The shadow guests door Joan Aiken

Title: The shadow guests Author: Joan Aiken Justification of my choice: I have read: ‘The shadow guests’ It is a novel whit a lot of excitement. I’ve chosen the book because when I was searching for a book I read the back of this one and it attracted me. Summary: The book starts when Cosmo Courtoys arrives at the airport in England. His cousin, Eunice Doom, came to pick him up there. When you start reading you first don’t know where his parents are and if they’re still alive… but later in the book you understand that his mother and his brother have died and that his father will come over from Australia as soon as he can. It isn’t told why he went to England. As his cousin picked him up, they went to the mill-house of her. Eunice told him she had fixed a boarding school for him in oxford. He will be there from Monday till Friday, and in the weekends he will be home with Eunice. At school he wants to make friends but the pupils in his classroom don’t take him to serious so they become enemies. They make silly jokes about him, call him Cosmo comic. The first weekend he comes to the mill-house he start making a house tree. When he’s talking to his cousin she told him about the curse that rest on their family. The curse means that every first-born son of a Courtoys will die in battle. Cosmo begins to understand why his mother and brother left the house; it was for trying to escape from the curse. The second weekend he goes to the mill-house he writes a letter to his father. As soon as he went to bed he feel asleep. But in the middle of the night a boy wakes him up. He doesn’t know who he is but he has a familiar face… his name is Con; a slave of the Roman Empire. His had come to him asking help, because he had to fight with the gladiators but he wasn’t able; Cosmo had to teach him it. He was a first-born son. A few weeks later he is making a boat-trip on a river near the mill house. He hears something. It was a boy singing. His name was Sim. He came from the middle ages. He asked him to teach him how to use a sword, because he had to go on a crusade but didn’t know how to use a sword. He was a first-born too. Than a few weeks later he was sleeping when suddenly a wardrobe fell on him. It was a big wooden wardrobe 200 years old. And was so heavy that Eunice and the neighbours had to remove it with 3 people. It was strange because such a big wardrobe couldn’t move by itself. That afternoon his bed walked down the stairs, just as odd as the wardrobe. When the following night he wasn’t able to sleep he looked out of his window and saw a person near the river. He went out to see whom it was. This guy had a familiar face too. His name was Osmond Courtoys, he came from 1765. he was told he would die in the fight with Cosmo Courtoys, so his mother had become a witch who could help him. During the fight osmond was winning till the moment that Cosmo fell into the water. When he woke up his father was sitting next to him. He had finely found a way to come over. Cosmo asked him what had happened to osmond, and his father answered they had found 2 bodies in the water. They both died.