The Neverending Story Review

I. Loved. This. Book. Words. Cannot. Express. It! 😍😍😍

The Neverending Story by Michael Ende follows Bastian Balthasar Bux, a boy who is very unpopular at school and whose life hasn't been the same since he lost his mother. One day at a bookstore he finds a mysterious book called "The Neverending Story". Instead of going to classes, he decides to hide out in the attic of his school and read the book. 

The book containing the story titled "The Neverending Story" is set in a magical world called Fantastica where every (mostly fantasy) story ever has ever existed. The creator of the world is this goddess-like character named the Childlike Empress. But she has fallen ill, and Fantastica is slowly starting to disappear into The Nothing. A boy named Atreyu has been chosen to help save the Childlike Empress so Fantastica can be saved. Atreyu goes on a long-winded adventure where he meets new foes and friends along the way. He becomes best friends with a luckdragon named Falkor. 

Yes, on the surface it seems like a typical chosen one high-fantasy story, but there is some ominous fourth wall breaking. And it breaks the fifth wall when Bastian finds himself a part of the story! And kind of us readers, too. So for Bastian, it becomes an isekai story. And from there the chosen one and other storytelling tropes get heavily deconstructed. 

Aside from the enchanting story itself, this book was also an extremely meta book on the art of storytelling. It asks questions like, why do we tell stories? Why do we get so attached to these characters that are really just in our imagination and on ink and paper? And how does a story never actually end? In what and how many directions? Well, it's a lot more complicated than you think...

Okay, with all of this gushing I gave it 5 stars. This is one of the most underrated fantasy books of all time. Even in fantasy circles in the bookish community online, I don't see a lot of people talking about it. Most who do know about it mostly talk about the live action movie adaptations, but I heard they are not that good and I won't watch them. Even less people know about the animated adaptation. I might watch the cartoon version, though. 

Anyway, go read the original book like I did!