“The book doesn’t occupy the world… it is the world.”
– The Toadhouse Trilogy: Book One by Jess Lourey
Jess Lourey is best known for her work in the mystery genre – namely her light-hearted Murder-by-Month saga (May Day, June Bug, et. al.) featuring Battle Lake, Minnesota, amateur sleuth Mira James – but that’s all about to change. With the release of The Toadhouse Trilogy: Book One, Lourey has entered into the young adult arena with a story that will appeal to fans of folkloric fantasy as well as classic literature.
There is so much to love about this book. I absolutely adore the cover art, arguably one of the most stunning – and fitting – book covers I’ve ever seen. If this came as an enlarged print, I would frame it and hang it on my wall! I have two young daughters who (think that they) help me pick out what books I’m going to read and review and both of them were drawn to this book because of the cover. I have hundreds of books in my “to read” pile – it’s essentially an entire room full of books – and both of my daughters sought out this book time and time again amongst the piles because of the girl on the cover.
Secondly, is the credit – the respect – that Lourey gives today’s young readers. The storyline revolves around 16-year old Aine and her blind little brother Spenser, who live in Depression era Alabama with their grandmother Glori. Their already strange existences are turned upside down in an instant when they realize that they have been living inside a book (Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird) hiding from a monster of a man named Biblos Skula (aka the Bookworm), who is relentlessly searching for them – and will do anything to find them. With Biblos closing in, their grandmother – who just may be a fairy queen – sends them on their way with a man named Gilgamesh, who pilots a miniature magical craft called a toadhouse, and they embark on a desperate quest to find three magical objects that they ultimately lead them to their mother, their family, and their true home. The objects are hidden inside the worlds that books create, and with Biblos in pursuit, the kids began a (bibliophilic) adventure of a lifetime.
Lourey could’ve easily “dumbed down” the storyline by directing her narrative into the realms of books that are currently in vogue and theoretically more palatable to a mainstream audience – Twilight, Hunger Games, Roth’s Divergent trilogy, etc. But instead she focused on classics like H.G. Wells’ The Time Machine, Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities, Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde, etc.
The cover art was spectacular, the storyline was highly intelligent, but it’s Lourey’s dreamlike writing style t
hat makes this novel so compelling. I’ve read some of her mystery novels and I can say that The Toadhouse Trilogy: Book One is easily her best work to date. Her evocative style, which is powered by an unwavering sense of wonder, is perfectly fitted for fantasy. Here are a few examples:
• “…dense hardwoods forming a canopy so thick only ferns and horsebalm sprout beneath them, and an occasional patch of grass where persistent sunbeams have fought through. The dappled light gives the forest an underwater quality, making it both vibrant and hazy. The ground is peppered with fallen branches…”
• “She leans back on her heels on the topmost branch of the fruit tree, its bark digging into her knees. Her head spins and her pulse races with a combination of joy and fear. She’s in an actual book, inside of a story, living a dream. Despite herself, she smiles. But what is reality then, and what is fiction?”
Young adult science fiction and fantasy is such a dynamic category right now – arguably some of the strongest writing in all of genre fiction is happening there – and, even with all of that competition, teen readers should add Lourey’s The Toadhouse Trilogy: Book One to their list of “must read” releases. It's that good.
Readers will, like the protagonists, literally get lost in this book. Beautifully written and unquestionably entertaining, this projected trilogy truly does have the potential to become a young adult classic – only time will tell...
Paul Goat Allen has been a full-time book reviewer specializing in genre fiction for the last two decades and has written thousands of reviews for companies like Publishers Weekly, The Chicago Tribune, Kirkus Reviews, and BarnesandNoble.com. He is a member of the National Book Critics Circle. You can follow him on Twitter at @paulgoatallen and get all the latest Barnes & Noble book news from @BNBuzz.
