Originally this book stood out to me as math was always my favourite subject in school. As someone who is an avid reader and continued studying mathematics at the university level, I thought that I would enjoy this book. I really like the concept of teaching mathematics through a story, however, I felt that this was not well executed. I felt that the main character in the book should have been older, perhaps around thirteen instead of only seven. Seven-year-old children who are advanced in mathematics are not going to follow the mathematics beyond the basic multiplication and division discussed in this book. Moreover, how many seven-year-old children are really wanting to buy Zippo lighters from a store? Perhaps a child in grade seven, but is this something that is necessary to promote at this age? I do not think that many seven-year-old children will relate to the character in this book. Lastly, I cannot help but be irked by the inconsistency with using metric and imperial units. On one page the estimated thickness is about half an inch, then two paragraphs down we have a brief conversion of two inches is roughly the same as five centimeters, then we get into yards and miles with very rough conversion factors to what that means in meters and kilometers. Why not also state the conversion factors? I’m familiar with the actual conversion factors between imperial and metric, so I can visualize these distances, but I think many seven-year-olds will simply be lost. The use of index cards to multiply, divide, and solve square roots is an interesting thing to learn, but I feel that to make this interesting to kids who aren’t into math, then the story needs to be more engaging. Personally, I did not find the actual story to be engaging, and I really do not think that this book is marketed to the appropriate age.

This was the first book I read of this type. I read it out loud to my daughter who enjoys maths.

The book is fun, especially as we get to see his imagination. My daughter enjoyed some of the humour. Although it did get a bit too complicated for her as we advanced through the book.

This is a good book for a high school aged child, especially one with an interest in maths.

It's well written but definitely not for everyone. It gets quite complicated from time to time, but it is fun to read and if you have a little fella who is interested in maths this it definitely the book I would recommend. Also just for children who are interested in the world and in reading about a boy with great imagination.
Still this book definitely fills more of a niche than serve the general reader. But there have to be books like that and I'm definitely here for that.

I have to be honest and say that I didn’t really get this book at all. I’m no mathematical whizz but I’m also fairly competent. I found the ideas interesting and perhaps if I sat with a fewer materials beside me, I might give them a go, but it didn’t read well as a story and just became a complicated muddle of explanations that didn’t really form a story.

After getting about halfway through, I couldn’t really complete it as it just didn’t compel me at all and I didn’t really get where the story was going.

This book was confusing, I didn't really understand what was going on. It didn't seem to have a plot or story at all. But it was kind of fun to read anyway!

Short book, suitable for Secondary age and up. This is an interesting, somewhat unusual, fiction story with maths very much in mind; in particular logarithms. I didn’t quite follow the relationship that Ranbir had that started his quest. But I learned the about the basis of doing arithmetic using logarithms. Personally I have used logarithmic for plotting, but never other mathematical functions. Thank you to Atmosphere Press and NetGalley for the ARC. The views expressed are all mine, freely given.