This novel is set in the Second World War in England; Rowan is a normal 13 year-old boy living in the War. He has a history of being violent when he is provoked. This doesn’t happen a lot and his family hope he will grow out of it, but now the opposite is happening.

“Sending him to live with strangers would be unfair, he can get quite aggressive, you know, he’s growing up; getting bigger and harder to control.”

In one day Rowan has lost control of himself twice: he says that a voice inside his head tells him to attack people, and afterwards he can’t remember anything about it.     

“Nothing bad… nothing bad… But his mind was a sieve … a net … a strainer of thoughts, with reason, like water, rushing straight through all the holes.”

Because of this they don’t want to send Rowan to be an evacuee; they wouldn’t want him to lose control around strangers. Then Rowan’s Nanna finds a hospital that he can go to, and where he can see a specialist.

‘An assessment ,’ his father repeated, patiently.  ‘Of your health. Mother and I think it’s high time you saw a specialist. Someone who understands these things and will be able to help you to… No it’s all right, R. Nothing to get upset about, old chap.

Rowan’s parents have told him he’s going to a hospital but they haven’t told him what kind of hospital: they are going to send him to a lunatic asylum. But on the way to the hospital Rowan finds out it is actually a lunatic asylum.

‘I know that place,’ said the woman. ‘There’s a lunatic asylum there.’

Rowan is examined by two nurses, one of whom is called Sarah-Jane. Shortly afterwards Rowan is diagnosed with schizophrenia.

‘The splatter of ink was minuscule, like a spray of fairy blood. The man wielding the pen blotted it, carefully, before continuing to write:

Schizophrenia.’

Rowan is part of an experiment for a new treatment being tested on all the patients in Ward Five: the treatment being used is called electro convulsive therapy.  This is where the doctor straps the patient to a chair and puts a bung in their mouth so they don’t bite their tongues while the electrical current is passing through them.

‘And Doctor von Metzer flicked a switch, sending one hundred and ten volts of electricity in a barbed-wire arc through Rowan’ brain.’

After Rowan has the treatment he wakes up thinking he is Superboy, but later on in the book discovers that he is not, he is just Rowan. Doctor von Metzer becomes Rowan’s friend as well as Doctor as the story goes on, but some people don’t trust him truly because he is a German and at the moment Britain is at war with Germany. They think that he is a spy.

‘This is all because he’s a jerry, Rowan agonised. They don’t know, or care, how kind he is. All they see is a rat. A filthy Nazi rat, listening to gossip on buses, and gobbling secrets.

At the asylum Rowan becomes friends with all the people in Ward Five; he also makes one very special friend, whose name is Dorothea, who has been put in Ward Five because she can see people’s guardian angles and talks to hers, Joan of Arc. Dorothea has the treatment and discovers that Joan of Arc has left her: she becomes very depressed at this and decides that she cannot handle it. Rowan is cured at the hospital, but Doctor von Metzer isn’t sure whether it is the treatment that has helped him or just Rowan’s persistence. Rowan eventually goes home but before that he saves Doctor von Metzer from a group of Sarah-Jane’s friends and realises he can be brave without being Superboy. Von Metzer decides to go back to Germany and help his own people.

I really enjoyed this novel; it had great descriptive words and kept me hooked the whole time.