Something Wicked This Way Comes (Fantasy Masterworks, #49) (A Leo Waterman mystery)

by Ray Bradbury

[Amber (The Literary Phoenix)]

This novel is richly written, filled with vivid metaphors and deep philosophical thought. The recurring themes of death and aging gives readers of any gender and age something to think about.

Something Wicked gets most of its fame - according to my conversations with others - from it's dark characters. The carousel, certainly, lives as vividly in the reader's mind as it does in Jim Nightshade's. However, it's easy to get lost in the freak show that the carnival offers - the lightning-rod-salesman-turned-mad-dwarf and the dust gypsy - but as a mature reader now, I also see the lamentations of always being too young or too old, and the struggling relationship between a man and a son, a son and his father, and the importance of friendship and the pain caused when one friend strays irreversibly. The dark carnival became, for me, a playground for the discussion of death - personified by humanity as a way of confronting the fear - and aging (Mr. Electrode is positively frightening).

All said, though, at the end of the day I am a girl and which I find Will and Jim's story interesting, I have trouble relating to their story, always a bystander, which is why for me this story only gets four stars instead of five. I always felt like I was watching the story through a window and while I enjoyed the artistic writing, philosophical trails, and dark fantasy, it didn't consume me as well as some other novels I enjoy. It's nice to know of a book that is so embedded in the psyche of a young man, and it is certainly one I will keep in my mind to read to my son, should I have one someday. But for myself, I just didn't find it as thrilling because I lacked a shared life experience.