Review: Mansion "Will Attract Bellairs's Fans, But It Is Not Likely To Win Many New Ones"

Book review: The Mansion in the Mist

Anthony and his klutzy librarian friend, Miss Eells, plan to spend an uneventful summer with her brother Emerson in an isolated old cottage in Canada. Events quickly take a sinister turn when Anthony finds a mysterious old chest that turns out to be a doorway into a parallel world in which a mad group of beings are plotting the destruction of Earth. The key to their success is a magical object, the Logos cube. Unfortunately for the Autarchs, a former member of their society has realized their evil ways and hidden the cube. Anthony, Miss Eells, and Emerson experience a series of harrowing adventures as they explore the strange world of the Autarchs and search for the object so that they can save the Earth. The atmosphere throughout this adventuresome chiller is appropriately scary and the villains are certainly evil personified, but there are several loose ends. Readers never know why the Autarchs have so much interest in the Earth or why they want to destroy it. Their world is certainly a terrifying place, but its origins and purposes are never made clear. This story will attract Bellairs’s fans, but it is not likely to win many new ones.

School Library Journal,
Vol. 38, No. 6, June, 1992, p. 112.