Rusty and the Magic Mountain
This is the first book I read of the Rusty series and i absolutely loved it. It is a quick read, spanning about 119 pages.
Rusty and the Magic Mountain, written in a peculiar Ruskin Bond style. The tone is very simple making it an easy read. The book has beautiful illustrations by Archana Sreenivasan and an eye-catching cover art by Aparajita Ninan with beautiful usage of neon green over black, making it funky for children and adults together.
Rusty and the Magic Mountain are about an Anglo-Indian teenager named Rusty (I believe he's an alter ego of the author himself) who is an adventure-seeking, engaging youth who aspires to travel and write. He learns about a magical and mystical mountain from the locals and is determined to climb the mountain and retrieve the treasure. Along, on the journey, he takes with him his pal Popat who is a faint-hearted little fellow, and Pitamber, a brawny wrestler who has a special fondness towards food. Together they embark upon the journey and meet strange characters like the Black Hat, Princess Reema and the ugly, old Witch Queen who loves her crows.
The story is unlike any other Bond's work I've read earlier. It is a gripping adventure that leaves you breathless until the very end.
{Spoiler Alert} The Scene where the tiger haunts the boys and kills the forest guard left my heart pounding.
There are certain hitches though. {Spoiler Alert} When Rusty looks at the inscription on the tombstone of Gloriana Herbert, who died in 1935 which he figures out was sixteen years before the events taking place in the story, making it the year 1951.
Then in the later part of the story, Popat whistles a popular film tune 'Aaja, pyaare, paas hamare, kahe ghabraye...' which is a song from the Bollywood movie Pyaasa released in the year 1957. This makes it highly unlikely for the boy to know the song in the year 1951.
All in all, nothing much significant, this is a nice summer read.