High in his attic bedroom, 12 year old David mourns the loss of his mother. He is angry and he is alone, with only the books on his shelf for company. But those books have begun to whisper to him in the darkness, and as he takes refuge in the myths and fairytales so beloved of his dead mother, he finds that the real world and the fantasy world have begun to meld. The Crooked Man has come, with his mocking smile and his enigmatic words: 'Welcome, your majesty. All hail the new king.'
And as war wages across Europe, David is violently propelled into a land that is both a construct of his imagination yet frighteningly real, a strange reflection of his own world composed of myths and stories, populated by wolves and worse-than-wolves, and ruled over by a faded king who keeps his secrets in a mysterious, legendary book...

Obtained and sent to another bookcrosser today as part of the UK Exchange at bcuk extra.

Ooh! Thankyou Tanamo. Received safely.

As I have 2 copies of this book and others have expressed an interest this is now off on a bookring. Participants are listed below. I hope you all enjoy this book - rather a departure from the usual John Connolly books I have read.

teachie - it's here
mrsbridgewater
suedo
YowlYY
plum-crazy

Thanks for putting this on a bookring Candy, it was a book from my wishlist.I am in the middle of a book for a swap and then I will read this next. I should get to it by the weekend.

Wow! What a fantastic book. John Connolly has a brilliant imagination and weaves lots of characters from fairytales into this story....but all with a twist to them.
I enjoyed the second half of the book with his interpretations/explanations of fairy tales as much as the morality tale in the first half.
I will now contact mrsbridgewater and get this posted off to her.

Arrived safely this morning - will read it soon!

I really enjoyed this book. Well written and a gripping tale!

Will contact suedo to get her address.

arrived in the post today. Will read it as soon as I finish my current read.

I enjoyed the story, and was gripped to the end, but did not bother with all the chat at the end. I enjoyed the way the main story was constructed, and wove a lot of other tales through it, but it did not grab me as a great story, and I was not interested enough to want to wade through the third of the book that was background information.
Thanks for the opportunity to read this. I'll PM for an address and send on very soon.

Got the address so will post it when I go out later

Just arrived at my door! Thank you to Suedo for mailing it, and to our ringmaster for sharing.
I have 3 rings/rays that arrived before this one and so I hope you will be a bit patient with my next JE. I plan to send it off to the next reader by mid February or even earlier. If this is inconvenient, please get in touch. Thanks!

I love fairy tales, and this was an exceptional one, where Connolly took elements of the most popular ones and combined them to create a brilliant story of two worlds, both real, next to each other, separated only by a stone wall. And still, despite the differences that jump to the eye at first, when the surface is scratched, the other, fairy tale world, is no better than the real one.
I did read also the interview with the author, which confirmed some of the thoughts I had while reading (and a gripping read it was!), as well as the final part, where Connolly explains how he did weave the elements of the most popular fairy tales in the story of David. This was so very interesting, as I got a chance to re-read the original tales, sometimes in the main 2 different versions. Myths and fairy tales, wonderful stuff really, and if some of them have got a twist thanks to Mr. Connolly, the better! (just think of Snow White and the 7 dwarfs... is the transformation of the gentle girl into a bitching slob fun?)

Anyway, my final word is that I love Connolly's dark books featuring Charlie Parker, and I love this new twist in his style too...if he was to write something similar again, I would surely go for it.
I will be on the lookout for a hardback copy - maybe with the author's signature - for my personal collection, but for the moment I am handing over the book to the Royal Mail...off it goes to delight the next reader (or so I hope!).

This has literally just dropped through my letterbox!

I've just started another book so it will be a few days before I begin this but I'm looking forward to it...& the treats that came with it - thanks very much YowlYY!

This book is making me seriously behind with the housework. I have done nothing but read since I started it last night. I am going to have to be tough with myself & put it down or I am liable to disappear under a pile of ironing.....

What a wonderful book...I thoroughly enjoyed it & couldn't put it down!
I loved the way the fairytales came to life but always with a twist....& I'd forgotten how gruesome fairytales can be!

I adored the chapters about Snow White & the Seven Dwarves because "...for a group of homicidal, class-obsessed small people, they were really good fun". And as much as I adore wolves, the Loups are certainly creatures I wouldn't want to come across....though they made perfect bad guys!

The only critcism I had about the story was it ended sooner than I expected - I'd forgotten about all the "extras" at the end!
The origins of the original fairytales made very interesting reading.However, although I read all the origins the only fairytale I actually read was "The Three Surgeons" as I wasn't familiar with that one.

Anyhow I think it's a book that needs more readers so with candy-is-dandy's permission I'm going to keep it moving...hopefully with another ring if anyones interested.

Thanks so much for sharing this candy-is-dandy, let's see where it goes next...

This is continuing it's travels on a second book ring...& is now part of The 2008 Keep Them Moving Challenge (#10)

Some brief "rules":

Please journal the book when you receive it.

Please PM the next person on the list for their address soon after receiving it(this will hopefully help prevent holdups later on) If you don't hear from them within a few days, PM them again. If after a few more days you still haven't heard anything, please let me know.

Read the book! Please aim to send on within around 6 weeks ...& journal it again when you've read it to let us know what you thought of it.

Please journal the date it's posted to the next reader.

Hope you all enjoy this book as much as I did...

list of readers:
yorkshire-lass (UK)
Cyzaki (UK)
sunlightbub (UK)
RDWirral (UK)<------STALLED HERE :o(

* EDIT JANUARY 09 - MOVED TO NEW RING*
WelshHelen (UK)
RonOren (UK)
Tregossip(UK)
Beebarf(UK) (Oct 08:note on profile asking to skip rings)
Squirk(UK)
24-7-365Reader (UK)
KiwiinEngland (Ireland)
pepita-di-Corfu (Greece)
ekaterina4luv (Germany)
sintra (Germany)
dutch-book (Netherlands)
verolyon (France)
Tanamo (UK)

The book arrived this morning,thanks Plum-crazy.I have about half a book to finish reading and then I will start on this one,cann't wait to get goung!

Another masterpiece by Mr Connolly!! I couldn't put it down once I'd started reading,pity there are no housework pixies to do my housework while I have my nose stuck in a book. What a good idea to have an interview with the author and the origins of the stories at the end of the book.
Will get it in the post to Cyzaki on Monday, hope you enjoy it as much as I did Cyzaki. Thanks for sharing Plum-crazy.

Thanks for the opportunity to read this! I'm reading another ring book right now, but I'll get to this one as soon as I've finished it.

Not sure how I felt about this book - I enjoyed the different takes on the fairy tales, but I would have preferred more detail about each one. I think it all moved too fast for me, there wasn't enough time to take in one fairy tale before moving on to the next. I enjoyed the section at the back about all the different fairy tales, it's interesting to see how they developed over time.

I'll post it to sunlightbub this weekend.

Posting to sunlightbub today - really sorry for the delay but real life got in the way of bookcrossing for a while there.

Received yesterday. Will probably not get to it now until after the Convention as i really must start reading some books for that, but looking forward to it.
RDwirral lives close to me, so will be passing it on by hand!

Apols for keeping this so long..the convention and an increasingly powerful Agatha Raisin addiction slowed me down somewhat!
I loved this book. It reminded me of Stephen King and Angela Carter and was just delightful.
( Like Plum-crazy I loved the Dwarves!)
Will hopefully drop this round at RDWirral's house later today.

Despite a number of PM's emails & ISOs I have been unable to get a response from RDWirral re the status of this book....so sadly, at present, must assume it has gone AWOL.

Will try & track down another copy to continue the ring. Watch this space....

Thansk to house-elf-dobby I have now a replacement book for this ring & it should be moving again soon...looks like this copy is destined for a spell on the Lost Book Island...

Continued ring

This book has washed ashore at the Lost Book Island after not being heard from for many months. This new arrival will be shown to a room and be allowed a bit of rest before being introduced to the many fun things to do here at the island.

All around there are books sipping cool drinks under shady palms while other books participate in a wide variety of beach sports. There is plenty of sand, surf and sun here for all of the lost and wayward books to enjoy.

It is hoped that very soon a new journal entry will come to rescue this book from the island and send it back out into the BookCrossing world so that it may continue on its journey. It is hoped that the new journal entry will tell all the interested parties where this book has been this long time and where it will be traveling to next.