They call him Lump. Ugly, misshapen - more goblin than human child - abandoned as an infant and taken in by a witch, he is nursed by a bear, tutored by a djinn; his only playmates are the creatures of the forest, whose language he learns to speak.
But when Lump inevitably stumbles into the human world, his innocence is no match for the depths of people's cruelty, which turns his heart to stone, and fuels a vengeance that places him and his witch mother in deadly peril. Yet these disasters also send Lump on a journey of self-discovery, to realms deep within the earth and far beyond mortal imagination.
In this stunning fantasy debut, Michael Gruber has created a world that is at once deceptively familiar and stunningly original, a world of cruelty, beauty, legend, truth, and above all, wonder. Readers will delight in the author's ingenious retelling of classic fairy tales and will marvel at the stunning new tale of a boy raised by a witch, a cat, a bear, and a demon.
Lump, the witch's boy, is a selfish brat who no one, save his mother, loves. Vanity forces him to wear a mask to hide his ugliness and despair, literally driving him underground until he finds salvation with the help of a bear. Luckily, Lump is surrounded by kindhearted characters listeners will recognize from favorite fairy tales, although the author has tweaked the traditional stories. This is one title that is better listened to than read. Denis O'Hare uses various voices and skillfully employs several accents to make this a believable fantasy. Even when Lump is behaving his worst, O'Hare is acting his best to move the story along. M.M.O. (c) AudioFile 2005, Portland, Maine
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