The Neverending Story by Michael Ende
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Book Summary Author: Michael Ende Brand: Dutton Translator: Ralph Manheim Edition: Hardcover Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published) Published: 1997-03-01 ISBN: 0525457585 Number of pages: 384 Publisher: Dutton Juvenile Product features:
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Book Reviews of the The Neverending Story
Customer Review: Starts well, goes bad, and then tries to save itself
Summary: 2 Stars
I have heard it said that you should not judge a book by it's movie, which is usually supposed to mean that the book is better than the film but in this case the opposite is true (if comparing it to the first 80's movie because they go seriously down hill after that).
The book starts off well and contains the same or similar and additional scenes as seen in the movie and it was interesting to see how things were different and to experience the things left out of the film.
The first half of the book is pretty good, once in the middle that is where the first movie ends and from then on up until the very end Bastian spends his time going from one random wish to another venturing through Fantasia which is a real drag up until the last 8 or so chapters. It was so boring I almost stopped reading the book.
Basically what happens from the middle onwards (I'm going to tell you because it is not worth buying this book) is that Bastian gets the AURYN which gives him the ability to wish for anything so he goes from one wish to another which usually involves him going from one place to another meaning there is little in the way of character development. All the places he goes to are pretty strange and at times very unrealistic.
Bastain, Atreyu, and Falkor fall out quite soon in to the second half of the book because Bastian ends up being very arrogant because he has all this power and after trying to crown himself emperor of Fantasia Atreyu marches an army to the Ivory tower and attacks Bastian there, sadly the tower is destroyed.
Eventually Bastian gets it in to his head (after many people trying to tell him) that all this wishing is causing him to loose his memories and he will get stuck in Fantasia if he does not return to his world ASAP, so he is magically drawn to this place where he meets Atreyu and Falkor and they help him to return to the human world and finally Bastian runs home to his daddy like the little boy he is.
This book is definitely aimed at kids so that is probably why I did not like it so much. The lack of character development and any real plot put a dampener on things. Basically all the latter half of the book contains is Bastian wishing for thing and then his wish coming true and he goes to some crazy place. The book does try to save itself near the end and it was interesting to see what was going to happen to Bastian and how he would get back to the human world.
Other things that annoyed me about the book where the really long and stupid character names, for example "Vooshvandervool" or something like that or one of the characters. Also quite often throughout the book the author says "but that's another story for another time" to avoid having to fill out story for a number of characters.
While the green and purple text was a good idea, the green text is a little hard to read in some light (my bedside lamp) and on many pages in my copy of the book some of the characters that made up the words were not well formed. The author also seems to have an obsession with colour because many of the people and things in the story are some strange colour, for example Atreyu has green skin and Buffalo are pink.
While this book was probably pretty good back when it was written in the late 70's I doubt that today's kids would find it that interesting. Ask them to choose between the likes of Harry Potter and this book and Harry Potter is going to win just about every time. Also I don't like the thinking behind this book, what it will teach kids is that if you want anything just wish for it and then nearer the end of the book it gives off the idea that you should not wish for anything otherwise you will loose your memories and become stupid because you can't remember anything; I don't want my kids learning such things.
So to summarise, if you really liked the 80's movie when you were younger it's probably best to leave it at that. If you are looking for a good fantasy story with some depth, realism, grandeur or character development then you will probably be disappointed with this book.