An appealingly unique world, cut from some interesting cloth.
This debut novel from pseudonymous Swedish author Davys, foreign rights to which have sold in more than 20 countries, is a noirish allegory starring a pair of twin teddy bears. It was originally published in Sweden in 2007.
The story is set in Mollisan Town, a metropolis that’s ordinary in every respect except for the fact that it’s populated entirely by stuffed animals. That makes for an odd social order. Couples wishing for a child submit a request to the Cub List, and their little bundle of fabric and stuffing arrives via a green pickup, while some adults tend to strangely disappear via red pickups. The novel turns on the latter detail. Eric Bear, a former gangster settled down with his wife, Emma Rabbit, is visited by his old boss, Nicholas Dove, who believes he’s on the Death List, meaning a red pickup is due to arrive soon. Eric is asked to discover the keeper of the list and expunge Dove’s name from it, lest his wife, Emma Rabbit, be destroyed. That setup suggests a spoof of hard-boiled crime fiction, but while Bear’s associates seem drawn straight from the heist-film playbook (an immoral gazelle, a devious snake, etc.), Davys is working more existential turf. Eric’s twin, Teddy, is the polar opposite of his brother, deeply obsessed with the nature of good and evil, and the novel is interspersed with his musings on the nature of relationships, particularly when it comes to family and religion. Davys ensures that Teddy’s ruminations are well integrated to the plot, and as Eric gets ever closer to discovering the true nature of the Death List, the author ponders the big questions of who created us and who keeps order in a complex society. Why a stuffed animal is a useful metaphor for getting at philosophical concerns is never entirely clear—Davys doesn’t make much of the inherent stuffed-animal-ness of his characters, which drink, eat, drive and generally live much as humans do. Still, the romantic triangle among Eric, Teddy and Emma is engagingly drawn, and never for a moment does the story feel like kids stuff.
An appealingly unique world, cut from some interesting cloth.Pub Date: Feb. 24, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-06-162512-1
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2009
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
A breezy and fun contemporary fantasy.
A tightly wound caseworker is pushed out of his comfort zone when he’s sent to observe a remote orphanage for magical children.
Linus Baker loves rules, which makes him perfectly suited for his job as a midlevel bureaucrat working for the Department in Charge of Magical Youth, where he investigates orphanages for children who can do things like make objects float, who have tails or feathers, and even those who are young witches. Linus clings to the notion that his job is about saving children from cruel or dangerous homes, but really he’s a cog in a government machine that treats magical children as second-class citizens. When Extremely Upper Management sends for Linus, he learns that his next assignment is a mission to an island orphanage for especially dangerous kids. He is to stay on the island for a month and write reports for Extremely Upper Management, which warns him to be especially meticulous in his observations. When he reaches the island, he meets extraordinary kids like Talia the gnome, Theodore the wyvern, and Chauncey, an amorphous blob whose parentage is unknown. The proprietor of the orphanage is a strange but charming man named Arthur, who makes it clear to Linus that he will do anything in his power to give his charges a loving home on the island. As Linus spends more time with Arthur and the kids, he starts to question a world that would shun them for being different, and he even develops romantic feelings for Arthur. Lambda Literary Award–winning author Klune (The Art of Breathing, 2019, etc.) has a knack for creating endearing characters, and readers will grow to love Arthur and the orphans alongside Linus. Linus himself is a lovable protagonist despite his prickliness, and Klune aptly handles his evolving feelings and morals. The prose is a touch wooden in places, but fans of quirky fantasy will eat it up.
A breezy and fun contemporary fantasy.Pub Date: March 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-21728-8
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: Nov. 10, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2019
PERSPECTIVES
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