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blbstorey 's review for:
Nicholas St. North and the Battle of the Nightmare King
by Laura Geringer, William Joyce
This is a beautiful, old-style sort of children's book, full of whimsy and darkness and fantastical things. Not as much . . . substance to it as I'd hoped, for lack of a better word, but I enjoyed it, and I love the author's art. This is the first in a series of books, I'm about to start the second one.
I did find one thing a bit . . . distressing. Maybe it's because I've been an editor and proofreader for thirty years, but I really was disappointed that this kind of mistake got through the whole publishing process. Twice in this book, the author used a word wrongly: "muslim" when he meant "muslin" and "allusive" (which isn't even a word) when he meant "elusive". It's puzzling enough that a writer wouldn't know they were using a completely wrong word, but that such obvious errors escaped detection throughout the whole editing process? I used to work for Simon & Schuster, once upon a time, and it's sad to think their standards have fallen even this much.
But basically, I loved the book, and look forward to reading the second one!
I did find one thing a bit . . . distressing. Maybe it's because I've been an editor and proofreader for thirty years, but I really was disappointed that this kind of mistake got through the whole publishing process. Twice in this book, the author used a word wrongly: "muslim" when he meant "muslin" and "allusive" (which isn't even a word) when he meant "elusive". It's puzzling enough that a writer wouldn't know they were using a completely wrong word, but that such obvious errors escaped detection throughout the whole editing process? I used to work for Simon & Schuster, once upon a time, and it's sad to think their standards have fallen even this much.
But basically, I loved the book, and look forward to reading the second one!