I would recommend this book to ages 8+, to people who appreciate and notice little details, and those who feel "different.

Good enough that almost every night that I read this to my son I gave him extra chapters - more for me than for him - as I needed to know what was going to happen next. The story is told in a dual narrative, with 3rd person POVs of Max and Luke, who is the prince of the Blue group within the civilisation, and I found seeing both perspectives really interesting.

The overarching theme of this book is certainly tolerance and understanding, that it may be natural for people to separate from one another because of our differences, but it is also in our nature to find common ground and come back together. I read this as a librarian but would try it with my 7-year-old in a year or two, I think some of the humour is a little old for him just yet. To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average.

The ending, I wasn't sure about, but I did come to terms with Max's decisions and saw his reasoning.His love of small models leads to an unlikely friendship with the school caretaker, Mr Darrow, who nurtures Max's talent in model-making. For my final book I thought I would try a book that was more light hearted, and Ross Montgomery’s book delivered. Darrow's experiments in building a miniature kingdom have succeeded, and that he is the catalyst for what is to come.

It's a classic boarding school story with a twist - most of the action takes place at the end of the school holidays, and at a microscopic level. It is handled seemlessly, with different fonts and characterisation throughout which makes this book easy to follow. I enjoyed the story for what it is, a silly, light hearted children's book; but for a story all about looking at the little things and the importance of detail, I hoped there would be more of just that. Pitt raises his voice and overenunciates at Max, and does things like having a chair set up at the front of assembly with a sign in large red letters, "special seat.

In my opinion, this novel is definitely an adventure novel, best suited for those looking from excitement and elements of humour from their reading. The more sensitive of pupils in the class could take on Max’s story for friendship and his difficulties communicating, perhaps how Sasha and his friendship develops in the next academic term.