Wait-what?!
That's the summary of my review for this book in case you don't want to go over the whole thing. Not that it's going to be very long. I can't say much about something I don't understand. Well, I do understand but kind of not and really ... I stared at the last page for a few minutes after I read it. Okay maybe just seconds. Normally, I don't like writing a summary of the book in a book review because that's what a blurb is for but just so I can prove I understood (lol), I'm going to write one along with why I found the stuff confusing.
***SPOILER ALERT***
This is a story of a colored (but not really) magician, Henry Walker. It's narrated by different characters whose lives were touched by (or at least who encountered) Henry. (That in itself can be confusing. In this book it is especially confusing because one narrator isn't confined to one chapter. You just have to be quick on the uptake and if you're not then I'm sorry.) The series of events from the day her mother died went from bad to worse for him. Henry was taught Magic by the devil (or so he believed), Mr. Sebastian, who also took his sister from her. He believed that was the payment for the "knowledge and power" he gave him which is actually just a few card tricks. It turned out his sister, Hannah, was given by their father to Mr Sebastian (real name Callaghan) for adoption and Henry was the only one who wasn't in on the secret. The only thing that this explained was why his father was so nonchalant about his daughter missing and why he didn't get angry at Henry for it because it's supposedly his fault. From then on, it has been his mission to find him and kill him and maybe retrieve his sister too. That was when he traveled the world and became famous and joined the circus in the end. That was when he met all these people narrating in the book.
I thought at this point I was catching up but the most puzzling part for me came towards the end. Was the private detective able to talk to Henry or not? Because he was supposed to be missing, that was what the circus/carnival people told him. It was even dated at the beginning of the chapter but then those dates were also messed up. <spoiler>And then they suddenly knew where he can be found, which was some watering hole, so the detective came for him and "talked" to him which was how he found out about Mr. Sebastian and how Henry apparently killed him. And then he was back with the kids who beat him up.</spoiler> Normally (again), I'd go back to the pages that I think might answer my question but I just feel so tired and emotionally drained after reading this sad, sad story.
I'm not even fussing about Henry supposedly killing Mr. Sebastian. Everything that took place in Henry's life was because of that lie. He couldn't explain how things happened and this, I think, made him just create an explanation for it. One that he could understand. One that would help him cope and keep going on.
About the genre, this is a fantasy, I was thinking this should be some sort of psychological ... mystery ... genre ... something. But then there's the part when Henry's mother's ghost was narrating too. And the thing about the magician's assistant I don't even remember her name she was sort of uneventful for me.
So there. Even my review is confusing. And it turned out long-ish after all.
2.5 stars?
It seems, for a children's book, this one is full of goodbyes. Not to mention graphic, morbid deaths and then there's a little bit of divorce too. It's funny how the ending bothers me more than the beginning, though. I mean his whole family was murdered brutally in at the beginning of the story but I was more sad when he had to leave the one he grew up with. And yes, I took down one star because of that lol.
This is a coming of age story told in a paranormal setting and has lots of adventures, big and small. The character, Bod, is cute and endearing and I fell in love with him and I liked that there's no you're-not-my-real-parents scenario because it gets old. I fell in love with Silas too ... heh. I would've wanted a bit more peek into the honor guards' duties and how they came to be. I dunno, something more. ***SPOILER ALERT*** Also an explanation of why Scarlett was scared of Bod. I didn't think it was because he let the Sleer's take Jack Frost. I kept thinking she saw something else but the book didn't say so.
I'm not over analyzing but the book left me with a lot of questions. I can't decide whether it's good or bad yet. Lol.
I've always wondered whether authors ever get "competitive" to the point of being catty. This book might have answered that question but it's kind of funny in a way that I expected it from a female author and obviously John isn't a woman's name. Okay, I'm stereotyping but ... work with me here, k?
I picked this book up partly because it's a mystery crime, partly because it's cheap (think I got it for 30php on a second-hand book shop) and partly (but also mostly) because it's a book about books (and I later realized book scouts who I didn't know exists). This edition has a foreword of some sort from the author himself. I didn't read the whole thing but gist is that he was talking about book scouts and about how he himself is one, etc. Let's just say that it gives us (or at least me) an inkling that the author put a LOT of his personality in this book (maybe even the whole series). That being said, I would say that the author is a book snob. Nothing wrong with that, I'm just saying. Lol. It was funny how the character would say he wouldn't pick up a book by so and so or how so and so's books are a dime a dozen compared to so and so. I guess when writing something you always put yourselves on whatever it is but what I'm trying to say is that this is based in a world that he (used to?) live in so he already knows how things work and only has to do (maybe) a little research. So ... yeah, he put a lot of himself in it. I had to chuckle when one of the characters mentioned how Stephen King is too nice he always builds up other authors and their books but never his own. Lol.
Story-wise, I think the world Mr Dunning created using this series is an interesting one. One that book lovers *coughhoarderscough* like me would like to live in-- if you take away the murder parts. Lol. In general, I liked this first book of the series and I might even hunt down the rest of them. I only gave 3 stars, however, because I couldn't ... feel ... for the character Janeway and it's not because he's a guy. I liked that he's a book man, I liked that he's persistent as an investigator ... I don't know if I like to know him more than that. I particularly didn't care about his involvement with that woman (please read the book as I do not want to say more in case it's a spoiler), it's like it was put there for the Hollywood effect. There has to be a leading lady of some sort. I don't know if I like his personality and most people need to "like" another person for them to follow-up on said person, right? I guess I'm "most people" in that regard. He is arrogant, yes but what protagonist isn't? You wouldn't want to read about a meek character. I guess what I'm trying to get at is that there is something off about the character but I can't place it lol.
So yeah, overall this is an interesting read for book lovers.
Am I allowed to say a book is beautifully written if it's this sad? And also this controversial? I might be a little late jumping in the bandwagon but I don't watch a lot of movies so I never knew they made one out of this until I saw the cover. Also, for some reason I decided to watch the movie before finishing the book. It might have ruined the shock value for me but the sadness and everything that goes along with the word sadness was still there. It's actually still here, ugh!
I bought this book just because I wanted something to read while waiting for a friend and when he saw me reading it he said, that's a kids' book. I just shrugged. In a way he was right. The way it was written was made to be something you would read to kids but the content, the heaviness of it, wasn't. I knew it was about the holocaust and I've read a few books about the holocaust and know of it so of course I already know it's not going to be a happy one.
On a more technical note, if I hadn't read stories based on the holocaust before, I wouldn't have completely understood what took place in the end of this story unless I do a little research. In the movie, the guards were heard saying "it's only a shower". In the book they weren't even asked to strip. The were crammed in a room but how do I know that they were burned alive?
I think it's important to mention that I came from a faraway (heh) country and from a time (now) that's much much better than that era. I don't have any relatives or close acquaintances who suffered during that time. Now, there was a little issue about something that people, that I know, wrote a few years back that offended a few people within our professional circle. I mentioned "close acquaintances" because I never knew these people worked within arms reach. They had relatives who lived (some didn't) through that time. The argument of the involved parties was that what was written was only distantly related to this issue. I think it's essential that authors write about what happened for that reason. And I think it's essential that people, like me, read them. Because we need to have at least a little idea of what took place so we can try to understand why certain people react about something that happened a long long time ago. That way we can be a bit more sensitive, or at least thoughtful, about it.
The author's note at the end of the book says: "... only the victims and survivors can truly comprehend the awfulness of that time and place; the rest of us live on the other side of the fence, staring through from our own comfortable place, trying in our own clumsy way to make sense of it all."
