The Halloween Tree by Ray Bradbury

Title: The Halloween Tree

Author: Ray Bradbury

Publisher: 1972

Genre: YA Fantasy

Pages: 160

Rating: 4/5 stars

Reading Challenges: 

Join the shadowy Carapace Clavicle Moundshroud as he takes eight trick-or-treaters on an unforgettable journey to find their missing friend, Pip. Travel through space and time, from the tombs of ancient Egypt to the gargoyles of Notre-Dame Cathedral, all the way to the cemeteries of Mexico on el Día de Los Muertos, the Day of the Dead. Is Pip still alive? And if so, can his friends save him from a ghastly fate before it’s too late?

Somehow I had never read this story until this year. I finally picked it up and read this in one afternoon with a cup of tea. I love this twisty tale exploring Halloween through cultures and the years. I loved the story of following the gaggle of boys to rescue their friend Pipkin. Moundshroud is the the best character and I really wish we had a bit more of him. This is definitely the book for young kids that want to be scared. Even I got the chills at a few parts. Such a fun experience.

Next up on the TBR pile:

Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury

Title: Something Wicked This Way Comes

Author: Ray Bradbury

Publisher: Simona and Schuster 1962

Genre: Horror

Pages: 308

Rating: 4/5 stars

Reading Challenges: NPR Scifi and Fantasy; NPR Teen; Mount TBR; Read Your Freebies; 52 Books -- W15

Few American novels written this century have endured in th heart and mind as has this one-Ray Bradbury's incomparable masterwork of the dark fantastic. A carnival rolls in sometime after the midnight hour on a chill Midwestern October eve, ushering in Halloween a week before its time. A calliope's shrill siren song beckons to all with a seductive promise of dreams and youth regained. In this season of dying, Cooger & Dark's Pandemonium Shadow Show has come to Green Town, Illinois, to destroy every life touched by its strange and sinister mystery. And two inquisitive boys standing precariously on the brink of adulthood will soon discover the secret of the satanic raree-show's smoke, mazes, and mirrors, as they learn all too well the heavy cost of wishes -- and the stuff of nightmare.

For a classic horror novel, I wasn't that impressed.  In reality, I think I read this too late.  I was reminded of newer horror writers.  The entire time I thought I was reading a Stephen King novel or something of the like.  The writing was a bit stilted at times, but overall I did enjoy the story.  The nightmares are scary enough to get me at times.  The characters are shadowy and mysterious.  The twists and turns kept me interested.  A good read, but I think I prefer Bradbury's science fiction to his horror.

The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury

Title: The Martian Chronicles

Author: Ray Bradbury

Publisher: William Morrow 1950

Genre: Science Fiction

Pages: 288

Rating:  4 / 5 stars

Reading Challenges: Science Fiction; Mount TBR; Fall Into Reading

How I Got It: J owns it

Bradbury's Mars is a place of hope, dreams and metaphor-of crystal pillars and fossil seas-where a fine dust settles on the great, empty cities of a silently destroyed civilization. It is here the invaders have come to despoil and commercialize, to grow and to learn -first a trickle, then a torrent, rushing from a world with no future toward a promise of tomorrow. The Earthman conquers Mars ... and then is conquered by it, lulled by dangerous lies of comfort and familiarity, and enchanted by the lingering glamour of an ancient, mysterious native race.  Ray Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles is a classic work of twentieth-century literature whose extraordinary power and imagination remain undimmed by time's passage. Inconnected, chronological stories, a true grandmaster once again enthralls, delights and challenges us with his vision and his heart-starkly and stunningly exposing in brilliant spacelight our strength, our weakness, our folly, and our poignant humanity on a strange and breathtaking world where humanity does not belong.

For the first 20 pages, I was thoroughly confused. I didn't realize that this was a collection of related short stories.  Once I readjusted my perspective, I found that I really enjoyed these stories.  The reader has to look at Earth and Mars through an alien viewpoint.  We see Mars and its inhabitants as they are.  And then we see how the humans from Earth see Mars.  Such strange little stories.  But if put into a 1950s era mindset, they completely make sense.  Not my favorite science fiction, but a good collection.