The Liberators
by Philip Womack

Release Date: 1st Feb 2010
Publisher: Bloomsbury
ISBN: 978 0 7475 9552 6
RRP: £6.99

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A book not to be judged by its cover...

Thrust immediately into a frantic chase that ends with a young boy being handed a nondescript black object and the cryptic message: “Kop-tay thur-son” before its previous owner is gruesomely dismembered on the tube; The Liberators certainly opens with a bang, but sadly stutters and stumbles drunkenly to its conclusion.

Its central characters are a leap of the imagination for most, comprising as they do of teenagers with names like: Ivo, Miranda and Felix who come from extremely affluent families; live in large, imposing London residences; suffer the discomfiture of private tutors and endure extraordinary levels of freedom owing to their incomprehensibly busy and important parents (or relatives, in Ivo’s case). Simply recounting the ordinary day-to-day life of children such as these would be enough of a fairytale for some.

However, we are, instead, treated to the incredible and occasionally bizarre quest for global domination by two brothers who are not entirely human. Bisecting Greek mythology and incongruously, the recent real-life global economic meltdown; The Liberators attempts to bring about an opportunity for an unlikely group of over-indulged teenagers with the all-important task of saving the world. Pace conflicts with the need for explanation and detail and one cannot help feeling that someone should have taken a steady hand to the plot and calmed things down a little. The action itself is at times overly grisly and there is the odd swear word thrown in (unnecessarily, in my view).

The concept of “Freedom” as an abstract, intense feeling of elation or chaos is initially confusing, and the organisation, FIN (Freedom is Nothing) is far too obscure as to make any definitive sense. Essentially, failing to come across as either as slick or sophisticated as say, Philip Pullman or J K Rowling; The Liberators is a middling boy’s action/adventure book that doesn’t quite live up to the hype or hope we had for it.

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