Don’t worry – I liked it 🙂

Just read it! It’s difficult, being such a Rudyard Kipling person as I am, not to nitpick and say, “Rudyard Kipling would have DIED before he used the word ‘trope’, or “Kipling came up with the Just So Stories BEFORE his daughter died,” or “Kipling’s postwar stories are AMAZING, so why do you have his talent fizzling out with the death of his son?” Or even just, “This doesn’t sound like Kipling’s voice.” But on the other hand, it gets some things very right – most importantly, the depth of Kipling’s love for his children, and the absolute tragedy of his later life. And I love the idea of making How the Whale Got his Throat into a declaration of war. It’s brilliant and totally out of left field, and I would never have thought of it.

I just looked it up, and the Rudyard Kipling story sounds so potentially awesome that I spent yesterday checking one bookstore after another for The Unwritten – they were all sold out – and have just reserved a copy at my nearest Barnes & Noble. Which unfortunately is not actually that close, and New York is still in the grip of a massive snowstorm, so I may not get the book for several days.

Yours did? Not nice packaging? I’m actually going to be hardcore disappointed if that turns out to be the case.

I’m not the best person to ask about spoilers, because I spoil everything for myself by reading the end. The story’s about Rudyard Kipling actually, with Oscar Wilde sort of in the periphery. The idea is that there are these sinister people who want all sorts of writers to write FOR THEM. Rudyard Kipling is reluctant. Oscar Wilde doesn’t go for it so much. (If I am recalling it correctly, which I easily might not be.)

Oh Lord, I hope you like it! I will feel guilty if you get it and think it’s terrible.