The 13 Clocks

Title: The 13 Clocks
Author: James Thurber
Spoiler-free synopsis: No spoilery review this time. I don't plan to talk about the plot, and I'll keep this short.

By rights, this is a book I should hate.

It's very much a kids book, but that's not necesarily bad. It's a basic fairy tale wherein almost everything that happens is explained by "because it does, okay?" the characters tend to be one-dimensional caricatures, typical for a children's book like this but generally hard to enjoy for me.

But this one, which I read voraciously as a child and which hung with me so strongly that I actually got it again this year just to have, isn't a book you read for anything other than the writing. This is the book that made me want to be a writer. The language was so imaginitive. Random rhymes and alliteration just pop up without warning. I'm not sure how much it means, because he seems to write a lot of introductions anymore and you HAVE to say something nice in them, but it seems I wasn't the only one the book hit that way if Neil Gaiman's description is anything to go by. If you like language, read it. I'd lay good odds that you'll enjoy its craft.