This book was hard for me to follow, but what I did follow was entertaining. The language is not appropriate for young readers. ( )

https://nwhyte.livejournal.com/3184263.html

I didn't really understand what was going on here - the use of language looked clever but it was too much like hard work for me. ( )

The story and plot of this novella is good. However, I found it extremely hard to get past the ‘unique’ voice of the narrator and see the story underneath. I feel as though I’ve missed large chunks of this story because I just had no clue what the narrator was talking about because basically every-other word was some slang that really didn’t have much context. After awhile I got somewhat used to it but I almost gave up on reading this book multiple times within the first 20 pages. It gets better and easier to understand as the story goes on though not much. There was quite a bit of humor in this story and the plot itself was imaginative and interesting. I just wish the slang was toned down a bit so I could have focused on reading the actual story instead of deciphering the words. ( )

Hal Duncan is an author that interested me based upon the brilliant, poetic, experimental fantasy novels Vellum (The Book of All Hours #1) and Ink (The Book of All Hours #2). This novella by Duncan was imaginative but unfortunately clunky.

The Land of Somewhere Safe is a fairytale, and in fact it’s told as a tale, which is one of its weaknesses. Duncan has traded a chance to write in the vibrant present for a narrator with a quirky voice telling the story (as a legend from the past) to a group of children. The story is told by a character with a very strong and sometimes hard to comprehend Scottish accent. I’ve read great books with main characters having thick Scottish accents (the brilliant 1994 novel How Late It Was, How Late comes to mind), and yet this one was rather hard to follow as it combined both Scottish lingo and imaginary fantastical vocabulary woven together.

The story is somewhat complex so having the linguistic difficulty piled on top of following the storyline made it a bit of a tough read. The plot was primarily a rollicking adventure story, rather than a literary mind-bender, so in the end, the linguistic barrier held back the thrills of the plot. It would seem that Duncan latched onto the fun of the wordplay but at the expense of the narrative drive. Having to interpret what is happening caused me to lose the momentum and fun of the plot. Further, the use of a narrator seemed like an arbitrary device because in the end almost nothing happens to the kids or the narrator hearing the story. They are a thin wrapper to the primary fairytale.

The story is set in an alternate reality during World War 2 where a group of children marked and empowered by faerie magic battle a Nazi and his minions after they are shunted into the land of faery. I enjoy the fantastical quality of literary fairytales, and in fact I describe my own second novel A Greater Monster as a psychedelic fairytale. Duncan had fun playing off many fairytale tropes, such as unicorns and dragons, but he just doesn’t take the story anywhere meaty enough for me to feel satisfied. Overall, a mediocre effort.

Note: I received this book free from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. ( )

A rollicking action tale centering around a portal world around the time of World War II, this story is narrated in the speaking style of (I believe) a British street urchin from the mid 1800s.

This speaking style is - for me - at worst indecipherable, at best nearly so. It gives the novella an undeniable character, but the underlying story provides winks and nods in place of substance and story.

For me this would be a much better short or even flash story than novella, but to each his own.

Possibly worth noting: most of the characters are children and this is (arguably) at heart a children's tale, but it's definitely not for children - extremely explicit language throughout. ( )