kailey_luminouslibro's Reviews (3.79k)

What a fun book! I love all the Doctor Dolittle stories!

There is one small bit about meeting a group of Wiccans. Mainly harmless. The rest of the book is delightful fun!

It starts out really slow, b/c it's reintroducing characters from previous books; but then it picks up, and it's a lovely story about school pranks and moralizing 'a la Little Women.' Delightful!

Some of these short stories are really funny and original! Others, I didn't like so much. Great writing though.

A good one, but not her best work. Not amazing, but entertaining, with some good characters. Not enough action.

Wonderful book! I love the writing, the characters, and the story! Fantastic stuff! Read it all in one day, b/c I couldn't put it down.

A great little fairy tale! Well-written, and with good characters. A little too much gross stuff for my taste, but boys would love it.

The writing is great as always. I love the magic and the storylines in these books, but I've been a bit put-off by all the Transcendental philosophy throughout the series. Now this book takes on religious thought and theology, teaching some weird Transcendentalist views, and dealing very strangely with Christianity and Druidism, and never really saying anything concrete.

I would be very careful about giving this book to children, and I would talk with them extensively about the false theology presented here. Or better yet, don't muddle their poor little heads with all this Transcendental philosophic nonsense.

Certainly an odd book, true to its name. Plenty of deliciously bizarre and fantastical things to amaze us! I like the plot well enough, and the characters are interesting and delightful. There's some really marvelous imaginative creations here, but.... Ah, the inevitable BUT... There's too many gross things- boogers and saliva, farts and burps, rancid squid poop, you name it. If it's gross and grody, it's in this book. Yeah, a guy wrote this.

Mostly, I don't like the villains being so horridly demonic. I mean, I can appreciate a good evil villain who gets his just deserts in the end, but this is just going too far. I mean, drinking kitten blood in a satanic ritual? Really? That's just too disgusting to contemplate.

I would not give this book to children to read. It goes beyond the normal range of evil I've come to expect from a good fantasy. It's quite sad too, b/c the author obviously has a wonderful talent for writing. And he ruins it with scary subject material. I found it disturbing and upsetting to read. Demonic possession is not something I want to read about.
However, after having messaged back and forth with the author... I feel a little better about his approach to the demonic material. He doesn't approach it flippantly, I think.

So I excuse it, since the rest of the book is so delightful.
He uses such vivid vocabulary! I got lost in the words. The writing is quite superb really. So read it if you must, but don't get bogged down in the ickiness.