I'm definitely in the minority here but I disliked this book immensely. Oh the plot was okay, evil carnies searching for lost souls to steal. Two young inseparable boys one with dark leanings and one not so much. One gets beguiled by Mr. Dark while the other does what he can to save his friend. Surely a great premise but badly executed. This is supposed to be a young adult book but the prose is so flowery that even I had difficulty following what the author was actually trying to convey. He went on so long with his passages getting farther and farther from the point that I totally lost where he was going and had to reread and decipher his words. Totally not my kind of thing and I can't imagine any child actually reading this book.
Here's a passage filled with purple prose: "when he saw the innocents of the Earth wandering the snowy streets the day before Christmas among all the tired men and women whose faces were dirty with guilt, unwashed of sin, and smashed like small windows by life that hit without warning, ran, hid, came back and hit again."
And how about this one: "From those gaunt windows they could rifle-fire their gaze artillery distances past library, city hall, depot, cow barns, farmlands to empty prairie." huh? It's like were two words would work, the author used 10 and just belabored the point to death.
