences and the cheap humor, I'd say it's a really good book. I'm afraid I just didn't care about much of it; a lot of this was because of Septimus' name/title/designation. I actually liked him, and they didn't call him Septimus until the end. Also, a lot of the characters are just selfish snobs, or witless sheep.The writing style was nice, though, and often beautiful. The world it's set in was lovely. The cover is also gorgeous...although, the "archaic and impressive" spellings for the words, which were so helpfully bolded and capitalized, was a tiny bit irritating.
But again, if you're young, you won't mind the problems I had with it. You'll not usually hear me saying this--I think kids have a right to read awesome literature, too--but really, I think this is just the kind of book everyone is destined to grow out of eventually. It's harmless and sweet, though, in its way. Definitely the kind of thing I would have wanted read aloud to me when I was little.
 - Angie Sage)
