The British Science Fiction Award-winning author of The Hollowing tells the story of a boy whose supernatural powers enable him to travel into the past, each trip bringing him closer to a terrifying... This description may be from another edition of this product.
i thought this book was not as good as some of his other novels, but a great fantasy nonetheless
harsh and frightening world of a child's imagination
Published by Thriftbooks.com User , 17 years ago
Holdstock is excellent at creating an atmosphere of the uncanny and ancient, evoking the fears and beliefs that lie in the marrow of our bones, from a time before words. This story, of a strange child adopted by two rather shallow and self-absorbed academics, who retreats into an invented but increasingly powerful mythological world, involved me closely most of the way. As his father discovers and exploits the boy's power to 'fetch' (the title is a rather clever pun) antiquities out of the past, he also begins to love his son, perhaps too late to save him, and perhaps too late to save anyone. The ending wasn't totally satisfactory for me. I felt it rationalised or diminished the sheer strangeness that had kept me reading. Others may feel it substituted a new and more frightening strangeness.
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