You can tell this book is unusual just by looking at it. Its shape is a perfect square, it is bound in cloth with no dust jacket, and the cover art is strangely wonderful. The contents do not disappoint – this is a tale of children living in a dystopia, looking for adventure and causing a bit of mischief. It also defies a brief description or easy packaging, but I’ll try.
The world of The Wikkeling is really just an exaggerated version of the rapidly accelerating and expanding world we currently inhabit. Schools are standardized to the point of homogeneity, with constant, instantaneous performance evaluations. If any student or school falls behind, the consequences are dire. Children are kept “safe” and “secure” through continuous monitoring to account for their movements throughout the day, an elaborate seat belt system on the bus, and even a camera trained on their beds to watch over them in sleep. Old houses are destroyed to make way for plastic edifices and books are done away with completely in favor of computers. Traffic never lets up, with near-total gridlock even in the middle of the night. It all adds up to a scary, but not completely unbelievable, vision of the future.
Without checking, I think I can safely say that John Connolly is the most-mentioned author on this blog. But that’s for a very good reason – he’s one of my all-time favorite authors and people. Plus he’s been kind enough to publish two books per year recently and still finds the time to tour and do interviews to talk about them. So we, in turn, keep reviewing his books and posting his interviews.
First of all, please don’t think I picked this book up because of the Oprah endorsement. I’m made of meatier things than can be swayed by an Empress. But when it comes to Viggo Mortensen, I’m JELLY. It might have something to do with his hair/face/body. Anyhoo, I remember seeing the cover of the book whilst shelving at the unnamed bookstore I worked for and thinking, “Oh, Viggo, when will we stop playing these games?” At around the same time my brother saw No Country for Old Men and was all, “I’m scared to sleep alone.” That movie being based on a McCarthy book paired with Viggo on the cover of THIS book slayed me. So I began the reading.
The immortal Oscar Wilde said that “Life imitates Art far more than Art imitates Life.” It’s all I can think about when I read a Castle book.
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