Book Review: The Thief of Always by Clive Barker

Wikipedia. Horror. Link. HP Lovecraft. Link. Clive Barker. And I get this. It's going to be made a movie. (Yes, I know, ANOTHER movie tie-in) pretty soon, so upon running into it at Pay Less Books, I decided that I'd get a peek at it before the movie comes out. It was described as a children's book, but a horror book at the same time. So it intrigued me. THIS is what I should have been reading during my days as a kid. THIS is the bedtime story I want to tell my children (If I ever get married. Hm. Nah) Because hey, it's a children's story. It's like 'Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.... Of Doom'.

Like most children's books, this book features children who get whisked off to magical faraway places, or just places that are plain bizzarre where they see things from their wildest dreams. The main character, Harvey Swick is sent to the Holiday House, a place that every child would want to go. There its always spring in the morning, summer in the afternoon, Halloween in the evening (Autumn) and Christmas at night (winter). Oh yay, joy. In an Enid Blyton book, the children will have fun, then go home, and live happily ever after, just that they miss the place.

But then Enid Blyton had no hand at all in this.

The children aren't allowed to leave, and the Holiday House seems to have secrets of the demonic kind. Will Harvey Swick be able to get out alive?

What I love about this book is its disturbing underlaying tones which might not seem too apparent to the average child, but oh yes, its there. And the bad guys don't explode into rainbows and candy. It's got darkness which it doesn't try too desperately to hide. And unlike a certain other book about a certain factory of chocolates, the bizarreness of this book doesn't feel all that childish. Sure there are transformations and stuff. But no one gets turned into a giant blueberry. And the tour-guide isn't a Depp-turned-into-Michael-Jackson.

Extra points for that.

Granted, I haven't read Chocolate Factory, but the movie just made it so much less appealing to me, that I don't think I ever will.

Good thing I picked this up before the movie, then.

I give it a 7 out of 10.