What a perfect book. The author is basically a combination of C.S. Lewis and Lewis Carrol with a sprinkling of Lemony Snicket. I quite cannot properly express my love for this book. It so perfectly blends classic fairytales with ancient myths contains absurd, quirky details and incredibly unique characters. It is most definitely a book written for children that anyone of any age would be able to enjoy. And now I list some of my favorite quotes for the novel (I doggeared so many pages):

"Stories have a way of changing faces. They are unruly things, undisciplined, given to delinquency and the the throwing of erasers. This is why we must close them up into thick, solid books, so they cannot get out and cause trouble."

"Those were all big words, to be sure, but as has been said, September read often, and liked it best when words did not pretend to be simple, but put on their full armor and rode out with colors flying."

"She sounds like someone who spends a lot of time in libraries, which are the best sort of people."

"When you are born, your courage is new and clean. You are brave enough for anything: crawling off of staircases, saying your first words without fearing that someone will think you are foolish, putting strange things in your mouth. But as you get older, your courage attracts gunk and crusty things and dirt and fear and knowing how bad things can get and what pain feels like. By the time you're half grown, your courage barely moves at all, it's so grunged up with living. So every once in awhile, you have to scrub it up and get the works going, or else you'll never be brave again."

"For wishes of one's old life wither and shrivel like old leaves if they are not replaced with new wishes when the world changes. And the world always changes. Wishes get slimy, and their colors fade, and soon they are just mud,mike all threat of mud, and not wishes at all, but regrets."

"Death is not a checkmate... It is more like a carnival trick. You cannot win, no matter how you move your Queen."

"That's what a map is you know. Just a memory. Just a wish to go back home--someday, somehow."

"She did not want to sniffle--what was a little hair? She had already lost it once after all. But that was magic, which could be undone, and this was scissors, which could not."


All in all, I desperately want to read the sequel!