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Something Wicked This Way Comes.
Somthing wicked this way comes is one of the best books ever written, I love the poetic flow of the plot and the way everything falls together in a dark erie mess. I sugjest this book to anyone, it will give you a whole other look on things every time you get on a merry-go-round and every time you step in to a mirror maze.
Something Wicked This Way Comes.
"By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes." So goes the linethat sets the tone of mystery and terror that hangs over every paragraph in this book.Ray Bradbury's descriptive genius shines through in this pleasantly horrifying novel.I enjoyed this book because of the way that Bradbury describes everything that happensin the book. Every paragraph in the book is a poem.It is a tale of two young boys, one bright, and one dark, who discover a great evil inthe autumn carnival. Somehow they must stop the evil from spreading without allowing it toengulf them as well. It is a carnival that makes broken promises and takes away your whole world,and Bradbury makes it come to life. The carnival is alive with everything from Witches of Wax, toShrunken Lightning Rod Salesmen.Once I picked it up, I could not put it down. It is experiencing fear at it's strongest, while sittingin the comfort of your own home. I would recommend this book to anyone, from children to seniors.Read it before it reads you.I don't know why I said that.David Warkentin, 14
Something Wicked This Way Comes.
Great, pivotal book by Ray Bradbury. My sister needed it for a class and this is a great edition! I recommend it!
Something Wicked This Way Comes.
Well, you've got to grant that Ray Bradbury is not a boring novelist. The entire story of Something Wicked This Way Comes runs almost entirely on enthusiasm. Part morality tale and part freak show, Something Wicked finds something of a happy medium as an exuberant young adult novel, a wild and unstoppable train of delight in every moment of living. The two protagonists Jim and Will live unimpeded lives without any great danger until the day the Dark Train arrives in the middle of the night, at the witching hour. Unfortunately, Cooger & Dark's Pandemonium Shadow Show offers more than mere curiosities and entertainments: it offers your heart's desire... for a price. Are you looking for true love? Your lost youth? Cooger & Dark will give it to you, just take a short ride on this carousel over here.It's easy for a reader to lose the overall geography of the novel in favor of its individual parts. Bradbury's prose oozes with flamboyance and a baroque explosion of literary decoration. Consider this description of a library from the second chapter:"Out in the world, not much happened. But here in the special night, a land bricked with paper and leather, anything might happen, always did. Listen! and you heard ten thousand people screaming so high only dogs feathered their ears. A million folk ran toting cannons, sharpening guillotines; Chinese, four abreast, marched on forever. Invisible, silent, yes, but Jim and Will had the gift of ears and noses as well as the gift of tongues. This was a factory of spices from far countries. Here alien deserts slumbered. Up front was the desk where the nice old lady, Miss Watriss, purple-stamped your books, but down off away were Tibet and Antarctica, the Congo. There went Miss Wills, the other librarian, through Outer Mongolia, calmly toting fragments of Peiping and Yokohama and the Celebes. Way down the third book corridor, an oldish man whispered his broom along in the dark, mounding the fallen spices..."Arguably, the overall body of the novel takes second place to its members. Bradbury's prose is such a delight to read that you might find yourself surprised to see a story wrapping itself up in the final chapters.But what is this novel? A horror story? An allegory of sin and temptation? An exercise in literary gluttony? I would suggest that it's a little bit of each. The moral, insofar as there is a coherent one at all, concerns the power of a sanguine attitude over the dark despair that comes in the middle of the night when you're tossing awake in bed. The Dark People could be interpreted as embodiments of ennui or despondency, as noonday devils who twist one's head around backwards to glare forever at what he has left behind. They feed on the unhappiness of ordinary people, and have so fed for centuries if not millennia. The fact that laughter has such great power over Mr. Dark and his carnival freaks would support this approach to the story.Most of all, I think that Something Wicked is worth reading for its grab-life-by-the-tail-and-hang-on attitude. It lacks a certain type of literary quality, but makes up for it with spiritedness, like a child who creates a whole imaginative universe using only Legos and crayons. One might need to be in the right mood for this novel, but it's not an unpleasant mood. Not unpleasant at all.
Something Wicked This Way Comes.
The Disney version of this book that was done in the 1980s really doesn't do this book justice. The prose is extremely vivid and rich, almost poetic. This is an excellent tale for readers young and old.
Something Wicked This Way Comes.
I'd like to start this review by getting the negatives out of the way first. My main problem with the book was how wordy it was at certain points, which I felt somewhat disrupted the flow of the novel. I would assume I'm in the minority about disliking this style, but I read purely for fun, not for themes and life lessons(though if a novel has them, as this certainly does, it's not a bad thing). Some of Mr. Halloway's long-winded perspective in the novel, his philosphy, slowed the book down. It's not that Bradbury was over descriptive in general (I read Stephen King, so I'm no stranger to descriptions), but it was the fact that he describes one thing with about a dozen different adjectives, which almost tempted me to skim through, even though it was such a short novel. Perhaps it's just that I wanted to get back to the exciting parts. I'd really love to say "screw it" and give this book 5 stars, but I pride myself on giving my honest opinions. Just these minor issues kept it from being 5 stars.As for the other 90% of the story, no doubt about it, it's very good. Not many books could be enjoyed equally by a teenager and a middle-aged reader, but I feel like this could. There's enough carnival-type fun and fantastic images for the young adult (as well as an older) reader to enjoy, while maintaining enough serious writing for an adult. It's quite a nice balance and Bradbury deserves alot of credit here.I'd also like to say that I was pleased with how much horror/supernatural there is. I knew before going into this that it was considered a dark fantasy, but I didn't expect much genuine horror, but there was more than enough to be found. As for the fantasy parts, well, they were pretty great as well. Add in some supernatural and the coming-off-age feel to it, and you have a recipe for success.Overall, alot of good imagination, mixed with some real life issues and struggles, Something Wicked This Way Comes is a unique book. A whole lot of story goes on in less than 300 pages, and this is one of them books that makes you realize how gratifying reading a good book can be.