Bad puns abound in this novel by Will Macmillan Jones, and while I can sometimes enjoy a bit of that, I have to say that overall I find myself somewhat disappointed by The Banned Underground.

The novel is meant to be a bit of frivolous time-killing fun (and nothing wrong with that) as the author himself told me. I encountered Jones doing a signing in my local Waterstones and got chatting.

It was good to shoot the breeze with a fellow author, and while doing that I was flicking through his book; some of the snippets I thus randomly read made me chuckle, so I thought I'd give it a shot. Alas, subjecting it to a proper sit down read, I found the book didn't measure up to expectations.

The novel is inventive and well-written, but as I progressed through the story, it began taking me back through the years to childhood; the feel of it became reminiscent of some of the kids' TV I saw way back when. Perhaps I missed something, but I didn't get the impression that The Banned Underground was aimed at a young audience. (Perhaps the young at heart?)

I suspect -- although I haven't put it to the test -- that my ten-year-old niece might enjoy the book and its rather childish (I thought) humour. As an adult, I began to find it all a little tiresome.