Top positive review
5.0 out of 5 starsAn amazing novel that blends reality and magic into a wondrous book that must be read!
Reviewed in the United States on January 18, 2018
I doubt many people will read this review, as there are already over a thousand reviews of this marvelous book (most of them five stars). Nothing I write here will do this book justice. It has been compared to "To Kill a Mockingbird," and I must say it shares with that book the ability to take you into the mind of a child with amazing clarity. But it is so much more. This is an amazing book and should be appreciated on its own for what it is. It is so many things - a coming of age story, a period piece of life in a small town during the early 1960's when so much change was taking place. But it is also a book about magic. Some of it real - mystical occurrences that have you wondering what was real and what was imaginary. Yet also the magic in a child's mind that sees wonder in the world of imagination, where adults have been reduced to seeing only facts and things. Even in the prologue and the acknowledgements Mr. McCammon calls to mind all of the things that brought magic into his life as a child and reminds us of what we lose when we grow up. When I picked up this book, I thought I was getting one of the author's horror stories (having forgotten the reviews I read when I bought it). When I saw that it was a book about a 13 year-old Cory Mackenson, growing up in the small town of Zephyr, Alabama in the early 1960's, I thought I had made a mistake in my choice. I soon found I was dead wrong. This book deserves my five star rating as much as any book that I have read. It is a wonder. The writing is on a par with the best writing that I've experienced. The book holds your interest and hooks you from the beginning and takes you to wondrous places you've never imagined - from mysterious sea monsters, to a voodoo-style black woman who is only known as "The Lady," to murder mystery that builds throughout to a thrilling climax, to racial tensions, falling bombs, dinosaurs that should be extinct, spirits coming back from the grave, ghost cars with dead riders - and all this told so convincingly from the mind of thirteen year-old Cory. If childhood, magic, mystery, real people, wonder and thrills fit into your idea of an exciting novel, by all means pick up this book and read it right now! You won't be disappointed.
