The Thief of Always

A nice little horror story for children. There were some similarities to Neil Gaiman's Coraline, but not to the point that one copied the other, rather that there are some conventions to be followed (and Gaiman and Barker have quite similar themes). The main character is a bit grey, but gets more fleshed-out in the second part of the story, and the other children are just interesting enough. A couple of subplots give the whole surroundings a feeling of relevance, and so a somewhat slow beginning with what seems like random fairy-tale elements turns into a suspenseful race with a satisfying ending and only enough unresolved threads to provide a history.

I don't know why the first two times I've tried getting into the works of Clive Barker I've started with his middle grade novels. I've never really been a fan of YA or middle grade, especially now that I'm older, but yet here I am.

The Thief of Always is an updating of classic fairy tale tropes with a bit of a modern horror spin. Like it says in the subtitle, this is a fable about the nature of growing up, with the main character going through an arc has he learns responsibility and the importance of even the boring, mundane days of our lives. If we're constantly waiting for only the holidays or the vacations and try to skip past the dreary days, before you know it the important parts of your life have flown past you.

Barker's writing captures a 10 year olds perspective well, especially the melodramatic self-pitying of a child bored in February at the start, and I think he captures the capricious and perhaps at times selfish attitude that a child can have without them necessarily being malicious. Harvey has everything that is both bad and good in children, including a clever streak and a deepseated desire to do the right thing. The villains are weird and memorable, with the Holiday House a good update of the classic witch's house found in Hansel and Gretel type stories.

However, I wasn't really wowed by anything, which I can't really hold against the book as I'm not the target audience (except for a single phrase that should have been caught in editing, "The swirling mists swirled around Harvey" or something along those lines). It's a decent enough book, and I would recommend it to anyone who enjoys Coraline, which does much of the same thing that this book does but was released 10 years later.

5 out of 10.