Since Every Dead Thing, I have been a fan of John Connolly. His Charlie Parker books are great detective/thriller novels with just a twist or hint of the supernatural. In fact, Connolly has specifically said that he leaves it to the reader to determine whether Parker’s “psychic abilities” are real or whether they are Parker’s mind getting away from him. With The Book of Lost Things, Connolly steps outside of his previous mythos and takes us on fairy tale about a boy (David) who gets transported from his world (England during a world war) to an alternative world.

Unlike most fairy tales, however, this alternative world is not bright and cheery. It is dark, depressing, full of monsters, and ruled by a king that has less and less power. Much of the book concerns David’s travels throughout the land to reach the king. He does this with the hope that the king will be able to help him return to the real world. In the meantime, David is shadowed and, at times, protected by The Crooked Man, who needs David’s help in order to live.

Connolly is a great storyteller and that shines through in this book. On his trip to find the king, the boy encounters several people from familiar fairy tales. However, those fairy tales have been twisted. For example, Little Red Riding Hood is willingly responsible for the half human, half wolf creatures that spend most of the book chasing the boy.

Despite the darkness of the world, Connolly manages to inject some humor into the scenes in which the boy meets Snow White and the dwarves. In Connolly’s world, Snow White is a lazy, overbearing, taskmaster that is hated by the dwarves and who scares off any potential prince who might marry her. In fact that best exchange of the book occurs when the boy is leaving the dwarves. The dwarves are retelling the Goldilocks story and they volunteer the information that the bears ate Goldilocks. David says that Goldilocks just ran away. The dwarves then say:

“That’s what ‘ran away and was never seen again’ means in these parts. It means ‘eaten.’ ”

“Um, and what about ‘happily ever after’?” asked David, a little uncertainly. “What does that mean?”

“Eaten quickly,” said Brother Number One.

As with his other books, Connolly takes what we know or what is normal and then twists it in a demented or unexpected way to keep his story fresh and interesting.

Although this book is different from Connolly’s others, I would not hesitate to recommend it.