THE MIRRORSTONE

An adventure in picture-book format, designed to make use of laser-produced holographic images, of which seven are included. The story is banal. Paul travels through his bathroom mirror to a medieval-looking world where an evil wizard (Salaman, surely an echo of Tolkien's orb-deluded Saruman) tries to trick him into making a perilous sea journey; running away, he falls into the sea through a reflecting puddle, evades sea-monsters, is somehow trapped within the sphere of the mirrorstone, but crashes back into his own bathroom when it shatters. The watercolor illustrations include plenty of eerie, mysterious spaces and nightmare-like architecture. The holograms are fascinating, with the surface appearance of shiny foil: when manipulated under a light source, they reveal three-dimensional images derived from complex constructions by the artist, bathed in ever-changing colors. As a curiosity, they may be worth the book's price.