Sunday, May 4, 2014

Book Review: Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children

This novel introduces us to a new world within our world.  The world of the peculiars.  The author uses old photographs to enhance his story.  This pictures are all in black and white, and show peculiar things.  The author weaves these pictures into a story.  Peculiar children are those with special abilities, either super strength, or bees living inside you, or making fire with your hands. 
Jacob Portman is the grandson of a man who was part of this community, and left to fight in the world war.  He talks about his experiences with his grandson, but as Jacob gets older, he doubts his father's stories more and more.  Father shows him the photographs to prove his stories, but Jacob feels they are just fakes. 
However his grandfather is murdered.  He he actually sees the murderer.  A strange looking monster with tentacles coming out of his mouth.  Nobody believes him.  This is just a reaction to the trauma.  He is taken to a psychiatrist.  he goes through his grandfather's things, trying to gain closure.  He decides to go to England to investigate, and his psychiatrist encourages him in this.  He and his father travel to England, and he begins looking for his father's friends.  He is told they were all bombed out in the war. 
He decides to visit the area anyway.  In the end he comes upon them, having passed through a time loop.  Only peculiars can pass through time loops.  He discovers his having seen a hollow is his power.  The are generally invisible.  He meets a girl of extraordinary strength, a boy with bees inside himself, a girl who floats, a girl who makes fire with her hands, a boy who is invisible and others.  This world and time loop is kept together by an Ybryne, Miss Peregrine.  A bomb had fallen on their house, however the loop begins seconds before this happens, and those in the loop continually relive the same day.  They do not age. 
This story gets interesting.  A world based on magic is not without conflict.  There ae those who would manipulate magic to gain immortality, but this is not without a price.

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