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{{infoboxsort infobox1
|title=The Runaway Troll
|author=Matt Haig
|date=February 2009
|isbn=978-0370329888
|sort= Runaway Troll
|cover=0370329880
|aznuk=0370329880
|aznus=0370329880
}}
He's not counting on wicked property developers, having to dangle from people dangling from rooftops, orange juice, and the horrors of cleaning one's teeth.
The setting of this adventure and its unusual characters are definitely to this book's merit, and I assume that the first volume, having a greater stock of odd forest life-forms, was only more of the same. The book immerses you in the quirky and daft from the off, and sustains it with different approaches to narrative style – the list, the authorial interruption and so on. But I couldn't help feeling that as wonderful as the approach is, and as epic-seeming , the huge but ever-lively read that results is, there were small flaws here and there.
I certainly appreciated the set-up of all the characters and situations that started the book at a pleasant pace and only increased it, but beyond that , the crux of the plot came only at the quarter mark. A slight, child-friendly practice of revisiting details and so on – explaining , for example , two or three times why someone is as they are, seemed unnecessary, if fitting with the chatty authorial style. I don't think the avid young reader will be putting the book down enough to need the reminders.
The book is pretty much self-contained, beyond a brief reference here and there to the original adventure. In fact, this would appear to be a mirror of what has gone before – where then the humans went into the Troll and forest world, here the Trolls break out into humankind. There is a lot more to it than that, though, and I can still definitely recommend this book to newcomers or those returning to this world. Despite my small twinge about the slightness of plotting, the book is still thoroughly engaging and readable, and should still delight the target audience eager for a first or second dose of the admirably odd herein.
We at the Bookbag are grateful to Bodley Head for our review copy.
Another world equally full of the charmingly odd is featured in the series beginning with [[The Palace of Laughter by Jon Berkeley]]. You might also enjoy [[To Be A Cat by Matt Haig]].
{{amazontext|amazon=0370329880}}
