Thursday, January 31, 2013

Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children

Ransom Riggs' Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children is a bit of a peculiar child itself.  Riggs has taken a lot of "found" photographs and woven then into a novel, mostly seamlessly.  In that sense, this is a stand-out book; some of the photos are spooky, some arresting, and they add some flavor to the novel.

Unfortunately, if the photos are a tasty garnish, I found the main meal of the novel to be fairly standard stuff, in the plucky-kids-take-on-evil vein.  Briggs' prose is fine, and there's nothing really wrong with the novel (except for the ending, which is very much a let-down), but there's not much to make it stand out either.  (In some ways, it strikes me very much as YA novel)

I suppose I'd read a follow-up, if I heard that it got more interesting -- I can imagine Riggs writing a more interesting second novel.

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