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A review by silvae
Die unendliche Geschichte by Michael Ende
3.0
The Neverending Story was a book I adored as a child - it had differently colored fonts, a beautiful cover, I probably had it read to me multiple times before I finally read it myself. Somehow, there memories and the first half of the book stuck around more than the second half did. I remembered the ending, vaguely, but everything that happened as soon as Bastian entered Fantasien was nothing more than a blur to me.
I've been on a bit of a nostalgic bender this year - call it regression, call it comfort reading - and when I saw that my library had the audiobook for one of my childhood favorites, I knew I had to get it. As soon as the familiar storypoints were behind me, I found myself a bit lost. I couldn't really connect to any characters and Bastian grew more and more exhausting to hear about as the minutes crept along. It felt like a weird mixture of Lord of the Rings (with some scenes definitely paying homage to Tolkien) and Lord of the Flies (little boys with too much power in their hand), and neither of them felt particularly well executed. Michael Ende is very on the nose with what he wants the message of the book to be, and maybe this bluntness is something a child reader can connect to quite well. For me it felt rather preachy and - strangely enough - unimaginative, which felt like a great disappointment. After all, the world he created is nothing short of every bookworm-y child's dream.
Some scenes were incredibly depressing and violent, others very unfitting. I will put some blame for this on the audio production, though, especially in regards to the unfitting parts (a sexy voice for a sorceress who pledges to be enslaved by a... 12 year old boy? No thank you!). The depressing parts make up a large chunk of the first half of the book, and while it feels odd to read about them in a children's book, I know my younger, incredibly macabre, self would have enjoyed those passages nonetheless.
All in all I still enjoyed revisiting the story and understand why I loved it so much when I was younger. Perhaps I have been exposed to enough literature by now that a lot of the initial wonder is dimmed by the knowledge of alternatives and inspirations.
I've been on a bit of a nostalgic bender this year - call it regression, call it comfort reading - and when I saw that my library had the audiobook for one of my childhood favorites, I knew I had to get it. As soon as the familiar storypoints were behind me, I found myself a bit lost. I couldn't really connect to any characters and Bastian grew more and more exhausting to hear about as the minutes crept along. It felt like a weird mixture of Lord of the Rings (with some scenes definitely paying homage to Tolkien) and Lord of the Flies (little boys with too much power in their hand), and neither of them felt particularly well executed. Michael Ende is very on the nose with what he wants the message of the book to be, and maybe this bluntness is something a child reader can connect to quite well. For me it felt rather preachy and - strangely enough - unimaginative, which felt like a great disappointment. After all, the world he created is nothing short of every bookworm-y child's dream.
Some scenes were incredibly depressing and violent, others very unfitting. I will put some blame for this on the audio production, though, especially in regards to the unfitting parts (a sexy voice for a sorceress who pledges to be enslaved by a... 12 year old boy? No thank you!). The depressing parts make up a large chunk of the first half of the book, and while it feels odd to read about them in a children's book, I know my younger, incredibly macabre, self would have enjoyed those passages nonetheless.
All in all I still enjoyed revisiting the story and understand why I loved it so much when I was younger. Perhaps I have been exposed to enough literature by now that a lot of the initial wonder is dimmed by the knowledge of alternatives and inspirations.