Well, this book was certainly different than I remembered. More characters, less … tangibility?
It does have that air of the mysterious that I remembered. I’m not talking about Hardy Boys type mystery, I’m talking about an enigmatic core that the reader has to wonder about along with the characters.
What’s the enigma? Steel birds.
“I see the birds that do not fly but run on wires. They sweep down in the dark straight and hard and cleanly as blades. They are terrible and purposeful. They strike. I am afraid of them.”
“They are not soft and warm and feathered, they do not fly as real birds do, in an innocent mapping out of air. They go in straight lines and they do not sing.”
This book definitely raises the post-Potter questions I’m covering in another post. Will modern kids be bored by the metal birds that don’t actually do a whole lot and may not even exist? Or will they feel the menace, the strange struggle between good and evil, as I did when I read this book in my younger days.
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