Publisher's Weekly Review
Thriller writer Connolly (Every Dead Thing) turns from criminal fears to primal fears in this enchanting novel about a 12-year-old English boy, David, who is thrust into a realm where eternal stories and fairy tales assume an often gruesome reality. Books are the magic that speak to David, whose mother has died at the start of WWII after a long debilitating illness. His father remarries, and soon his stepmother is pregnant with yet another interloper who will threaten David's place in his father's life. When a portal to another world opens in time-honored fashion, David enters a land of beasts and monsters where he must undertake a quest if he is to earn his way back out. Connolly echoes many great fairy tales and legends (Little Red Riding Hood, Roland, Hansel and Gretel), but cleverly twists them to his own purposes. Despite horrific elements, this tale is never truly frightening, but is consistently entertaining as David learns lessons of bravery, loyalty and honor that all of us should learn. (Nov.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus Review
A child's nightmare odyssey through an alternate world inspired by the darkest aspects of fairy tales. The Irish thriller-writer (The Black Angel, 2005, etc.) breaks new ground with this extravagant fantasy. Twelve-year-old David is a Londoner who has inherited his mother's love of myths and fairy tales; when she dies of an unnamed disease, he takes her loss hard. And it gets worse. His father falls for Rose, the administrator of his mother's hospice; she bears him a son, Georgie. David dislikes them both. When war breaks out (it's 1939), they move to Rose's house outside London. David's bedroom is haunted by a notorious trickster, the Crooked Man, known for stealing children. When he hears his mother's voice calling for help, he wriggles through a hole in the brickwork and finds himself in a forest. Right away, he spots two corpses. One belongs to a German aviator, the other to an animal wearing clothes. Luckily, the first living human he meets is the well-disposed Woodsman. He tells David the animal was a Loup, half-wolf, half-human; the mother of the first Loup, Leroi, was Little Red Riding Hood. (Be prepared for other perverse fairy-tale variants.) Leroi is plotting to displace the feeble old king; his chief adversary is the Crooked Man. The only good news is that the king's greatest resource, the Book of Lost Things, may show David the way home. So man and boy begin their journey to the castle. Dangers abound. Wolves and Loups are on their trail. Evil trolls guard a bridge across a canyon, while fanged harpies cruise below. The Woodsman is chased off by wolves, and David must use all his smarts to avoid various grisly ends. There's a nod to his coming-of-age, but graphic violence is the come-on, enough to sate the most bloodthirsty appetite. Connolly doesn't know when to stop--by the end, the punch-drunk reader is past caring about the ultimate winner or David's fate. A robust storyteller loses his way. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Library Journal Review
After a 12-year-old's mother dies, the books she worshiped start whispering to the child-and soon they are dragging him into another world. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.