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    The Whatnot
    The Whatnot
    The Whatnot
    Audiobook8 hours

    The Whatnot

    Written by Stefan Bachmann

    Narrated by Peter Altschuler

    4/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    The Whatnot is the acclaimed international bestseller and sequel to Stefan Bachmann's riveting debut novel, The Peculiar, which Publishers Weekly called "an absolute treat for readers of any age," and which the Los Angeles Times compared to "Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment, Charles Dickens's A Tale of Two Cities, and more recent classics, such as J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter and Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events."

    Twelve-year-old Pikey Thomas is missing an eye, a family, and friends of any sort. One day, running from bigger boys set on bullying him, Pikey finds himself in front of a grand, beautiful house. There he meets and helps a black-winged faery who is injured. It's a small gesture of kindness and bravery in steam-powered Victorian London, where faeries, now banned, are on the run or imprisoned; where the human armies are preparing for war; and where the changeling Bartholomew Kettle, aided by Arthur Jelliby, still searches for his missing sister, Hettie. This is the epic, dark, imaginative, unforgettable, and ultimately hopeful sequel to Stefan Bachmann's acclaimed debut novel, The Peculiar.

    "An enthralling read . . . Bachmann combines the pleasures of a Dickensian cast of characters with the eldritch qualities of British faerie lore and adds a touch of steampunk to entice readers into an alternate universe in which the English are on the verge of war with the fay. The breathtaking beauty of his prose is coupled with a plot that also leaves his audience breathless."—School Library Journal

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins
    Release dateSep 24, 2013
    ISBN9780062280367
    The Whatnot
    Author

    Stefan Bachmann

    Stefan Bachmann was born in Colorado and spent most of his childhood in Switzerland, where he graduated from Zurich University of the Arts with degrees in music composition and theory. He is the author of The Peculiar, his debut, which was published to international acclaim when he was nineteen years old. His other books include The Whatnot, A Drop of Night, and Cinders and Sparrows. He is the coauthor (with April Genevieve Tucholke) of The Secret Life of Hidden Places. He lives in Zurich, Switzerland, and Berlin, Germany. 

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    Reviews for The Whatnot

    4/5

    23 ratings2 reviews

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    • 5/5
      I was not familiar with Stefan Bachmann before this title, but I am so glad to know about him now. While the poverty and violence of this particular magical world may be a little much for the under-12s, the story is gripping and the characters are wonderfully engaging. I am always particularly impressed with authors who capture the dark side of the fairy world, and Stefan has certainly done that. A feast for the visual imagination and a fresh story.
    • 4/5
      Audiobook from the library - In this sequel to The Peculiar, Hettie Kettle is stuck in Faerie, trying to survive while waiting for her brother Barty to rescue her. She passively goes along with whatever the various pompous faeries tell her to do, almost to the point of slavery. However, after long years pass with no sign of Barty, Hettie begins to realize that maybe she will have to grow up and rescue herself. Meanwhile in the now anti-faery city of London, an orphan boy named Pikey is ostracized due to having a wonky eye that sees only things that aren't really there. After evading a group of particularly nasty bullies, Pikey is recruited by Barty Kettle and Mr. Jelliby to help them find a way to rescue Hettie. They believe there is more to Pikey than meets the eye (pun intended).What I expected to be a straightforward sequel ended up being something much more interesting. Barty and Mr. Jelliby, the heroes of the first book, are relatively minor characters in this one. The plot and perspectives center around Hettie and Pikey, who are much more interesting at this point. In the previous book, Hettie was a (rather annoying) helpless little sister, but in the sequel we get to see her grow up before our very eyes. By contrast, Barty is self-assured but a bit incompetent, since it takes him years to rescue Hettie. The weirdness and surrealness of Faerie is excellent, especially the inconsistent sense of time between it and our world. Once again, I'm blown away by a book written by an author so young.