I read this in two days. It was weird, but good weird. I read the introduction and Marcus Sedgwick said the different sections could be read in any order. It felt a bit subversive going straight to part 2, but I did it, then part 3, 1 and 4. The book reads as four linked short stories which I guess it really is (although the spiral doesn't seem to have any real power, it just is). I enjoyed each of the stories for different reasons, even though they are all so different. Like other reviewers have said, this book is hard to categorize, sort of fantasy crossed with a whole heap of other genres. I was close to giving this five stars because it is so original, but it wasn't quite that good. ( )

It's true that the book stars off with the weakest story (while each story can be read in any order, Sedgwick must know that the majority of people are going to read it in the order presented), but the following ones get stronger and stronger as they go along, and culminates in the last story, which is the best and maybe the most ambitious (though I could argue for the first one).

While the theme is loosely spirals, it's more about humanity's thirst for and yet fear of knowledge, and the dangerous of knowing too much (but that this doesn't excuse living in ignorance). The protagonist of the first story searches for that knowledge, and, while she survives the initial invasion, she's eventually trapped with a big idea circling (spiraling? :D) her conscious; Anna is punished for knowing too much and not fitting in with the others, though it seems as though they gets theirs; Charles peeked too far into the realm of knowledge and suffers for it; Ben finds out that he has gone insane from such knowledge, but manages to break the circle.

The first story was OK; free verse and poetry aren't really my cup of tea and I was really curious about some questions that didn't seem to get answered. The second story was good - heartbreaking to see how easy it is for your neighbors to turn on you so quickly and senselessly. The third story (which had the best title) had some real potential that I don't think it lived up to - I assumed (maybe erroneously) that the doctor would join Charles in his descent, but he managed to remain unscathed though touched by the cliche of the "mentally ill but wise" man. The fourth and last story was my favorite - I've always had a weakness for space horror, and space psychological horror in particular, and even more of a weakness for weird"the killer was you driven crazy from the future all along!" sci-fi shit so this really hit all my buttons. There was genuine atmosphere of tension, an interesting mystery/reveal, and some good twists. ( )

https://nwhyte.livejournal.com/3240067.html

It's a set of four loosely connected stories, a girl in prehistoric times, a medieval young woman accused of witchcraft, a doctor in a nineteenth-century asylum, and a generation starship where the cold-sleep passengers start dying. They are all well written, especially the first which is more or less in verse form, with the recurring theme of a spiral echoing across the centuries. The author's foreword suggests that the four stories can be read in any order, but I don't think that's really true. I see that it was shortlisted for the Carnegie medal - and am interested that I didn't pick up on it being intended for a younger audience, if indeed it was. ( )

Wow, this blew my tiny mind!
Is it a childrens’ / YA book? I’m not sure. Is it an incredible book? Absolutely. ( )

This was so strange, and I will never look at spirals the same way again. Prepare to have your brain scrambled. ( )