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Gustav Gloom And The People Taker #1 (2012)

by Adam-Troy Castro(Favorite Author)

3.88 of 5 Votes: 2

languge

English

genre

Horror

publisher

Grosset & Dunlap

series

Gustav Gloom

review 1: If Lemony Snicket and J.K. Rowling had a baby, left that baby to be raised by Tim Burton, and he grew up reading lots of Peter Pan and Edgar Allan Poe, he would grow up to be Adam Troy-Castro as the author of this book. As a caveat, I say that having read nothing else by Castro.Clever, creepy, and with no shortage of twisted humor, this story oozes with the influences I've mentioned above. This is not a ghost story or a haunted house story, but something a little more complex and some might say darker. It sits firmly in the niche for readers who have outgrown Goosebumps, but aren't quite ready for the scarier Dan Poblocki. I give it 3.5 stars rather than 4 because I think it lacks the appeal to adult readers and is therefore a little less universal and mature. The illustra... moretions are great and whoever designed the POB cover for the school market edition deserves a raise because I couldn't resist it.
review 2: The author gave this book to my children when we were at WorldCon this year. The book looked like it would be a lot of fun and I certainly got excited to read this book to my kids. So it was the first book we started reading together.The main problem with this book is that the sentences are impossibly long, complex, and difficult to read out loud. I found myself out of breath before I could finish a lot of the sentences in this book. I can't imagine the difficulty a child would have in reading this. Sometimes I would want to read more to my kids, but I simply couldn't do it any longer. That was very disappointing.The story itself is fun. I liked it as an adult and the kids loved it. The characters are funny and the story has just enough dark elements without being to much for children. Overall the plot is fun, even if just a little drawn out with with lengthy descriptions.Will we get the second book? That remains to be seen. I like Gustav (the character) a whole lot, so maybe we will. less

Download links for: Gustav Gloom and the People Taker #1

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