I wanted to like it, but I didn't. I found the social commentary heavy-handed, and found it overall a bit dull. You don't get to know the characters, so it was hard to care what happened to them. The ones that were most intriguing to me - the woman, the starving man, and the elderly man - were in and out of the story quickly. And the tone has a kind of flat delivery to everything - which does realistically convey the fatalism of being a peasant, I guess? - but it means that horrific events are conveyed with little emotion or impact. The moral seems to be: everyone sucks, power corrupts, and there's nothing you can do to fix it. Everything is both boring and horrible. Yay. ( )

I love fables--Brothers Grimm, Animal Farm, The Life of Pi. For that reason, I was immediately lured in to read "A Giant Comes" by A.J. Saxsma. This is a short but rich novel, told in a fashion that I have come to admire. And while I was pulled in to Saxsma's fairy tale world from the first page, at the same time I felt a distinct and undeniable connection to the present. That, in itself, is a feat.

The plot centers on a traveler who invites an orphan to join him on a journey to a nearby village to warn them of an impending giant. In the village, we meet archetypes--the everyman, the hero, the outlaw, and the ruler along with the priest, the dullards, and those who blindly follow. I could picture these characters walking around our modern "village" saying the same thing, acting the same way.

This is a story full of deceit and trickery as we follow the young boy. I kept looking for an obvious twist but--delightfully--found none. In Saxsma's portrayal of this fairy tale world, it is not hard to find parallels to Western culture. There is a rich cynicism of the church, of politicians, and of their blind constituents.

"A Giant Comes" is a cautionary tale, and not one that ends easily. I received no fuzzy good feeling. Rather, I am left to contemplate the connections between the traveler and the boy, between the priest and elder, between the workers and the merchants. This is a highly recommended book, and one I will return to again. ( )