Revisiting The Thief of Always by Clive Barker (spoilers)

So I’ve been in a bit of a reading funk this year, I havent had great luck with my picks and it’s kind of put a damper on my appetite for books. So I thought what I needed was to go back to basics with one of my all time favorites that I havent read in close to a decade: The Thief of Always and yeah, this book is still an absolute joy to read. If you’ve ever read Coraline you know the setup, a boy named Harvey is trudging through a post Christmas winter when he gets invited to the Holiday House, a place where you can experience an entire year in a single day. He gets all his wishes brought to life as he slowly realizes something sinister is running things in the background. The vibes in this book are immaculate, there’s a couple chapters focused on Halloween that are particularly great and the ultimate reveal and defeat of the mastermind behind things is really creative and fun. It’s also a short read, you can and will blow through it in a day and there’s almost no fat on the story. Harvey makes for a good main character, you can tell he knows something is wrong in the back of his mind from the word go but wants so bad for things to be as they seem. There’s a great scene where he opens a Christmas present and realizes that it’s the exact same toy his father made for him but lost years ago that’s so interesting to read and I like how it becomes both a symbol of his optimism unraveling and a thing he uses to fight back in the end. One last thing if you’ve never read this book you need to track down a copy with the illustrations done by Barker himself because they add so much to the story, I’m a big fan of the one that shows the POV of Harvey playing a Halloween prank on his friend at the House which serves as the big breaking point showing the kids they are in way over their head. Amazing book, one of the all time greats and I always wish people held it up as much as they do Coraline. Puts me in the mood to go back to some of my other estranged favorites like Jaws, Amazonia, Valley of the Dolls and The Outsiders

by ShinyBlueChocobo