A Review - Something Wicked This Way Comes - Ray Bradbury

By the pricking of my thumbs, Something wicked this way comes.

I adored this book. Something Wicked This Way Comes makes me want to be a better reader, a more intelligent reader. It’s the first book I’ve read since high school that’s left me with a desire to study literature. I’ve read multiple reviews for this book that complain the prose is inaccessible, or that this isn’t horror. Everyone is entitled to their own opinion but I wholeheartedly disagree.

The prose is wonderful. Yes, it’s extravagant and mystical and in parts complicated, but it’s beautiful. This is a 247 page poem. A poem of good against evil, of love, life, fear, death, acceptance, family, accepting yourself and everything else you can personally find between the pages. Bradbury made me smile, cry and check behind my curtains, sometimes all in one sitting.

As for the book not being horror, this is horror before the internet melted our brains. Its horror before gore and death was considered a pre-requisite for a book to be scary. It’s horror by way of atmosphere. The bottom line is, this is a horror novel.

If I had to be picky, the characters are probably the weakest part of this book for me, they’re very broad strokes but honestly broad strokes are all it needed. The characters represent some of the more typical stereotypes of life. A boy who feels he understands the world too much. A man who cannot accept and come to terms with his advancing years. A creature seeking nothing but despair. I guess what I’m trying to say is that the characters don’t feel like the focal point of the novel, the message the characters produce by the end is.

I would recommend this book to anybody. Don’t be put off by the writing style, embrace it and the story will come to life in front of you.

Five stars all day, every day. 6 stars on the 24th of October.