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Something Wicked This Way Comes |
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List Price: $15.99
Our Price: $10.87
Your Save: $ 5.12 ( 32% )
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Manufacturer: Eos
Average Customer Rating:  
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PRODUCT DESCRIPTION
Binding: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9780380977277
ISBN: 0380977273
Label: Eos
Manufacturer: Eos
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 304
Publication Date: 1999-06-01
Publisher: Eos
Release Date: 1999-06-08
Studio: Eos
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Editorial Reviews:
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Few American novels written this century have endured in th heart and mind as has this one-Ray Bradbury's incomparable masterwork of the dark fantastic.A carnival rolls in sometime after the midnight hour on a chill Midwestern October eve, ushering in Halloween a week before its time. A calliope's shrill siren song beckons to all with a seductive promise of dreams and youth regained. In this season of dying, Cooger & Dark's Pandemonium Shadow Show has come to Green Town, Illinois, to destroy every life touched by its strange and sinister mystery. And two inquisitive boys standing precariously on the brink of adulthood will soon discover the secret of the satanic raree-show's smoke, mazes, and mirrors, as they learn all too well the heavy cost of wishes -- and the stuff of nightmare.
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: A thrilling, life-affirming read!
Comment: Jim Nightshade and Will Halloway are two best friends teetering on the edge of adolescence. They run wild like the archetypal boy has always run, free of worry and filled with a sense of anticipation and adventure. On a night indistinguishable from other nights both walk the streets of Green Town, Illinois, the kind of place where boys are allowed to roam with the world as their chaperone, the earth their toy box. There they meet the lightning-rod salesmen who deliciously warns the two of a coming storm with the prospect of lightening. What better enticement for the two than the excitement, the danger, the possibility that one of their houses--and only one--will be struck, changed by his predictions?
Ray Bradbury's Something Wicked This Way Comes is an evocative tale of friendship, innocence, and the horrors of death. As the two boys journey their way through a wicked carnival, they discover the temptations of life, the secret desires of people around the world that we do not leave behind with childhood, and the ever continuing battle of good against evil. There's no one who writes quite like Bradbury. It's a rare gift to possess the voice of childhood with all of its fears, joys, and sorrows, but it's an even greater gift to evoke a nostalgia for a childhood I never had. But Bradbury pulls from the reader's emotions something universal in all of us: desires of curiosity and friendship, fears of loss.
The boys grapple with their friendship and the ultimate (and literal in this sense) threat of doom: growing apart. But in searching individually, the two find the strength neither has without the other. Bonds are solidified friend to friend and father to son in this touching and horrific tale of life and the things that make our existence worth every minute: family, friendship, and laughter.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Not quite what I expected
Comment: This book is way smaller than I thought it would be. (5.5"x7.25") Plus the paper looks really cheap.. for some reason they put it in so that on the edge it has all different widths of paper.. looks all jagged and worn. I guess you get what you pay for though.
Customer Rating:
Summary: typical bradbury
Comment: this was a great book, quick and full of imagery. i had to buy this for a school assignment but i enjoyed reading it so, score! :o)
Customer Rating:
Summary: Something Wicked
Comment: I have read this book before but wanted a new copy. The book came quickly and was as advertised. This book is a quick read and is enjoyable. I recomend it to any one who likes fanasty/science fiction. Also gives an idea of what a small town in the midwest was like in the 1920s.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Beautiful and Dark
Comment: "Something Wicked This Way Comes" is a dark tale about weakness in the face of temptation. A tale that is a moving commentary on youth and relationships, as well as being unsettling when it depicts how regrets affect our attitudes and actions in maturity.
The book centers on two boys moving into adolescence, Jim Nightshade and Will Halloway, best friends born two minutes apart. When Cooger & Dark's Pandemonium Shadow Show rolls into town with its carnival attractions, the boys natural curiosity for adventure lead them to discover the sinister intentions of the show. The boys, as different as light and dark but complimentary to each other, must work to save the community (and themselves). To stop Mr. Dark they must fight their own desires and growing impulses.
Ray Bradbury's writing style is lyrical and poetic which takes a few pages to get accustomed to, but ultimately enhances a book that if written in a more direct style would feel slightly empty. The tone is dark and brooding in a beautiful way that carries the novel to heights above where it should be for the story alone. Although the story has wonderful coming of age yearnings, mystical and dark action and a lovely father and son awakening, the theme of loving yourself and accepting your fears is slightly bland. It is Bradbury's lyrical writing that creates an emotion on the page that leaves the reader mesmerized.
There is much to enjoy with this book. Although the book is developed around the two boys and their relationship, I found myself routing for Will's father to shed his fears of being irrelevant and not miss the opportunity to show his son that it is his maturity that will be needed to beat back Cooger and Dark. I also loved some of the really spooky possibilities of how Cooger and Dark's carrousel could create situations where innocence of youth may not be so innocent.
A good book with some very beautiful writing and scenes, but overall it seems slightly incomplete with many themes just touched upon leaving the reader wanting more.
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