I visited the library just after Thanksgiving and found Fairy Tale by Stephen King. It was a Lucky Day book (which means a new release that can't be renewed) so I had three weeks to read the 600 page tome. Oh my! I was initially up to the challenge, but then got sick with covid and was up for nothing. In the end I read most of it in the last two days. But I finished! And returned it on time - ha!
What a fun mashup of everything fairy tale, from Jack and the Beanstock to Rumpelstiltskin and any other fairy tale story or character you can think of. Current and timeless. Smart and truly entertaining. The references were intentional and made this other world seem the source of them all, discovered by wayward travelers who happened upon a portal.
I also enjoyed the illustrators, Gabriel Rodriguez and Nicolas Delort, alternating a drawing for each chapter. Very cool.
Page 17: You have to keep in mind that high school kids - no matter how big the boys, no matter how beautiful the girls - are still mostly children inside.
Page 33: The windows were dusty, all the shades pulled. Those windows looked like blind eyes that were somehow still seeing me and not liking my intrusion.
Page 414: You get used to the amazing, that's all. Mermaids and IMAX, giants and cell phones. If it's in your world, you go with it. It's wonderful, right? Only look at it another way, and it's sort of awful. Think Gogmagog is scary? Our world is sitting on a potentially world-ending supply of nuclear weapons, and if that's not black magic, I don't know what is.
And finally, page 595: You may say I have no reason to feel shame, that I did what I had to do to save my life and the shed's secret, but shame is like laughter. And inspiration. It doesn't knock.
