HallowFest: Literary Fixation- Something Wicked This Way Comes

As a child I watched The Halloween Tree cartoon every year that it came on. It helped to shape my love for Halloween. This month for Iggle BookWorms The Halloween Tree novel by Ray Bradbury is our book club pick. I am still currently on the wait-list for this book I decided that for this month's challenge to read another book by Ray Bradbury, Something Wicked This Way Comes.

I wish I could say I like this book. If a book has really short chapters it throws me off. In fact, in this book one chapter only had one sentence. It just stops the flow during reading. I have had this problem with some classic novels, like Dickens' works, which were written to be printed a chapter at a time.

The story itself is interesting. Small town America becomes the battle ground for a fight between good and evil. Evil being represented by a traveling carnival that uses peoples wants and fears to lure them into their soul stealing traps.

Good being represented by the carefree innocence of two young boys, one of which is being pulled towards the darkness.

And of course the sage wisdom of the older father, who would like nothing more to be young again but understands the cost of such greed.

I never felt like I knew the characters well, only superficially. Even the evil carnival people seemed to be caricatures, hardly fleshed out. The constant descriptions and comparisons throughout the novel drown out the characters themselves. It was all style and prose without substance.

Towards the end of the book it starts to flow a bit better, but it felt like a labor to read. I really wanted to like this book. I still have good hopes for The Halloween Tree. 

Sorry if this sounds disjointed, it is really late and I just finished the book and wanted to write down what I thought quickly.

Kind of a disappointment for #HallowFest15