It seems that books are all I ever write about. Perhaps if I had a regular life, that'd be different. Sadly, I'm not sure I'd be so apt to share the sordid details of reality...
Anyway... On to the book. Last week I finished Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children, and it was excellent. I decided to read it based on two things - it has a creative title, and I like the author's name (Ransom Riggs - c'mon, he's got to be cool). I think I read a synopsis at some point, but by the time I started reading the book, I'd forgotten what it was about. It was so unique, though! I don't think anything properly describes it without completely giving everything away. And the way that the author went about creating characters and bringing them to life with REAL old photos - genius. I've read a lot of sci-fi fantasy stuff, and can only take so many vampires and werewolves and fairies and trolls before I'm ready to scream. The characters are none of those things, yet they're still amazing superhuman beings. The *romance* could have been better, but this IS a boy story, so I'm not expecting much in that respect. The writing, though... wow. Ransom Riggs can WRITE. The words were beautiful and moving and...every last one of them was right. It flowed perfectly. I don't think I ever tripped over an awkwardly placed word.
Anyway, it's about a boy and his relationship with his grandfather - sort of. It's also about his relationship with his father...and then his acceptance of himself as a separate and strong individual, not a crazy, misguided kid. He goes off to Wales with his father, to reconcile his feelings surrounding his grandfather's death - to make sense of it, to come to terms with the fact that his grandfather was a regular guy and that there was nothing magical about him or anything particularly sinister about how he died. There's no such thing as monsters! But, after hanging out on the tiny island off the coast of Wales for a while, he starts to realize that things aren't what they seem - his grandfather's stories were all true. There are children who are capable of really amazing things, sometimes they're even sort of scary. And, there are monsters. The whole story felt a little sad - here are all these kids, most of them throw-aways, who've been segregated and can't ever return to the real world. There was one little boy with his soldiers - little mud men he'd brought to life with the hearts of mice - I could see him so clearly. While what he was doing was pretty disturbing, he was just a kid with toy soldiers. While they're kept apart from the real world, the live in a sort of manufactured paradise. Naturally, that has to end... and it has to be sort of our main boy's fault. The monsters arrive. There are some little battles. There are some goodbyes. And then they sail off into the glow of a war... and I sat staring at my Kindle because, while it ended in a great place, it didn't really end. Who knows how long I'll have to wait to find out what happens next. The author's blog talked about looking for pictures for the sequel. Bleh. I want book 2.
But you should read book 1.
And I should get back to doing my homework...and planning my reluctant trip...
(I would have posted a picture, but it seems that my amazon associates thing is broken :( hope it gets fixed...)
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