Sideshow

With his second effort, William Ollie has made a quantum leap beyond the promise of his excellent debut novel The Damned, revealing to his readers a mysterious Ferris wheel and carnival recreating ominous feelings once produced by the classic Something Wicked This Way Comes; and a handling of viewpoints of two young boys every bit as deftly as the best of Stephen King. Chills and thrills abound in Hannibal Cobb's Kanasas City Carnival, a place of magic and mystery you won't soon forget. Sideshow has my highest recommendation." -- Gene O'Neill, author of Doc Good's Traveling Show The smoke ring rose, higher and higher, changing shape as it went, until it disappeared into a cloud that moments ago had looked like the caboose of a train, a cloud that now began to change, to mold and meld, to twist and turn and take on the shape of the thing that had entered it. This thing, this dark entity, hung frozen in the sky, calling those chosen few out from their houses, their bars and their factories, calling them forth to face what waited in that dark and foreboding night. Justin Henry didn't believe his friend had seen a Ferris wheel rise up from the ground like a runaway vine. But he followed Mickey Reardon out to the overgrown field at the edge of their little country community anyway. Now two thirteen-year-old boys have seen something they couldn't have, and neither of their lives will ever be the same again. The carnival is in town, a very different kind of carnival this year. One no one will be coming back from.

From Publishers Weekly

After a disorienting over-the-top prologue, Ollie delivers a lurid but memorable take on the dark carnival theme. South Carolina boys Justin Gabriel Henry, Mickey Reardon, Danny Roebuck, and bully Bo Johnson are magnetically drawn to the charms of Hannibal Cobb's Kansas City Carnival after a ferris wheel magically sprouts one October day in Godby's field outside of Pottsboro. Strange things begin happening as Cobb wields a perverse hold over the townspeople using his freaks and assorted evil tricks. The boys are soon tasked with stopping the carnival and freeing its prisoners, as The Amazing Rubber Woman asks Danny to rescue them before "the dark… tears us apart." Despite Ollie's rowdy, somewhat overheated prose, he manages to score some satisfying moments as the odd carnival hurtles to a wonderfully weird conclusion as nostalgic as an old EC comic. (Aug.) (c) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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