Title The Wind Eye Series --- Author Robert Westall Cover Art Nancy Petley-Jones Publisher Puffin Books - 1987 First Printing Macmillan London - 1976 Category Fantasy Warnings None Main Characters Mike, Beth, Sally, Bertrand, Madeleine, St. Cuthbert Main Elements Ghosts

Cuddy, they said, could control the wind, raise storms and strike people dead - even when he was in his tomb.

Bertrand and Madeleine shouldn't have got married. Even their children seemed to think so - though the children themselves go on as well as any half-brothers and -sisters could be expected to.

Their holiday together got off to a bad start when Madeleine trampled on St. Cuthbert's tomb in Durham Cathedral. From then on, the eye of the long-dead saint was well and truly on them...

My sister had picked this one up years ago, and was doing some cleanout of her book collection. As I appear to be unable to let a book go out the door of this house without my reading it first (especially if its a quick read) I decided to give it a chance.

Now I'd also read The Scarecrows by Robert Westall, and I can start to see a pattern. I really, really, dislike his characters. They are crude, and mean to each other, even when they are close families that actually love each other. It makes me quite miserable to read his books. And while I thought at first they are too dark for the age group these books are aimed at, in fact, that age group easily feels what these characters do, this kind of spiteful resentment of their own family. But as an adult I found it hard to read it.

The story on the other hand, I rather enjoyed. A boat that could take people back in time, a rather vindictive hermit monk who seemingly had bad intentions but perhaps he wanted more than to just be left alone, perhaps he wanted to help people who didn't think they even needed help.

So in the end, I am letting this book leave the house, it's not a keeper, but I think I'm glad I took a day to read it after all. Plus I got to learn a little bit of English history I didn't know about.