A strange and creepy carnival comes to town by train at three in the morning, witnessed by two young boys, William Halloway and Jim Nightshade. It's a good start to a book I had high hopes for. I mainly wanted to read this book because one of my favorite books,
Johannes Cabal the Necromancer, was so obviously influenced by it. Well, it was influenced by a lot of things, but this book is one of them. I found Bradbury's book enjoyable, for the most part. It was a little old-fashioned, sometimes, in its prose, but it was written in the 1950's so that's not unexpected. It's part coming of age novel and part horror, although the horror part is a little lacking; it might have been pretty dark for the 1950's, but I don't really know. The carnival's purpose in this book is to steal people. In those days, a carnival needed freaks for its shows. Well, this carnival gets it's freaks in a somewhat unorthodox way, through changing people by using their desires against them and then making them part of the show. The book focuses on the kids, Jim and Will, and Will's dad. Together they manage to defeat the evil Dark and Cooger, the owners of the carnival, and everyone lives happily ever after. Well, most everyone. I think I would have liked the book better if we had a chance to see more of Mr. Dark. He was an interesting character and it would've been nice to know his backstory and motivations. But even without that, it was still a good book, and perfect for a Halloween read. On a more personal note, reading this book really made me want to go to a carnival! I think I was lucky growing up, our carnival always came in late October and it was a lot of fun. Unfortunately it went broke a few years ago and we haven't had a carnival in awhile. I think we were lucky that we had one at all, they're not as popular as they used to be. Kind of sad, really.
A strange and creepy carnival comes to town by train at three in the morning, witnessed by two young boys, William Halloway and Jim Nightshade. It's a good start to a book I had high hopes for. I mainly wanted to read this book because one of my favorite books, Johannes Cabal the Necromancer, was so obviously influenced by it. Well, it was influenced by a lot of things, but this book is one of them. I found Bradbury's book enjoyable, for the most part. It was a little old-fashioned, sometimes, in its prose, but it was written in the 1950's so that's not unexpected. It's part coming of age novel and part horror, although the horror part is a little lacking; it might have been pretty dark for the 1950's, but I don't really know. The carnival's purpose in this book is to steal people. In those days, a carnival needed freaks for its shows. Well, this carnival gets it's freaks in a somewhat unorthodox way, through changing people by using their desires against them and then making them part of the show. The book focuses on the kids, Jim and Will, and Will's dad. Together they manage to defeat the evil Dark and Cooger, the owners of the carnival, and everyone lives happily ever after. Well, most everyone. I think I would have liked the book better if we had a chance to see more of Mr. Dark. He was an interesting character and it would've been nice to know his backstory and motivations. But even without that, it was still a good book, and perfect for a Halloween read. On a more personal note, reading this book really made me want to go to a carnival! I think I was lucky growing up, our carnival always came in late October and it was a lot of fun. Unfortunately it went broke a few years ago and we haven't had a carnival in awhile. I think we were lucky that we had one at all, they're not as popular as they used to be. Kind of sad, really.
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