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A review by emtees
The Neverending Story by Michael Ende
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.25
This book is almost impossible to talk about. On the one hand, it’s a kid’s book about a fantastical world, a girl in need of saving, and a child from the real world who is given a chance at adventure. On the other, it is so full of ideas, themes and the irrepressible imagination of the author that it is difficult to narrow anything about it down to a few sentences.
I only read this book recently, though I’d seen the movie a lot as a kid. The book is a very different thing from the movie. I love the movie, but it is a much more straightforward and optimistic fantasy than the book. The book is split into two parts, roughly. The first, which anyone who has seen the movie will recognize, is about Atreyu, a young hunter who is sent on a quest to save the life of the Childlike Empress, ruler of Fantastica, accompanied in imagination only (or so it seems) by Bastian, a boy from the real world who is following Atreyu’s adventures in a book called The Neverending Story. Bullied and lonely since the death of his mother, Bastian is happy to escape from the misery of his life into the story, falling deeper and deeper into it as Atreyu faces increasing hardships and proves himself brave and true. Atreyu is a great fantasy character on his own, but he is clearly a character in a way Bastian, with his very mundane flaws and weaknesses, is not. In the second half of the story, it is Bastian himself who gets to enter the world of Fantastica and have an adventure of his own, where he discovers that unlimited freedom and imagination come with a price.
Fantastica is a classic fantasy world, or more accurately, it is every classic fantasy world. As the story progresses, it becomes increasingly clear that Fantastica is imagination itself, and so Michael Ende has no limits to what he can do there. Fantastica is full of iconic beings and places: Falkor, the loyal and eternally optimistic Luck Dragon; the Childlike Empress, who views all her people, good and evil, with the same neutral eye; Grogammon the Many-Colored Death, the lion with the tragic fate; Xayide the sorceress and Yor the Blind Miner who digs for images from men’s dreams and the Swamps of Sadness and so many more. The second half of the book in particular feels like a hallucinogenic trip through every wild idea Ende ever had. It’s disorienting in the best way.
Along the way, though, it was the themes and the wild proliferation of ideas that kept me invested. The book ponders questions like the line between stories and lies, between the freedom of imagination and the danger of forgetting the real world, between dreams that give life meaning and fantasies that distract from it. It both celebrates the life of storytellers and people of great imagination and questions the responsibilities they have, looks at stories as both the sources of hope and joy and of manipulation and danger. There’s an interesting moral complexity to Bastian’s journey, especially when set (deliberately) alongside the straightforward heroism of Atreyu’s. Bastian is given everything he ever wanted, and the power to make the world - and, more dangerously, himself - whatever he wants to be, but the price is one more than just he pays.
It almost feels silly to rate this book when I feel like I need to read it again and again to see all that’s there. I’ll definitely be doing that.
I only read this book recently, though I’d seen the movie a lot as a kid. The book is a very different thing from the movie. I love the movie, but it is a much more straightforward and optimistic fantasy than the book. The book is split into two parts, roughly. The first, which anyone who has seen the movie will recognize, is about Atreyu, a young hunter who is sent on a quest to save the life of the Childlike Empress, ruler of Fantastica, accompanied in imagination only (or so it seems) by Bastian, a boy from the real world who is following Atreyu’s adventures in a book called The Neverending Story. Bullied and lonely since the death of his mother, Bastian is happy to escape from the misery of his life into the story, falling deeper and deeper into it as Atreyu faces increasing hardships and proves himself brave and true. Atreyu is a great fantasy character on his own, but he is clearly a character in a way Bastian, with his very mundane flaws and weaknesses, is not. In the second half of the story, it is Bastian himself who gets to enter the world of Fantastica and have an adventure of his own, where he discovers that unlimited freedom and imagination come with a price.
Fantastica is a classic fantasy world, or more accurately, it is every classic fantasy world. As the story progresses, it becomes increasingly clear that Fantastica is imagination itself, and so Michael Ende has no limits to what he can do there. Fantastica is full of iconic beings and places: Falkor, the loyal and eternally optimistic Luck Dragon; the Childlike Empress, who views all her people, good and evil, with the same neutral eye; Grogammon the Many-Colored Death, the lion with the tragic fate; Xayide the sorceress and Yor the Blind Miner who digs for images from men’s dreams and the Swamps of Sadness and so many more. The second half of the book in particular feels like a hallucinogenic trip through every wild idea Ende ever had. It’s disorienting in the best way.
Along the way, though, it was the themes and the wild proliferation of ideas that kept me invested. The book ponders questions like the line between stories and lies, between the freedom of imagination and the danger of forgetting the real world, between dreams that give life meaning and fantasies that distract from it. It both celebrates the life of storytellers and people of great imagination and questions the responsibilities they have, looks at stories as both the sources of hope and joy and of manipulation and danger. There’s an interesting moral complexity to Bastian’s journey, especially when set (deliberately) alongside the straightforward heroism of Atreyu’s. Bastian is given everything he ever wanted, and the power to make the world - and, more dangerously, himself - whatever he wants to be, but the price is one more than just he pays.
It almost feels silly to rate this book when I feel like I need to read it again and again to see all that’s there. I’ll definitely be doing that.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Death of parent
The main character’s loss of his mother is a major aspect of his character.