Rainer Maria Rilke

"Live a while in these books, learn from them what seems to you worth learning, but above all love them. This love will be repaid you a thousand and a thousand times, and however your life may turn,-it will, I am certain of it, run through the fabric of your growth as one of the most important threads among all the threads of your experiences, disappointments, and joys."--Rainer Maia Rilke


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Thursday, June 28, 2012

Very Peculiar

Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs
(Adolescent Fantasy)

This was definitely a book that threw me for a loop.  I bought it because I expected an eerie and strange tale, one that was scary and would creep me out (those are my favorite types of books).  What I got was more of a fantastic mystery.

The story revolves around a boy named Jacob and his grandfather.  As Jacob was growing up, his grandfather told him tales of his own childhood growing up around peculiar childhood friends at an orphanage in Wales.  When I say peculiar, I don't mean kids who talk to themselves or pick their scabs or whatever, but rather children who can float and fly and other, well, peculiar things.  Jacob never really believed the tales until his grandfather is brutally murdered and Jacob glimpses a monster responsible.  Yep, a real monster.  When a pychiatrist can't help Jacob cope, Jacob's parents relent to his demands and allow him to go to Wales to settle the matter of the tales and the monster once and for all. 

Once there, Jacob finds the orphanage, a creepy abandoned building, and almost gives up.  He is becoming convinced his grandfather must have been crazy after all.  And that's when the tale turns really peculiar with flashbacks, flashforwards, monsters, peculiar children and all.  In a strange twist, Jacob something stumbles into the exact world and role of his grandfather.

The ending is definitely an opening for another book in a series. 

I'm not sure how I feel about the story--it was a disappointment in a way because I wanted it to be eerie and scary and it started out that way.  The real pictures in the book add to the feeling and I felt a bit cheated that the book turned out to be so different.  I feel that the advertising and title and cover lends itself to a creepy factor and the book isn't that at all.  As a fantasy, it was creative and interesting but still......just a little peculiar.  All in all, I won't be picking up the sequel.

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