12-year-old Goldie Roth is about to separated; from now on she won't have to have a chain around her arm connecting her to an adult. But when a bomb goes off in the city, her separation is postponed a year. Goldie doesn't want to wait till next year! So when nobody is looking she grabs a pair of scissors, cuts the ribbon holding her to her parents, and runs away. But with the Fugleman and Blessed Guardians searching for her she has nowhere to go, until a mysterious man leads her to the old museum...
When I first read the title I thought of the museum as some thieves' hideout. And in a way, it was that. What I wasn't expecting was the author's definition of a thief. In most books with a thief as a good guy, he is a Robin Hood like character. But Lian Tanner isn't trying to make a case for stealing from the rich to give to the poor. She says that stealing should not be glorified; that if you use it to hurt someone in even a small way you are betraying yourself and them. And she does a good job to point that out; most authors wouldn't. But then Tanner finished with a line that made the book more than worth reading.
"But there are some things that you should steal. That you must steal, if you have enough love and courage in your heart. You must snatch freedom from the hands of the tyrant. You must spirit away innocent lives before they are destroyed. You must hide secret and sacred places."
Tanner also did a wonderful job of illustrating that no matter how nice and clean a city looks on the outside, there are problems underneath the surface that can rapidly come to life. The rooms in the museum hold the things the people in the city have tried so hard to get rid of. The people don't realize that the dangers haven't left; the dangers have only hidden below the surface until trouble brings them out again.
The only problem I had with the book was that there is very little character development. I don't see that as a huge problem, as otherwise the book was great, but there should be some character development. The main character does change some in the story, but she doesn't really have any conflicts
"Don't try and push fear away. If you fight it, you make it stronger. You gotta greet it politely, like an unwanted cousin. You can't make it leave you alone, but you can do what you have to do, in spite of it."
While this book was intended for a younger audience, its themes run incredibly deep. I would recommend it to anyone who is either still young enough to enjoy fairy tales or, as C. S. Lewis said, old enough to enjoy fairy tales.