Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury (3.5 stars)

"By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes". Such a great title. More dark fantasy than horror, I was put off early in the novel when Bradbury tries way too hard to make sure you know the carnival is evil, and really scary....mmmmmkay?

So the maze waited, its cold gaze ready, for so much as a bird to come look, see, and fly away shrieking. But no bird came.

NO BIRD CAME. But anyway, it actually recovers and does get creepy, once some events have caught up with all the foreshadowing. Bradbury's writing is often poetic:

Times come when troughs, not tables, suit our appetites.

quite surrealist:

Outside, a weather of stars ran clear in an ocean sky.

and occasionally I just found it nonsensical:

Why are some people all grasshopper fiddlings, scrapings, all antennae shivering, one big ganglion eternally knotting, slip-knotting, square-knotting themselves? They stoke a furnace all their lives, sweat their lips, shine their eyes and start it all in the crib. Caesar's lean and hungry friends. They eat the dark, who only stand and breathe.

WAT? I dig weirdness and don't mind being confused while reading, but this type of thing broke the flow of the story for me a few times.

The father, Charles Halloway, has all of the best dialogue, which is not surprising since the two protagonists are children. His heart-to-heart with Will in the library where he tries to impart some wisdom in terms the kids will understand was quite moving, and my favourite part of the whole novel:

Could he say love was, above all, common cause, shared experience? That was the vital cement, wasn't it?

My favourite creepy moment was Will's encounter with the Dust Witch's balloon over his house:

...he saw her squinched blind-sewn eyes, the ears with moss in them, the pale wrinkled apricot mouth mummifying the air it drew in, trying to taste what was wrong with his act, his thought.

Overall, creepy carnival just seemed a bit too cliche to me: perhaps if I'd read this in 1962 I wouldn't be quite so jaded. I also took issue with Jim and Will's first encounter with the carnival: they 'killed' Cooger and got away far too easily given how powerful Dark and the Dust Witch are later in the novel.

A couple of reviewers mentioned they thought the movie (screenplay also written by Bradbury) was actually much more impressive than the novel. I'll have to check it out.

3.5 stars.