I am not one that is normally drawn to the fantasy genre. I mean, sure, I read all of the Harry Potter books (because they were fantastic!). I am a huge fan of the Xanth series and don't even get me started with the Incarnations of Immortality series (if you haven't read that series, I highly highly recommend it) but I find myself drawn more to thrillers or mysteries or anything with vampires and witches. So, with that being said, I love how this book drew me in from the get go.
Just the blurb on the jacket alone got me excited to read this book:
Meet Roger. Skilled with words, languages come easily to him. He instinctively understands how the world works through the power of story.
Meet Dodger, his twin. Numbers are her world, her obsession, her everything. All she understands, she does so through the power of math.
Roger and Dodger aren't exactly human, though they don't realize it. They aren't exactly gods, either. Not entirely. Not yet.
Meet Reed, skilled in the alchemical arts like his progenitor before him. Reed created Dodger and her brother. He's not their father. Not quite. But he ha a plan: to raise the twins to the highest power, to ascend with them and claim their authority as his own.
Godhood is attainable. Pray it isn't attained.
Separated at birth, they know nothing of the other's existence. Until one day, they start communicating telepathically. Initially thinking the other is an imaginary friend they embark on a journey that will test their limits, prove their humanity, and save the world. All in a day's work.
The book starts off at the end of the story in the middle of the action and does a lot of jumping around which would seem confusing but somehow isn't. Just hold onto your seat because it doesn't take long to find yourself reading well into the night so you can find out what's going to happen next. I admit I stayed up way too late a time or two (ok, fine...or four) to finish this book.
Woven throughout the book are pages of an as of yet unpublished children's book (much like Dean Koontz did with his Book of Counted Sorrows) that blends a Frank L. Baum style children's story with alchemy and alludes to what Roger and Dodger are currently going through. There are also a lot of references to Midwich Cuckoos, a novel which was made into a movie called Village of the Damned. The more I think about the sheer scope of all that was tackled in this one stand alone fantasy novel my head spins. In a way that I'm still processing all these days later.