Synopsis : ‘Everything You Can Imagine is Real’
High in his attic bedroom, twelve-year-old David mourns the loss of his mother. He is angry and he is alone, with only the books on his shelf for company.
But those books have begun to whisper to him in the darkness, and as he takes refuge in the myths and fairytales so beloved of his dead mother he finds that the real world and the fantasy world have begun to meld. The Crooked Man has come, with his mocking smile and his enigmatic words: ‘Welcome, your majesty. All hail the new king.’
And as war rages across Europe, David is violently propelled into a land that is both a construct of his imagination yet frighteningly real, a strange reflection of his own world composed of myths and stories, populated by wolves and worse-than-wolves, and ruled over by a faded king who keeps his secrets in a legendary book . . .
Review : Before starting this book, I was a little afraid about the way the author has changed the tales all along the story. Indeed, I think it’s always difficult to rewrite stories of our childhood, stories that everyone knows about, without remove the little thing there is in them or even their enchantment. But it wasn’t the case, we can discover with a great pleasure the writings we all know but in a different form. Some don’t change and are very representative from the first ones, others have a new very original version like for the Little Red Riding Hood. Some of the stories are more horrific and others make us smile like Snow White, I can say I really loved this one, it was a really great idea !