Note: "The prime of Lofting's active career lasted only a decade, and during that period he wrote only one other fantasy, The Twilight of Magic (1930), a slightly moralistic tale set in a land-of-fable medieval Europe." --SFE: Encyclopedia of Fantasy, biographical entry by John Clute (alluding to the Doctor Dolittle series) Kirkus Reviews (above) covered the 1967 US ed. as "two sequences", featuring "Giles as a boy of nine" and "Giles as a young man", the first a "childhood fantasy" and the complex second "an evocation of a medieval court ...". Either way, a probable disappointment to Dolittle fans.

Synopsis: In the days when magic was on the wane, a little boy in possession of a magic whispering shell does a service for his young king. --summary, Library of Congress records of both 1967, 1993 editions