Runciter reviewed Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury
The Carousel Spins On
4 stars
Returns, reversals, and endless trips forward and backward on the carousel. Such is a life. I first read Something Wicked This Way Comes as a 13-year-old boy (not dissimilar in age to Will and Jim, the novel's main protagonists) and for the second time as a middle-aged man (now close in age to the careworn library janitor Charles Holloway, Will's father). My interest was originally driven by the then-current film adaptation from Disney Studios - I knew Bradbury as author of The Martian Chronicles and Fahrenheit 451, but had cracked neither book. My own literary interests then leaned toward the pop-horrors of Stephen King and the fun-loving heroic fantasy of the type published by Tor Books. Something Wicked challenged my sensibilities and youthful reading skills, and it's interesting to note my reaction after four decades. If I'm nothing else, I'm consistent, as my response was similar in 2025.
Bradbury's …
Returns, reversals, and endless trips forward and backward on the carousel. Such is a life. I first read Something Wicked This Way Comes as a 13-year-old boy (not dissimilar in age to Will and Jim, the novel's main protagonists) and for the second time as a middle-aged man (now close in age to the careworn library janitor Charles Holloway, Will's father). My interest was originally driven by the then-current film adaptation from Disney Studios - I knew Bradbury as author of The Martian Chronicles and Fahrenheit 451, but had cracked neither book. My own literary interests then leaned toward the pop-horrors of Stephen King and the fun-loving heroic fantasy of the type published by Tor Books. Something Wicked challenged my sensibilities and youthful reading skills, and it's interesting to note my reaction after four decades. If I'm nothing else, I'm consistent, as my response was similar in 2025.
Bradbury's novel relies on the (very potent) image of a sinister, shadow-dwelling carnival disrupting the calm order of a small Illinois town in an unspecified time (1920s? Surely pre-WWII), granting wishes, seducing the gullible, and going about the business of recruiting additional "freaks" to swell their sideshow's ranks. "Illustrated Man" Mr. Dark is the throng's director, ringmaster, and spokesman - an effective pitchman for evil, though the dialogue provided to him hits less menacingly than I remembered. Wide-eyed innocent best friends Will (studious and level-headed) and Jim (rash and impetuous) are roped into the world of the visiting carnival first by their natural curiosity, and then by their desire to rescue the wayward townspeople who fall into the carnival's thrall.
Apart from the memorable setpieces and characters (Mr. Dark chief among them), what I remember most vividly from my 1983 reading was Bradbury's highly florid, dense use of adjectives. I admire his willingness to expand the then-acceptable language used in fantasy and science fiction, drawing it much closer to prose poetry than dried-and-dull descriptions of place and action. It wasn't my imagination back then - at several points in this current read, I wasn't clear on what was actually transpiring during a particular scene or dramatic moment, thanks to the overuse of simile and metaphor. Given the slim page count and (overall) shortage of incident in the story, I wonder if Bradbury thought of the book as a framework upon which to hang his prose since it's fairly skeletal otherwise. Most of the writing hits - hyper-stylized descriptions of dessicated facial features; vivid scenes described in terms of light, smell and sound; deft descriptions of character shared with the reader like small-town gossip. Occasionally the writing demands more focus that I'm used to providing, but the rewards justify the effort.
Cooger & Dark's Pandemonium Shadow Show (and those who operate its hidden levers) remains a vivid-yet-elusive will o' the wisp some forty years after I first discovered it. I'm glad I visited it again.