The Unwritten - Mike Carey
- Tommy Taylor and the Bogus Identity - Tom Taylor is a minor and reluctant celebrity because his father wrote a series of wildly popular boy-wizard novels starring Tommy Taylor, a character suspiciously similar to his son. When evidence emerges suggesting Tom's own past may be a fabrication, he finds himself caught up in a conspiracy involving secret organizations, literary history, and the unsettling possibility that stories may have more power than anyone realizes. Before Tom can get to the bottom of any of his questions, he is framed for a massacre at his father's old house in Switzerland and arrested. As a palate cleanser, this volume ends with a story about Kipling dealing with the powers that be behind stories. [4]-two
- Inside Man - In prison in France, Tom finds himself rooming with an embedded reporter. With the help of Lizzie, the woman who first mentioned his possibly fabricated past, Tom starts to see that he has the power to make stories real. A sinister power that once worked with Tom's father wants him dead, and in the midst of another massacre the three make their escape to a grim and tragic world, one that never existed. Carey artfully alternates Tom's prison story with that of the prison governor, who has his own problems with the unexpected power of story. Meanwhile, a brand new Tommy Taylor book is about to come out, despite the fact that Wilson Taylor has been missing, presumed dead, for years. In one of the best episodes of the entire run, the interstitial story in this one is about a foul-mouthed rabbit who longs to escape his seemingly idyllic funny-animal world that is sinister underneath the surface. [4]-two
- Dead Man's Knock - The new Tommy Taylor novel is finally released, but it turns out to be a counterfeit written by Mr. Callander's cabal in an effort to discredit the story and undermine Tom. The real Wilson Taylor reappears to offer cryptic guidance, but the deadly Pullman, whose touch causes people to disintegrate, is never far behind. Lizzie Hexam has a crisis of confidence, and in one of the cleverest chapters yet, Carey spins a "choose your own adventure"-style episode hinting at her tragic origins and how she became Wilson's willing tool. Once again, Carey masterfully blends myth, literary geography, and the fictional Tommy Taylor saga with Tom's increasingly desperate flight for survival, producing a story that is both intellectually playful and genuinely suspenseful. [4.5]-two
- Leviathan - Every writer needs to grapple with his own white whale, and as Tom inadvertently becomes a character in Moby-Dick on his own, Carey cleverly merges and layers several whales from literature. When Tom is inside a whale with Sindbad, Baron Munchausen, Pinocchio, Job, and possibly James Bartley, all figures who found themselves in similar predicaments. Tom takes control of the story, but meanwhile back in the real world, the puppet master Rausch has captured Lizzie and Savoy, whose illness turns out to be story-related. And the volume ends with an interstitial scene, in which the talking rabbit who was once the robber Pauly takes command of a troop of talking animals on a quest so blackly comic and childhood-trampling that it should come with a warning for the faint of heart. [4.5]-two
- On To Genesis - After putting his imprint on the Great American Novel, Carey turns to that inevitable American art, comic books. Escaping from the whale, Tom joins his friends in a heist of the late Wilson Taylor's goods, specifically his journal. It seems that years ago, Wilson Taylor, working for Pullman at the time, was tasked with stopping the nascent Tinker comic book. In true noir fashion, though, he falls for the dame who does the strip, and strings Pullman along. Tom uncovers this story and discovers more family secrets; meanwhile, the cabal goes scorched earth on anyone in Tom's past. [4]-two
