A collection of short stories about a transient magical bookshop - I like the themes, but this wasn't particularly outstanding for me. ( )

I suppose this odd little book is best described as a collection of linked short stories. All of them feature a bookstore called Lost Pages, which sells books about histories and myths and creatures that never existed, at least in our world. Collectively they involve a variety of misfit children, visions of a tentacled god of nightmares and the supernatural armies who oppose him, and people who experience encounters -- often sexual ones -- with the uncanny. I'm not sure it quite gels together into a coherent whole, and if it were any longer, that might be annoying, but as short as it is (about 200 smallish pages with good-sized type), the fact that we only get little half-glimpses of this weird reality that seems to exist behind our own works surprisingly well.

It's strange and interesting stuff, and apparently just exactly what I was in the mood for. ( )

A lovely little book - a bit disjointed in the manner of a Fairytale, which adds to the story of the Book store.

These stories are separate, but form a continuous narration - I love Aydee - she is such a wonderful person. The smaller stories of Luke, Kurt, Sandra, and others add to the overall picture of who Aydee is and how the Book store functions.

Ultimately, is the book store a figment of the imagination or something else entirely... either way, I hope for the latter since this book truley is a door through lost pages. ( )

The Door to Lost pages is a collection of connected short stories, all written with a mix of the weird, sci-fi, bizarre, horror and fantasy genres. There are a handful of experiments with meta-fiction as well. Many of the stories left me with a kind of sharp heartache, a bittersweet hope that the fanciful dreamy parts of the novel are real and that the indications of a grim reality are the only fiction the author intended.

The book pulled me in easily. The prose is very simple and kind of alluring. I don't know if that is due to the writing style or the subject matter. Maybe both. For example:

"Aydee had to control herself so as not to scream with excitement. Here was a story she needed to read: an opportunity to learn how other people, besides Lucas, besides herself, had been affected by their contact with Lost Pages. A chance, maybe, to better understand this strange life and her place in it. She bundled herself in her reading chair, enraptured." p74

Everything about it forced me to keep reading, even when I was afraid of what I would find on the next page. All the stories are connected by an original mythos, each tale adding to your knowledge of it, slowly building another world in the background. A mythos of gods, protective beings (that include grade school boys), strange beasts, curses and spells, all kinds of magic and dimensions. The shifting sense of reality is a feature of the whole book; once you think you have a handle on the world, Lalumiere changes it with a sad twist. It is left up to you as a reader to decide which reality you believe to be real.

It isn't a difficult or long read, but neither is it light reading. I would suggest it if you want something bizarrely engaging and maybe a little raw and bittersweet. ( )

I got an ebook of this book through NetGalley(dot)com. This was an interesting collection of short stories all based around a bookstore called Lost Pages. The stories are some-what ambiguous and quite varied as far as their content goes. They were an okay read, but the writing style wasn't spectacular and the stories were all a bit vauge.

The book starts with a intro that's nothing special. It's followed by a prologue and six additional stories all featuring a girl named Aydee and a bookstore called Lost Pages. The stories span a number of years and in the background feature a battle between some good and evil Gods; all of which is tied into the various stories.

I will start by saying this is a collection of stories for adults. The first couple stories are intriguing and relatively innocent. The first story talks about how Aydee left her home and ended up at Lost Pages. The following one talks about a young boy Billy who hunts monsters in his spare time and uses Lost Pages as a source of information. The stories that follow these have a lot of unconventional sex described in detail. There is sex with same sex partners, sex in groups, voyeurism, etc. Hence, the reason I would say adults only for this collection.

The concept of Lost Pages is a wonderful one, that all book lovers will enjoy. Lost Pages is a bookstore that contains books that don't exist elsewhere and cover topics that are magical or no longer remembered by the rest of society. People find the Door to Lost Pages when they need something...other...in their life. Very cool concept.

The writing style of the story was so, so. With such an awesome concept I would have liked a more descriptive or sensual writing style; at times the style of the writing came off as a bit cold and a bit simplistic for the topic being covered. So, not my favorite writing style but okay.

All of the stories are tied into a battle between some good and evil Gods. This is the part that gets a bit ambiguous. The concept behind the Gods and what they are is never explained very well. It is all a bit confusing and blurry. Which may be what the author intended, but for those who don't like amibiguity in their literature this is just a heads up.

These stories have a lot of weirdness to them. The early ones remind a bit of Charles deLint but stranger. The later ones reminded me a lot of some of Elizabeth Hand's books (Waking the Moon, Blacklight). There is no doubt that as a reader you are in for some weirdness when reading these stories.

Overall it was an okay read and a quick one. I loved the idea of the Lost Pages book store and enjoyed some of the strangeness in these stories. The tone of the stories changes a lot from the early ones to the later ones. There is a lot of ambiguity, as all the stories are tied back to some obscure mythology that is never very well explained. Because of this some of the stories are a bit hard to follow. I expected the writing style to be a bit more lyrical than it was, it was a bit simplistic in style for the creativness and strangness of the stories. For those of us who like strangeness in an urban fantasy setting I would recommend some of Elizabeth Hand's work, Catherynne Valente (absolutely beautiful writing with a large dose of strangeness) or Jeff Vandermeer over this collection. ( )