Mistaken for Whistling Jack and on the run from redcoats, Kit is catapulted into a world of magic and wonders he thought the stuff of fairy tales (Goodreads).
Unlike real life, in the world of Kit Bristol, not everything is better with magic. Tripp's novel starts out reasonably well, with a fun, swashbuckling tale of highway robbery and a cool horse, but as soon as magic begins to develop, it loses a lot of its charm. The magical universe Tripp proposes is not well integrated, and the actual concept of it isn't really all that original. It appears that the author felt like adding a 'G' at the end of 'goblin' is what passes for originality. All that being said, the story becomes fairly engaging as it goers along, and once one gets past the cliche magical exploration. There isn't a whole lot of dynamic character development that isn't presented in an obvious manner, but the characters do begin to endear themselves to readers (barring any mention of a pointless love triangle). An unnecessary amount of main antagonists are added, and the dull politics that they accompany are no more intriguing. Without the magic (which sounds like a terrible thing to say) and with at least one less antagonist, Kit Bristol's tale might have been made a bit more compelling. As it is, though, it might be the very definition of enjoyably average. 6.8/10
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