Walter Moers was born in 1957 and is a writer, cartoonist, painter, and sculptor. He is the author of The 13 and 1/2 Lives of Captain Bluebear, Rumo & His Miraculous Adventures, and A Wild Ride through the Night. He lives in Hamburg, Germany.
Optimus Yarnspinner has inherited from his godfather an unpublished manuscript by an unknown writer. He sets off to track down the mysterious author, who disappeared into Bookholm—the so-called City of Dreaming Books. Yarnspinner falls under the spell of this book-obsessed metropolis, where an avid reader and budding author can find any number of charming attractions—priceless signed first editions, salivating literary agents, and for-hire critics. But as he pursues the trail of the missing author, the darker side of Bookholm begins to unveil itself—cold-blooded book hunters, fearsome cyclopean booklings, sharp-toothed animotomes, and, of course, the Shadow King, whose howls rise from deep beneath the city at night. Will Yarnspinner survive his quest into this world where reading is a genuine adventure? A fantastic tale for every book lover, The City of Dreaming Books is another zany Zamonian adventure from the one and only Walter Moers.
Let me first start by saying that this book is every book lover's dream come true. The city of Bookholm is so real, one could taste it, thanks to Moers's superb "translation" skill. His fantasy world building skills are unparalleled. I had wanted to create a world just like this, just for book lovers, and Moers just nails it. The city is everything a book lover would have wanted, and I love how he doesn't compromise on making it feel like a real place—the world is occupied by dinosaur-like creatures and other such marvels that while we know it can't really exist, we still are able to buy into every single aspect of it. There are so many dark parts of the city, too, and so much intrigue, and we learn that Bookholm isn't always pretty or dreamlike. That's what makes this city so believable and so real when we're reading, and what keeps us on our toes as Yarnspinner recounts his tale within the City of Dreaming Books.
Moers goes to great lengths to immerse readers into this story. The synesthesia is some of the best I'd ever seen: you can really taste and smell everything, and Moers really pulls upon one's experience with books to do that. We all know what the smell of new and old books is like, we've all held and touched books, he just extends on it in a way that makes you realize just how special it all is. He also incorporates art within the novel to help us visualize things that would be hard to do otherwise. You can't review this novel without talking about the art, which is so gorgeous and enriches the story in so many ways. The most obvious being that it's sometimes difficult for different people to picture what is being described, but Moers takes that barrier away by depicting the different types of creatures Yarnspinner interacts with, the different foods he tries (the pastry in the shape of a book was my favorite!), and the different types of numbers and symbols that lead him on this journey (and are used in the chapter numbering of this novel, too) are so well done and add so much to the story.
We think we're just reading Optimus Yarnspinner's story—when in fact, we're uncovering all these different stories of all these different characters. We follow Yarnspinner (unwillingly) into the catacombs, and we uncover the realities of Colophonius Regenschein's life as the only Bookhunter. We had learned about his life as Yarnspinner reads Regenschein's novel, and then we get signposts throughout the rest of the journey from Regenschein. This novel is immense—Regenschein's is not the only story completely folded into Yarnspinner's narrative, but so is the unnamed author of the important manuscript Yarnspinner carries with him, and the Shadow King, the unknown but much feared creature of the dark whose sighs can be heard even above ground. My favorite part of the story was the way Moers integrated Regenschein's story right within the text to share the origins of Bookhunters and to explain the Shadow King. I thought it was an incredible way to distill storytelling, to give so many hints for the ending without actually giving anything away, and to keep us intrigued all the way up until the end when we finally receive some clarity in how it all comes together.
Fans of this books are usually ones who enjoyed the Harry Potter or Percy Jackson series in their youth—or even when they were older—and it's usually because we've all been in search of fantasy just as immersive and imaginative as those series throughout our lives. Moers delivers what we've been looking for, and more, especially for those who have dedicated themselves to books and literature after having engaged with those two series in their youth. Those who truly love literature will recognize Oscar Wilde and Elizabeth Barrett Browning within the text, as well as nods to William Shakespeare, Arthur Conan Doyle, Mary Shelley, and other literary masters whose works have completely influenced the entire world. Moers pays tribute to them throughout the novel, not once sacrificing his own world to do so, making for a much more exciting and treasure-hunting read for those who love literature. And if you don't love literature, or didn't read Harry Potter in middle school? You'll find that, if you love adventure and fantasy, and love stories that steal hours of your time, that The City of Dreaming Books is still absolutely a must-read for you, too.
Thankfully that's not all from the world of Zamonia—the fifth book in the series, The Labyrinth of Dreaming Books takes readers back to Bookholm, and back into another bookish mystery.
*This review can also be found on my Goodreads page*
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