The Talismiths: The Secret Saboteur

by M.L. Hodder

Have you ever wondered who creates all the magical objects in your favorite stories?

Twelve-year-old Charlie Crumple is about to find out.

When a mysterious voice and a last-minute summer job drop him inside Talisman, Incorporated—the secretive factory where his late father once worked—Charlie discovers enchanted objects are not only real, they are designed, crafted, and flying carpets, talking mastheads, enchanted wands… and a thousand other magical necessities story heroes rely on.

But magic isn’t the only thing brewing inside the factory.

Machines are breaking down. A key Talismith vanishes. A rival corporation is circling like a hangry dragon. And someone—hidden deep within the twisting halls of Talisman, Incorporated—seems determined to tear everything apart from the inside.
Then come the clues… coded notes, dire warnings… that all point back to Charlie’s father, a brilliant Talismith whose death has never quite made sense. The more Charlie investigates, the more questions he uncovers, and the more dangerous the mystery becomes.

To uncover the truth, Charlie and his new friend Tess must team up with the factory’s designers, crack his father’s puzzles, finish a dangerous invention, and expose a traitor before it’s too late.

The clock is ticking… and if Charlie Crumple fails, happily-ever-after may vanish for good.

Perfect for fans of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Nevermoor, and Percy Jackson. The The Secret Saboteur is a fast-paced, mystery-filled middle-grade fantasy packed with humor, magical inventions, clever puzzles, found family, and the kind of wild i-MAGI-nation kids love.

"I didn't want to leave the incredibly imagined world of The Talismiths, where humor and high stakes kept me turning pages. It is cinematic in scope, populated with likeable (and wonderfully unlikeable) characters, grounded by redemption and hope, and imbued with a mystery that kept me guessing to the final, satisfying end. It's a perfect, can't-put-it-down adventure."
—Award-winning children's author Meredith Davis, The Minor Miracle and The Minor Rescue

Genres: Fantasy, Middle Grade

316 pages, Kindle Edition

Published November 26, 2025

About the author

M.L. Hodder is a middle-grade author from Oregon. Before writing full time he spent over two decades as a designer at Nike. His debut fantasy novel, The Talismiths: The Secret Saboteur, was inspired by his career designing products for athletes and imagines the hidden craftspeople behind the enchanted objects in classic fairy tales. It was released in December 2025 and is available on Amazon. He lives with his family and two cats, Bug and Lil.

Reviews

[Carrie Schmidt]

The prologue of The Talismiths: The Secret Saboteur by ML Hodder sets the stakes high and even had me double checking to make sure I hadn’t opened a Lynette Eason suspense novel by mistake. A worried man being followed as he drives down a snowy road at night. A top-secret project. A possible traitor. And then… his car goes flying, the would-be assailants close in, a cover-up, and one final, last-ditch plea for help. Definitely put me on the edge of my seat and had me quite curious as to how these opening paragraphs would play into this middle-grade fantasy about fairy tales and enchanted objects! Something which starts to become clear in the first chapter as we zero in on the story’s hero – Charlie Crumple – six months later.

What follows is a fantastical adventure that sparks the imagination, with just enough ‘what-if’ plausibility to have readers keeping one eye on their door mats and another on their bookshelves. Charlie is a likable and sympathetic character who middle grade readers can readily identify with. He too deals with school bullies and difficult teachers, loves playing his fave Nintendo Switch game with his best friend, and sometimes thinks his mom is being unfair. He’s also still grappling with his dad’s unexpected death and some complicated emotions about his dad’s former job… which he’s about to find out isn’t creating flying carpets, glass slippers, or magic wands for movie props but for fairy tale heroes instead. When Charlie’s mom sends him to the Talisman, Inc. factory (which is staffed by a variety of mythological creatures) for the summer, to be introduced to this family legacy of talismiths and learn more about what his dad did there, he soon finds himself in the thick of a sabotage investigation and the company on the verge of a hostile takeover. And then there’s the mystery of what really happened to his dad…

Bottom Line: Middle grade readers will enjoy the way The Talismiths: The Secret Saboteur by ML Hodder blends their favorite fairy-tales, the eternal fight between good and evil, magical realism, mystery, and just regular ol’ kid stuff too. It makes it easy for them to put themselves in Charlie’s shoes and imagine what they would see and hear and do if they were in his position. The author’s worldbuilding skills and vibrant descriptions create movie-worthy visuals as you read, while also leaving room for your own imagination to flourish. The pace moves quickly, but not too quickly, and the mystery element of the plot is quite well-crafted. And for parents who get uneasy about magic… the magic that’s mentioned here is more scientific or of the LOTR/Narnia or fairy-godmother varieties, rather than being dark or spell-driven. This series starter wraps up most of the plot points but leaves one pretty big continuing arc that will have readers impatiently waiting for word of a second book. The Talismiths: The Secret Saboteur would be a good next read for fans of Narnia, Harry Potter, or even the Shrek movies and Monsters, Inc.!

(I voluntarily reviewed a complimentary copy of this book)

first reviewed at Reading Is My SuperPower

[Eileen]

This was a fun surprise! Charlie Crumple has not done well in school or life since his dad was killed in a car accident, leaving him and his mom with few resources. He's been getting in trouble at school, so when his mom sends him to his dad's old job for a summer internship, courtesy of his uncle, he protests vehemently, especially because he was looking forward to camp with his best (and only) friend.

It's not long before he finds himself drawn into mystery and intrigue as he makes some new friends (and enemies) as he works to both figure out what happened to his dad and save his dad's factory. I loved trying to figure out who the enemies were (I figured out one of the big ones but not all of them) as well as learn how the worlds worked. In some ways this book reminded me of Nevermoor and to a lesser extent, Harry Potter, where a kid finds out about a magical world that most of the world does not know about and ends up getting drawn into the politics and intrigue of good vs. evil. I loved the connection between the world of fairy tales and our own, and the Talismiths' role in connecting the two.

I loved the whole book and am looking forward to the next installment. I have no idea how many books will be in this series, but I hope there will be a few!

I voluntarily read and reviewed an advanced copy of this book from Booksirens. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

[Melanie Dulaney]

Think about all the magical objects in all the fairy tales, fantasy books and myths you have read. All of those things have to be imagined and created and that is exactly what a talismith does and the very best ones were imagined and created by Charlie’s dad at a secret factory he is just now learning about. And he’s only finding out because his father is dead. Maybe even killed.

12 year old Charlie is just a regular kid, one still dealing with losing his father, but usually pretty ordinary. However, when a school bully pushes him too far and they end up in a fight, Charlie is shipped off to the factory where his dad worked and discovers all manner of secrets surrounding that work. A place where magic still exists to fight the evil in fairy tales but Talisman Incorporated hasn’t been the same since Charlie’s dad, Nick, died and new magical objects are not being made, money is in short supply, machines keep breaking and an evil corporation is lurking, ready to take over and start providing fantastic tools to the villains of literature. All hope lies in Charlie and the talismith blood that flows in his veins and the Magical Amulet Genius Instinct (MAGI) that is generally not present in adults but never faded from his father, enabling him to think outside of the box and generate new objects. But the sabotage continues and it becomes obvious there is someone inside the factory making bad things happen so Charlie teams up with Tess, a Black girl his age who is hoping to become a talismith, in order to identify the culprit, help create a magical suit that will protect a fairy tale princess which will bring enough money to save the factory, and along the way, figure out who killed his father.

Such creativity and imagination on every page of M. L. Hodder’s The Talismiths! And while there are plenty of the usual fantasy tropes and certainly a myriad of well-known fantastic beasts, centaurs, trolls, Minotaurs, cyclops and more, there are also some completely new beings mixed in and stirred up with known myths and fairy tales and a few that are either made up or just not familiar to me. I am looking forward to the next book and hope that the author is picked up by a more mainstream publisher allowing this series to be more widely distributed and possibly in hardcover format to make it more useful in the library setting.

Highly recommended for fans of all the magic school fantasy books out there but readers should be ready for something completely different.

*Profanity: none
*Violence: Charlie’s dad dies in a car accident, plenty of damage is done to the factory and villains are set on squelching all the good they can but there is no extraneous blood or gore.
*Sexual content: none
*Representation: Factory workers are predominantly mystical and mythical creatures so race and diverse heritages are not really a factor, however, Tess is human and is illustrated as Black on the cover and described as brown-skinned in the text.
*LBGTQ+: none

Thanks for hosting a giveaway Afoma Umesi Reading Middle Grades and author Mike Hodder.

[Theresa Sandifer]

I really liked this book. The idea was actually different, not just a “new” version of an old , and often tired, trope.

The main character, Charlie, is honestly real. He isn’t a genius, or a hero, or really anything extraordinary in the beginning, and really through much of the story. He has feelings like we all do, wonder, anger, happiness, frustration…, and they show. His friend, Tess, is also real, but I don’t think we know nearly as much about her at the end of the book. I hope we learn more, she could be really interesting if she were more prominent.

The book had a lot of characters, maybe too many, I had a hard time remembering most of them, and while they did move the story forward, maybe they didn’t all need to be named. For me it made the book feel crowded and a bit chaotic.

The world was really cool and is revealed more and more through the story. I thought the Shelf was an awesome part of it. I would have loved to be there and see it.

In About the Author it mentions that they wrote it with reluctant readers in mind and I think it is perfect for them. It moves along steadily with few or no dull, nothing happens parts, which often loses those readers.

[C.G. Baerga]

The Talismiths: The Secret Saboteur is one of the freshest concepts I have encountered in middle-grade fantasy in a long time. Imagine every magical artifact in every fairy tale ever told — flying carpets, lightning bolts, glass slippers — manufactured by a secret factory staffed by mythological creatures, currently under threat of a hostile takeover by the villain supplier next door. ML Hodder, a debut author and former Nike designer, builds this world with a visual imagination and a corporate humor that works beautifully on every level — for the kids reading the adventure and the adults quietly recognizing the boardroom politics underneath it. The cast is distinct, the mystery keeps you guessing, and the heart of the story — a boy who misses his father and is not ready to stop looking for him — never gets lost in the mythology. A few chapters ease off the gas when the story wants to sprint, and I personally wanted the magic carpet race to last about three times longer than it did. But this is a minor complaint at a table that otherwise kept me well fed from the first page to the last. Highly recommended — and yes, I am already eyeing Book II.

[Molly Greenleaf]

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. The author paints such a vivid story and brings you right into the world on the page. I highly recommend!