MG Fantasy review of Britfield & the Lost Crown by C.R. Stewart

Britfield & the Lost Crown by C.R. Stewart
Format:  E-book 
Publisher:  Devonfield Publishing LLC 
Number of Pages:  361
Published:  June 18th, 2019
Source:  Review copy from Netgalley

Opening lines:  "Number forty-seven!  stop chattering to thirty-four and get back to work, immediately!"  

Tom has lived at Weatherly Orphanage for six long years.  Here the orphans are forced into hard labor by Mr. and Mrs. Grievous, but Tom has plans to make his escape.  On one of his last night raids into the Grievouses mansion to steal a book from their collection, Tom inadvertently alerts them to his presence.  While not initially detected, the Grievouses suspicion's are raised and the very next day Tom is called to the main office.  Mr. Grievous presents Tom with an offer if he confesses within two days as to which orphan snuck into his home, in exchange he will receive information about the parents Tom thought were deceased.  Unable to rat out his fellow orphans, Tom and his best friend Sarah enact a plan to escape from the orphanage.  When Mr. and Mrs. Grievous learn that they're on the loose and fearing that they can tell the police about all of their misdeeds, they hire Detective Goverstone, a legendary Scotland Yard detective known for locating missing children to hunt them down.  Equipped with only a piece of paper with the word Britfield on it, Tom and Sarah set out on a 300-mile cat and mouse chase across England to determine the significance the word holds to Tom and to uncover any possible clues that might lead Tom to the whereabouts of his parents.

Britfield and the Lost Crown opens with an action-packed escape from Weatherly Orphanage.  At first glance, I thought this story was going to take place during a much older time, something kinda akin to Oliver Twist, especially given the horrible way in which the orphans were being mistreated.   Although I wasn't able to pinpoint the exact time period, there are computers and a helicopter giving it a more modern feel.   Tom and Sarah endure many hardships as they make their escape from the orphanage.  Especially as they climb across a rooftop, travel through an underground tunnel, and once they hop aboard a hot air balloon.   All while being tracked from the ground by Detective Goverstone and his massive police force.  When their balloon does crash land, a foot race ensues taking them through the city streets of Oxford.  Along the way, Tom and Sarah receive help from a student and professor at Oxford University and visit such historical sites as Windsor Castle, Christ Church, and Canterbury Cathedral, to name a few. 

I love stories set in England and having Tom and Sarah flying around in a hot air balloon gives the reader an interesting, birds-eye perspective of England.  As I learned from reading an interview with the author, one of Stewart's main goals for writing Britfield & the Lost Crown was to not only to write something that was entertaining but also something that was accurate geographically, historically, architecturally, and culturally.  I think he accomplished this very well.  There are lovely passages describing the buildings they pass and historical details about the places they visited are intermingled into the dialogue.   In addition to the story being exciting, there are also five maps detailing the places Tom and Sarah visited in the story, with one even including the layout of Windsor Castle.   There's even a website for the book with even more details and actual photographs from the countryside of Yorkshire, The Midlands, Oxford, Windsor, Richmond, London, and Canterbury.  Beautifully detailed photos that include excerpts from the book linking them to the relevant passages from the story and adding in the historical significance as well.  For example this one on Windsor Castle: 

" The oldest inhabited royal residence in Britain, Windsor Castle represents the pinnacle of majesty.  First built in 1070 by William the Conqueror, the original wooden structure was replaced with greyish stone and improved over the centuries.  Perched high on a hill and illuminated by lights, it stood as an enormous fortified structure with thirty-foot walls and fifty-foot rectangular towers."       

The next book in the series, Britfield and The Rise of the Lion is due to release in the Fall of 2020 and this time Tom and Sarah will be traveling to France.  I can't wait!!  There's even a Goodreads giveaway going on right now.