Puss Reboots: Blog: February 2008: The Winter of the Birds

Recent posts

The Berenstain Bears Learn About Strangers by Jan and Stan Berenstain
The Best Christmas Ever by James Patrick Kelley
The City by Allen J. Scott and Edward W. Soja
Commander Toad and the Voyage Home by Jane Yolen
The Dame in the Kimono by Leonard J. Leff by Jerold L. Simmons
Down to a Sunless Sea by Mathias B. Freese
Dragonite's Christmas by Akihito Toda and Kagemaru Himeno
The Enchanted Castle by Edith Nesbit
The Fattening of America by Eric A. Finkelstein and Laurie Zuckerman
The Halloween Play by Felicia Bond
Heavens to Betsy & Other Curious Sayings by Charles Earle Funk
How Do Dinosaurs Clean Their Rooms? by Jane Yolen and Mark Teague
Hungry Hill by Carol O'Malley Gaunt
Imaginative Still Life by Moira Huntly
In the Skin of a Lion by Michael Ondaatje
A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains by Isabella L. Bird
The Mariah Delany Lending Library Disaster by Sheila Greenwald
Maxine an the Ghost Dog by Linda Pack Butler
Midnight Sun by Elwood Reid
Monkey See, Monkey Do by Marc Gave and Jacqueline Rogers
Murder in the Place of Anubis by Lynda S. Robinson
Olivia Counts by Ian Falconer
Rusty's Train Ride by Heather Amery and Stephen Cartwright
Ship Fever by Anrea Barrett
There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly by Pam Adams
The Toontown Players Present Chicken Little by Margaret Snyder
The Voluntary State by Christopher Rowe
The Winter of the Birds by Helen Cresswell
Witch Week by Diana Wynn Jones
Yours Turly, Shirley by Ann M. Martin

FSF Reviews:
If Angels Fight by John Bowes
Philologos, Or a Murder in Bistrita by Debra Doyle and James D. Macdonald

Previous month

The Winter of the Birds: 02/08/08

The Winter of the Birds is a weird blend of the diary as novel and science fiction. Imagine a young male protagonist like Christopher John Francis Boone of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time or Jason Taylor of Black Swan Green in the middle of a Doctor Who type of story.

Edward Flack decides to become a hero. At the same time, Mr. Rudge has a vision of birds that run on wires and are coming to terrorize the the village of St. Savior's. The two team up to protect the village from the threat of these birds and become friends in the process.

There is also the story of Alfred Graves who is saved during a suicide attempt by Patrick Finn, the reluctant taxi driver. Finn and Graves's unlikely friendship comes head to head with Flack and Rudge's quest to save the world from wire birds.

The Winter of the Birds has moments of delightful humor, gothic horror, and outright surrealism. It took me a couple of chapters to get used odd narrative but once I did I enjoyed it thoroughly.