Books: The Remarkable Inventions of Walter Mortinson (2019)

“In the humdrum town of Moormouth, Walter Mortinson’s unusual inventions cause nothing but trouble. After one of his contraptions throws the town into chaos, Walter’s mother demands he cut the nonsense and join the family mortuary business. Far off on Flaster Isle, famed inventor Horace Flasterborn plans to take Walter under his wing, just as he did Walter’s genius father decades ago. When a letter arrives by unusual means offering Walter an apprenticeship, it isn’t long before Walter decides to flee Moormouth to achieve his destiny. Walter runs away in the family hearse along with Cordelia, the moody girl next door with one eye and plenty of secrets. Together they journey through a strange landscape of fish-people, giantess miners, and hypnotized honeybees in an adventure that will not only reveal the truth about Walter’s past, but direct his future.”

The Remarkable Inventions of Walter Mortinson by Quinn Sosna-Spear is a strange and unique, but also very disjointed middle school novel. I felt the themes were a bit adult-ish, with grief and sorrow playing a major subject matter here. We have a Walter’s mother who is in need of psychiatrist to get over the death of her husband, but instead takes out her sorrow on Walter. It makes some sense, but then again, I felt Sosna-Spear bit off more than she can chew. The book as well seems marketed as story of fun times, adventure and friendship (which was what interested me in the first place). And while we have some adventure none of it is fun and Walter’s relationship with Cordelia is antagonistic from the start (though we get an explanation of that in last fifty pages of the book). There are a lot of good ideas here, but they all come off as half-baked and some are just forgotten. And Horace Flasterborn, the villain of the piece, reminds me a lot of Charles F. Muntz, the explorer that Carl Fredricksen adored in the Pixar film UP. Muntz, of course, was more interesting.