This book was a find. I caught it on a sale day and was able to download it to my kindle for free. What initially attracted me to this book was the cover. I like weird horror-fantasy hybrid books and I like butterflies. It was a win-win. I try to shuffle my reading up between adult fiction, young adult fiction, and classics. But I especially try to keep an eye out for good, and diverse, young adult books which I can take with me into my classroom/student-teaching. You can never have enough books to recommend to your students. The product reviews were comparing this book to others by Stephen King and Ray Bradbury. Well I will admit it was a good, quick read, I don’t think I would go so far as to equate it with the “King” of horror. It’s simple, with nothing of Stephen King’s complexity, but these books aren’t written for the same audience. They shouldn’t be compared. This book is written for middle school/early high school readers. I’d be troubled if it felt like I was reading “IT”.
The very first page gets you with a hook and from that point on it’s hard to put this book down. The story follows the disappearance of Matthew and several other children from a small town and the appearance of a pale stranger with interesting powers as well as some interesting pets. The story is narrated by Robert, who is struggling to find his place between boyhood and manhood, when his brother disappears and things start to get…odd. He quickly turns into the hero as the town’s adults are sucked in to the newcomer, Abram’s, spell. The promise of rain from this hypnotic villain is enough to make parents forget their children. Robert is an excellent narrator and he keeps the story moving quickly. There is never a dull moment in Slade’s book and even though it is written for young adults he manages to keep an intelligent and intriguing writing style.
This books downfall is the ending. While it does a good job with wrapping up the story it also introduces a lot of last minute plot points. Usually authors do this to fill up plot holes at the last minute, but Slade didn’t have anything to worry about on that count. While these points would have added into the complexity of the plot if brought up sooner, bringing in major plot points with just pages left to the ending was a little wasted. Even if this book was a dozen or so pages longer it would still be appropriate length for young adult and Slade would have gotten his layered plot. Instead it just comes across as a little sloppy in a book that had done such an excellent job.
I still love that butterflies featured a prominent role in this book. It’s just one of those things that made me really happy. If you have a young adult in your life who you’re not quite sure is ready for the world of King or Lovecraft yet, this is a great book for the future horror fan to cut there teeth on.
