Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children (2011)
Monday, July 11, 2016
Title : Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children
Author : Ransom Riggs
Genre : Dark Fantasy
Rating : 8.1/10
After his grandfather's murder, apparently by a make-believe creature, 16-year-old Jacob Portman goes to Wales to learn more about his grandfather's life. He finds that his grandfather lived in a derelict orphanage for "peculiar children". That is where he meets Emma, a "strikingly pretty" girl who can control fire. She uses time travel to take him back to 1940 to meet Miss Peregrine, the orphanage director, who lives with the other children in a "time loop". Jacob enjoys spending time with the other peculiar children such as Millard, who is invisible, and Bronwyn, who has incredible strength. In the pub where Jacob is staying, he hears stories of mysterious deaths in the region, and he warns the peculiar children. They tell Jacob that the deaths were caused by the "hollows" or "hollowgasts," the same monsters that killed his grandfather. Jacob later learns that he too is peculiar, and realizes only he can see the monsters and stop the killings.
After Jacob (with Emma's help) kills one of the hollows, Miss Peregrine is kidnapped. The children rescue Miss Peregrine, but she is in bird form and cannot change back to human form. Ultimately the peculiar children must find another time loop when theirs fails to reset. A loop must be reset every day by its owner – in this case, Miss Peregrine – and she is trapped as a bird, causing the loop to disappear and forcing the children to find a new home.
At the first sight, I thought that it was a horror/thriller novel, but it’s not. Only a little bit ‘dark’.
The first time I saw this book, my friend told me that it’ll be a coming soon movie this year. And I remember that I’ve already seen the trailer on YouTube, so I decided to read this book. Reading a novel before the movie will be the first experience for me. But again, even watching the trailer before the movie is a bad idea. I regretted it as soon as I read the story.
It was a great story, surely. But it’s a little bit creepy because of the black and white photographs inside the book. When I read the book at night, I often skipped the page that includes a creepy photograph. But, the photograph also goes along well and support the story, and I think that Ransom Riggs succeeded in making this into a dark fantasy book. The photographs will help the reader to imagine how the charracters should look like.
There’s no complaint I can give for the story. Ransom Riggs has already done a pretty good job writing it. I can feel the fear, tension, and the other emotion through this book. Oh, I think that I can guess the plot in one part of the story. But it’s okay since the whole story seems satisfying.
The only thing that I regret about the story is, I’ve already known that the movie will be different from the book (that’s why I said that I regretted watching the trailer before the book). But, the movie will have nothing to do with my appraisal of the book, so that I think 8.1/10 is a pretty good score for this book.
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