[If you haven't read
The Book of Lost Things yet, don't read this--SPOILERS ABOUND!]
I do, it's true. I almost lost my love for Stephen King's Dark Tower books when he appeared as himself in the last parts of the epic. Last week, I had to put Richard Powers's
Galatea 2.2 down (instead of throwing it across the room; it was a library book) after discovering "R.P." was Mr. Powers himself. It's like the author wants to be patted on the head: now aren't YOU clever!
Granted, John Connolly is not David, the revealed author of
The Book of Lost Things, but the text screams CLEVER CLEVER!!! at me. Also, DERISIVE! and CHILDISH! (Don't confuse that with childLIKE, a perfectly fine thing to have in a young-person's book.)
Alas, I am left puzzled. I still can't decide if I liked it or not. I didn't hate it, but it didn't ring any bells for me either. Technically, the book is published for adults (it won nominations for being a YA crossover) but it reads more like the sort of story an adult
thinks hearkens back to oh-so innocent childhood. The stripped down narrative is merely a collection of snapshots from fractured fairy tales, most with pre-Victorian morbidness added back in--and then some. The portions of darkdark blood and guts did not mesh with the ridiculous bits, like the whole seven dwarfs scenario.
It frustrated me to no end how little the inhabitants of Fairyland/Dreamland/The Afterlife/whatever knew about their country. The first rule of fantasy is there
must be rules--some logic, please! But a whole population of individuals who have no local or historical knowledge? Instead of rich characters, they become a whole lotta cutouts, reliant on what little of their personalities Connolly chose to include and what we know about them from general knowledge--
Roland, for example. Here's a knight*** who cannot remember the order of kings and queens. And don't get me started on the dumb townspeople.
So David killed Rumpelstiltskin? Anansi? Coyote? Kokopelli? Loki? The Devil? Is all Heaven safe now--or was that Hell? Is the afterlife the stuff books are made of? Where is everyone else who died? Ack!
Why does the woman in the tower want David? Was she calling the whole time? Is she modelled after a fairyland character and I'm totally missing it?
Did anyone else know the answer to the troll's riddle? Hello! Labyrinth!
There's the whole copout with the plane crash, (COME ON--WHAT ARE THE ODDS???) meaning one could legitimately finish the book thinking David was just a nutty, dreamy man with an imagination and troubled childhood. (The plane crash also led me to believe David was in a Donnie Darko situation, dead and just ambling around the empty spaces in his mind--something he asks Roland on page 208.) On a whole, the book was too neat and tidy. David never has to work hard at anything; it all comes to him rather easily. All natural, no real effort or sacrifice. The Woodsman has Great Timing at the end, of course.
Maybe I've read too many fairy tales and fantasy stories to enjoy this rehash?
The end left a sour taste in my mouth. Not a bad book, but it had the potential to be better.
***Incidentally, Roland is the main character of Stephen King's Dark Tower books, as in R. Browning's "
Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came." But he's a different sort of knight, one with pistols slung around his hips and grit in his teeth.
