The unwritten : inside man /

The second collection of this literary comic continues the tribulations of Tom Taylor, who may be the fantasy-novel character Tommy Taylor (think Harry Potter), written by his father, come to life. The main plot arc has him getting plunked into Stuttgart, 1940, to save Jud Süss, a novel written by a Jewish dissident but twisted by Goebbels into an anti-Semitic propaganda film. This metafictional comic, where literary worlds bleed together, is still more in the business of promising than delivering, but what it promises is getting more tantalizing by the moment.--Chipman, Ian Copyright 2010 Booklist

Tom Taylor thought that he only shared a name with the hero of his now-missing father's hugely popular Harry Potter-esque Tommy Taylor novels. But ever since Lizzie Hexam (seemingly a Dickens character come to life) confronted him with strange hints about his real nature, evidence has mounted that the truth is far stranger and that the literary "trivia" his father taught him may be key to his survival against a shadowy conspiracy attempting to control the world via its stories. Here, framed for the murder of a group of writers, Tom finds himself in a French prison, but Lizzie has a plan to spring him. Frankenstein's monster, Childe Roland, Joseph Goebbels, and a rebellious storybook rabbit also star. VERDICT While spinning the fascinating tale of his reluctant hero's odyssey, Carey delves deeply into how stories influence reality-most movingly here in the characters of an indulgent father and his two children, who may play at being Tommy Taylor's wizard friends a little too avidly. A dark, thoughtful metafiction with all of literature as its canvas; like Jasper Fforde's Thursday Next, with teeth. Highly recommended.-S.R. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.