Post a Comment On: A Nod to Nothing

[Image]Wow, was this good. I would strongly recommend it to Mean Mr. Mustard or Klund. John Connolly's The Book of Lost Things was just great on many, many levels. It was like Harry Potter meets Gaiman, with more of their darkness, and at the same time, more levity. I think Harry Potter is funny sometimes, but only because you recognize things in Harry and his friends, or recognize something clever, not because the author has posited something truly humorous. On some pages I thought I was reading Neil Gaiman or Emma Bull, on other pages I thought I was eyebrow deep in Pratchett, like when...damn it...I'm not going to ruin the dwarfs with a spoiler. They're so f-ing hilarious I laughed out loud. And in other sections, I was physically nervous it was so dark and disturbing. When the knight tells his story to the townmen's children, you're just sure you'd beat the bejesus out of anyone that did that to your kids. It makes the Blue Fairy Book look happy. I'm not sure what to complain about, other than that you can't read it to your children unless you want them to have nightmares, and that David, the main character was just the slightest touch flat, but only because Connolly had a definite arc he was imposing on him to make the story work the way he intended. But The Book of Lost Things is about stories, so you can forgive him for making it obvious that you're reading one.

A beautiful book that could have slid into cliche, but rises to some place much higher.