The town appeared almost overnight, as if summoned from the shadows, complete with a looming stone tower at its heart and a general store that promises to fulfill your deepest desires... for the price of your soul. Drawn by a witch’s secret summons, the curious and the desperate are flocking to New Vineland, unaware of the doom that awaits them.
But the witch didn’t count on Harold Goodman--an adventurous young Englishman with an unshakable moral compass and a burning desire to uncover the truth behind the tower's dark power. Joined by an enigmatic stonemason, a salty old sailor with more wisdom than he lets on, a haunted warhorse with a hero’s heart, and a gifted young girl just awakening to her magic, Harold sets out to challenge the evil that fuels New Vineland. The battle for the town--and the souls within it--is about to begin.
This was a fairly fun and somewhat likable story. The central setup involving the creation of the town, the journey to the witch’s village, and how the whole operation in the society comes together makes for a wholly intriguing starting point that lets everything come together rather well. As we get introduced to the initial curse of the baby that is traded away for control of the overnight kingdom that he is left in control of, this lets the film get introduced to a series of intriguing rules and regulations for the citizens that live there, from treating their lives as a bargaining method with how they go about their lives compared to the visitor who’s trying to acclimate to the situation. Avoiding the comedy aspects of the fish-out-of-water scenario that it’s trying to be, the realization about how the society in the universe operates is a solid touch to help introduce what’s going on in the village.
The inclusion of the secondary storyline about how the growing dissatisfaction over the way of life sets about a mystical journey into the heart of the tower to confront the ruler over how he’s raising society. The trip to bring about a new order features plenty of thrilling encounters and some rather fun work brings about the different scenarios throughout the kingdom on the quest to do that, which is generally fun enough, yet also brings up the one main issue with the book in how it’s short chapter selection makes the book feel much longer than it does. The constant starting and stopping of the story to get introduced to a new chapter, the way everything comes together, especially with some of the more useless chapters in the middle half detailing the society that we’ve already got a handle on the society or the small tangents related to the necessity to enhance their courage for the expedition there. This comes off as the main issue against this, though.
3.5/5
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