Where this series used to consist of one-off stories all set in the same world with overlapping characters, the most recent entries into this world have focused on the two young girls first introduced in The Wizard of London and expanded upon here and there until they really came into their own when Nan and Sarah moved to London and teamed up with Sherlock Holmes and John Watson in A Study in Sable. Now though, the pair have proven to be prodigious investigators in their own right and they have been handling more and more cases on their own. That being said, when something magical, and not necessarily spirit-related, is involved, they still call on their friends, Elemental Masters John and Mary Watson. And while the whole world believes Sherlock is supposedly dead after confronting Moriarty at the Reichenbach Falls, when necessary, they find ways to get a hold of the master sleuth as well.
In The Case of the Spellbound Child, a letter addressed to Sherlock concerning lost children catches Watson's attention, and the fact that the distraught parents appear to have some elemental magic about them piques not only John's curiosity, but also that of Lord Alderscroft, their patron. Lord A commissions Nan, Sarah, their two birds, their ward Suki, and John and Mary to head to the small village near Dartmoor and determine exactly what is afoot.
As Nan, Sarah and their party investigate the dealings in the town, they learn that missing children in the county have actually been on the rise, but what they don't realize is that the cause is a dark presence in a small cottage in the woods that lures in children with potential magical abilities. The Case of the Spellbound Child flips between the perspective of the heroines and the two main missing children, Ellie and Simon, and through their perspective, we get the Hansel and Gretel tale. In order to better fit it into the Elemental Masters setting, instead of their captor being a witch bent on fattening up children to eat them, the creature that has a hold over the kids is clearly an Earth Mage that is slowly siphoning off its captives' magical abilities in order to increase its own power.
The two stories organically grow together as the investigation gets the group closer and closer to the person behind the missing children, while Ellie and Simon work to not only survive their strange imprisonment, but also work out potential ways to escape. When the party learns that Sherlock is also near and working on an investigation of his own, all the pieces start to fit together just right in a very satisfying way.
The fairly recent decision to focus primarily on Nan and Sarah and have a more episodic approach to the Elemental Masters series has given this line some new life, and while the previous books laid down a lot of groundwork for the world and set up the fairy-tale retelling format, the Elemental Masters books have become a much stronger offering since A Study in Sable and has become a world to which I truly enjoy returning. The Case of the Spellbound Child is another great addition to this growing collection.
