The Kings and Queens of Roam: A Novel

by Daniel Wallace

From the celebrated author of Big Fish comes an imaginative, moving novel about two sisters, their dark legacy, and the magical town that entwines them.

Helen and Rachel McCallister, who live in a town called Roam, are as different as sisters can be: Helen, older, bitter, and conniving; Rachel, beautiful, naïve—and blind. When their parents die suddenly, Rachel has to rely on Helen for everything, but Helen embraces her role in all the wrong ways, convincing Rachel that the world is a dark and dangerous place she couldn’t possibly survive on her own . . . or so Helen believes, until Rachel makes a surprising choice that turns both their worlds upside down. In this new novel, Southern literary master Daniel Wallace returns to the tradition of tall tales and folklore made memorable in his bestselling novel Big Fish. Wildly inventive and beautifully written, The Kings and Queens of Roam i s a big-hearted tale of family and the ties that bind.

Genres: Fiction, Fantasy, Magical Realism, Book Club, Literary Fiction, Audiobook, Novels

290 pages, Kindle Edition

First published February 1, 2013

About the author

Daniel Wallace is author of five novels, including Big Fish (1998), Ray in Reverse (2000), The Watermelon King (2003), Mr. Sebastian and the Negro Magician (2007), and most recently The Kings and Queens of Roam (2013).

He has written one book for children, Elynora, and in 2008 it was published in Italy, with illustrations by Daniela Tordi. O Great Rosenfeld!, the only book both written and illustrated by the author, has been released in France and Korea and is forthcoming in Italy, but there are not, at this writing, any plans for an American edition.

His work has been published in over two dozen languages, and his stories, novels and non-fiction essays are taught in high schools and colleges throughout this country. His illustrations have appeared in the Los Angeles Times, Italian Vanity Fair, and many other magazines and books, including Pep Talks, Warnings, and Screeds: Indispensible Wisdom and Cautionary Advice for Writers, by George Singleton, and Adventures in Pen Land: One Writer's Journey from Inklings to Ink, by Marianne Gingher. Big Fish was made into a motion picture of the same name by Tim Burton in 2003, a film in which the author plays the part of a professor at Auburn University.

He is in fact the J. Ross MacDonald Distinguished Professor of English, and director of the Creative Writing Program, at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, his alma mater (Class of '08). He lives with his wife, Laura Kellison Wallace, in Chapel Hill. More information about him, his writing, and his illustrations can be found at www.danielwallace.org and www.ogreatrosenfeld.org.

Reviews

[Bandit · Rating 5 out of 5]

Every so often I read a book so SO amazing, that I don't think I can do it justice with a review. But I do try. This is my second read by Daniel Wallace and I loved it just as much as Mr. Sebastian and The Negro Magician. And although this book didn't have any direct connection with magic, it was just as magical. I suppose, if classification was needed, this is a work of magical realism. Just how it should be done, a perfect mix of surreal wonder and absolute beauty. Wallace really has a gift for creating these incredible landscapes, the lost corners of the world, where the rules are ever so slightly off. To say that this was a story about two sisters in a small dying town who discover that beauty is an inside/outside concept would be a drastic undersell. This was a perfect fairy tale for adults, a fable with morals and lessons, an epic (in range not volume). As any body of work it is driven by a heart and at the heart of it, it's a love story and as any good love story, it's a meditation on the whole nature of love and of what we do in the name of it, about the sacrifices and cruelty and the power of forgiveness. Where some writers merely tell a story, Wallace creates a completely immersive narrative, with phenomenal genuinely original characters the reader can care about and the stunningly lovely, moving writing one can fall in love with. I loved this book from beginning to end. Completely. Highly recommended.

[nimrodiel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Roam, a town found in the middle of the wilderness. Once, it was the home of a great silk factory built by Elijah McCallister. When the silk worms stop producing the town slowly falls into disrepair as it's inhabitants slowly move away.

Helen and Rachel McCallister are the great-granddaughters of Elijah McCallister. Orphaned when their parents perished in a car crash, the girls live together in the home that their great grandfather built when the town was established. Helen the eldest sister is ugly, while Rachel is beautiful. Helen is bitter, and Rachel cheerfully naive. Helen can see, while Rachel is blind as a result of a childhood illness. the girls are dependent on each other. Helen believes that Rachel can not survive without her daily help.

Helen's bitterness towards Rachel's beauty and the extra attention paid to her by their parents when they were alive leads to her uttering a lie one rainy afternoon when they were both children. This lie leads Rachel to gow up believing the worst about herself and her town. However, when Helen taunts Rachel with her inability to survive on her own Rachel decides to prove Helen wrong. What will happen to Rachel as she makes her way outside of roam? what will go through Helen's mind when she realizes that Rachel is going to find out the truth that will change everything that she believes to be true?

I am a fan of Daniel Wallace's books. I was delighted to receive an inquiry if i would be interested in an advanced readers edition of his book. I loved how the story alternated between Rachel and Helen's point of views, and how their story alternated with that of the town's past.This was written in a way that pulled me as the reader further into the setting rather than distracting from the main story. It was wonderful to see how the story lines intertwined and the effect each had on the other. I found myself drawn into the subtle weaving of magic and whimsy the story unfurls, and if not for other obligations could have easily spent an afternoon reading the entire book.

[Lori Anderson · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was thrilled to receive an advance copy of this book. "Big Fish" and "Mr. Sebastian and the Negro Magician", also by Daniel Wallace, are among my favorite books, and this book is as enchanting, if a little darker.

The book is about sisters, a dying town, ghosts, lumberjacks, magic water, and the fine line between love and hate. The story is a magical blend of vignettes from a cast of characters who are all connected by their relationship with the town of Roam. In this way, it reminded me of "Big Fish", and I hope someone options this book for film, because it would be spectacular.


The story:

Rachel and Helen are sisters -- Rachel is beautiful and blind, Helen is so ugly it hurts to look at her. As "The Kings and Queens of Roam" is told, I found my alliance with Rachel slowly move to Helen. While Helen initially acts abysmally to the sister she feels she's been burdened with, she ultimately becomes (to me) the heroine in the story. The sisters' tale of love, friendship, lies, and hate mirrors the stories of other inhabitants of Roam. Woven into the sisters' story is the story of how Roam came to be, and how it came to die.


The ending:

While I won't give away the ending (don't you hate when people do that?) it was both beautiful and bittersweet. It leaves room for the reader to imagine the "what happens next" but also gives a poignant,"what if" scenario.


The words:

One of the things I've started doing in the past year is marking up my books. For the longest time, I thought writing in a book was tantamount to murdering its pages, but now I find myself underlining passages and writing in the margins. I hope one day someone will pick up a book I've read and know that much more about ME from reading what moved me.


Daniel Wallace has a beautiful way with words, no two ways about it. He can inject the gentlest of humor into places where humor would normally hide. He also just can spin words into gold, and I underlined so many sentences that just spoke to me on a visceral level. Some examples:


"I imagined a different sort of life than the one I led," she said, "but I suppose everybody could say the same."


"Life is about making worlds."


"Life was good: he actually felt this. It was very strange to think he had lived so long without being able to articulate this simple idea."


The book comes out in May, 2013, and I highly recommend you preorder now!



Lori Anderson

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[Lauren · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was great, and everything you'd expect from a Daniel Wallace novel. Whimsy, folklore, quirk, and heartache. Told from several vantage points in time, through many different characters, the separate stories reinforce the importance and consequence of stories themselves, that the tall tales we tell ourselves and each other are perhaps a bigger reality than we will ever know. And just what happens when this reality shifts, morphs, or disappears entirely? All you need to do is read the fate of the McCallister family in Roam to understand the weight of our words and the worlds we create. There's the town founder, Elijah, who plays God at the expense of one man's happiness, and whose existence is so linked to the empire he built that it dies along with him. There are the ghosts who live in Roam, the former inhabitants who live the lives they cannot let go of even in death, making the Past a literal character in the novel. And then there are Rachel and Helen. One sister young, beautiful, and blind. The other old, spiteful, and homely, and determined to swap roles with the sister who could never see otherwise. Rachel exists as the person her sister creates her to be, and in a place of Helen's own devices, until she sets one foot outside of Roam and changes everything.

Kings and Queens of Roam is an imaginative and lovely look at just how closely the past stays with us, just how much fiction we are willing to believe in, and just how much truth we will wring from all of it.

[Jacki Leach · Rating 5 out of 5]

Daniel Wallace, author of 'Big Fish', gives us an original fairy/folk tale that will leave you mesmerized. Two sisters, one ugly, the other blind and beautiful, live in their family's moldering mansion in the near-dead town of Roam. When one learns her lessons, the other leaves the town, only to find the truth which blots out her innocence.

Colorful lies give this well-told tale an enchanting edge, but not is all 'sweetness and light'.

Yet another perfect vehicle for director Tim Burton!

[Adam · Rating 4 out of 5]

During the five years I spent in college, I was so bogged down by research and distorted by literary analysis that I only read one book for pleasure: 100 Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. It took me three months to read...three long, glorious months, during which I absorbed every word as best I could. Each page was its own separate novel, each paragraph its own story, as though Marquez weren't just writing about the Buendia family or the little town of Macondo, but a history of everything that ever was or would be: love, birth, death, corruption, perseverance, illness, strength, joy, war, peace, success, failure. The world was in that book, something I recognized from the very first line, and I lived in that world every day on the third floor of my campus library. For almost an entire semester, that book was my education; the rest was just distraction.

Marquez remains the master of magical realism--that blend of the actual and the fantastical--and very few writers have managed to strike that same balance with the same skill and effect. (In truth, it would be foolish to try.) Daniel Wallace is one of the few writers today--and perhaps one of the only American writers--who embraces the magical and fantastic and their influence on the real with the same clarity as Marquez, even if he's destined to stand forever in his predecessor's shadow. Big Fish, Wallace's first novel, concerned a son whose only window into the life of his dying father is the old man's repertoire of strange, unbelievable stories--of a giant named Karl, of a town where the people are kept from leaving by a Cerberus-like dog, of a massive snowfall that buries houses up to the roof, of war and snakes and big, uncatchable fish. By the end of the novel, the stories William Bloom so long dismissed as ridiculous become the stories he himself tells about his father--a moment when the fantastic and the real become one in the same.

Now, fifteen years after the publication of Big Fish comes The Kings and Queens of Roam. Set in a strange, secluded area of the American wild--an area filled with ravines, bears, wild dogs, thieving vines, and sudden downpours--the story concerns the residents of Roam, specifically two sisters, as the town slips into ruin decades after its silk factory--the only foundation of its economy--has stopped producing. The younger sister, Helen, is beautiful and blind, while the older sister, Rachel, is ugly and sighted; Rachel is also vindictive towards Helen, who relies on her for information about the world beyond her almost sightless eyes, and in a moment of selfishness, Rachel "switches their faces" with a sudden, vicious lie. Suddenly, Helen thinks of herself as hideous and her sister as the epitome of beauty; when the townspeople compliment her on her looks, Rachel tells Helen, they are lying out of pity. It is a momentary burst of anger and resentment that Rachel doesn't understand, even as it's happening--one due in part to the sudden deaths of both parents in a car accident some time before and in part because of Rachel's constant need to take care of Hannah--but it causes Rachel to run from home and forces Hannah to examine just how deep her ugliness goes.

Interspersed with the story of Hannah and Rachel are other stories of the Roam's residents, both past and present. We learn how the small village was founded--the kidnapping of a Chinese silk-grower by an American man--and how their partnership in business eventually became a friendship that was, much like the sisters', based on little more than selfishness and anger. There is Smith, the massive lumberjack who lives only for his dogs and never speaks; Digby, a waist-high bartender whose tavern is populated by the ghosts of dead citizens waiting for a home to open up in town; and Dr. Beadles, an aging man who finds the cure of all ailments in the water of a hidden river. Each story on its own is a fascinating look at how Wallace crafts characters who are unique individuals on their own but come together to create a foundation for the central themes of loneliness, love, and forgiveness. It's these characters and themes that come together in the novel's closing moments and, beautifully, resolve not only the resentment felt between both sisters but also the entire tortured history of Roam.

While Wallace is no Marquez--and has never claimed to be--he is clearly indebted to the Venezuelan Nobel Prize-winner nonetheless. Just like Marquez's most famous novel, Wallace's newest is populated by contrasts: the giant lumberjack alongside the "not-a-midget" bartender; the young Hannah meeting the super-centenarian Chinese silk-spinner and kidnap victim; a city of the living now increasingly populated by the dead; Hannah's internal and external beauty alongside Rachel's internal and external ugliness; and so on. Wallace also allows all of these contrasts and extremes to exist without undue attention. That ghosts should not only haunt Roam but speak to the living, sit in a bar, and look for available real estate would normally be the focus of the author's distracting need to explain away every implausibility; for Wallace, it's little more than a natural part of this world, and it adds to what would otherwise be a basic story of family arguments and personal discovery.

In fact, it's these elements--the fabulous and the normal so wonderfully mingled together--that are the heart of the story. Yes, the relationship between Helen and Rachel dominates the novel, as it should, but each character hides a depth behind their hyperbolic facades that is its own rich story. Their heartbreaks--of wanting to love and be loved, of wanting to be more than just survivors in a literal ghost town--normalize them in a way that no physical description ever could. That their town should be called Roam--named for the two founders' sojourn there, though perhaps also an ironic nod to the historical empire--is telling. Not a single character who lives in Roam appears happy until they are joined with someone or something else: a quiet tree-feller and his dog, a ghost and his house, or a short bartender and a woman who loves him. Or even two sisters, one beautiful and one ugly. Their reality is one of loneliness, and it's only by searching--by roaming--that they find their own personal magic.


This review was originally published at There Will Be Books Galore.

[Erica]

I made it through four discs then called it quits.

The problem I had was that, to me, this is a mediocre story made worse by the wrong reader.

The book had originally intrigued me for many reasons: It has a slightly magical description, there's a cute little fairy house on the cover, and most-important, it's about sisters. I love stories about sisters. From the first description of them, though, I was put off - the oldest was apparently the most hideous child ever birthed, so ugly that no one in town would even look at her. That seemed weird to me. I don't think I've ever seen a child so homely that I couldn't even look at it. However, her parents loved her ... so, really, why did she even notice at such a young age the actions of the townsfolk? Shouldn't she have been secure in her place in the world because her parents didn't treat her like the ugliest child ever created? Shouldn't it have taken her a whole lot longer to notice that everyone's eyes avoided her? This isn't something she should have picked up on at, what, age three?
But whatever.
Seven years later, her little sister, Rachel, comes along and this second child happens to be the most beautiful girl in town and probably the county. Sadly, a childhood illness strikes her blind and she has no idea she's stunningly lovely or that her sister is hideous.
So we're starting out with a fairy tale and one that never sits well with me - the ugly older sister and the fetching younger one.
Helen, the grotesque child, hates her sister based solely on their outward appearances and takes to emotionally torturing little Rachel. So now we have exterior facade matching interior motivation and the whole story is centered on looks, jealousy, and who can see which truths in which tales.

It's also a broader family story, pulling the past - the story of the manipulative and abusive town founder - toward the present - Helen and Rachel - via the relatives in between such as Helen and Rachel's parents. This is fine, lots of stories do this, not a problem...until other people start getting pulled in and now there are too many stories to keep up with, stories that aren't necessary, stories that could have been told somewhere within the context of the family line, not as break-out stories of their own. This became a huge problem for me when I started to feel manipulated into appreciating the quirkiness of the Roam/Arcadia area; it felt forced, these multiple perspectives of wacky people and their interchanges with other strange folk and so I stopped caring.

I might have trudged through the book, letting it play in the background and not really paying attention, had there been a different reader. However, this reader seemed to be maybe the worst possible choice. She sounded, to me, as if she were reading this story while hiking up a mountain with a group of not-very-bright third-graders. The cadence of her speech was odd, flowing at a conversational pace and then slowing down for SERIOUS ENUNCIATION then she'd start yelling words at random...the speech patterns were similar to Captain Kirk's, actually. None of it made sense, it didn't fit with the story, and it distracted me to no end.

I'm turning this back in today and my ears will thank me for it on my drive home tonight.

[Heather · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was lucky enough to get an advanced copy of the book and I have to say, I was not disappointed! The key words of this review (and book) are going to be magic, whimsy, haunting, and tragic because that is exactly what it delivered. My favorite part is the theme of magical realism that runs throughout. The magic in the water, the ghosts, the characters who seemingly never die. While I was reading, I was reminded of One Hundred Years of Solitude and The House of the Spirits.

Kings and Queens creates this haunting portrait of two women. The eldest sister, Helen (who is tragically ugly) and the younger, Rachel (who is beautiful, but blind). I don't want to say that they are a product of the decrepit town of Roam (even though it's part of it) because their problems are more personal than that, which is to say, because of Rachel's naivete, Helen takes advantage and creates a world for Rachel that is scary (flesh-eating birds) and limited (no way out of Roam). Rachel was always dependent on Helen for everything, which is why she leaves.

So there's the sister drama, but while all of this is happening, Wallace unravels the mysteries of Roam, the ghosts of former inhabitants, the people who still live in Roam (mostly those without purpose) and the legend of the founders of Roam. This part opens the doors to so much of the magic and whimsy I eluded to earlier. They are important to the story, their history is relevant to the separation of Helen and Rachel that they (both the sisters and the outside characters) don't even realize it. At first I was bothered that the story went into detail about each of the seemingly static characters, The Lumberjack, Digby, Jonas, but during one of the tipping point scenes, their fate almost mattered more to me that that of the sisters! I was amazed that Wallace could turn my perspective of them around.

The ending was beautiful. It left a lot to the imagination. It creates a place where two different worlds collide into a beautiful and haunting silhouette of acceptance OR it could just be a tragedy.

I really wish there was a map of Roam at the beginning of the book to give me a sense of the life there, but you can see a map on Daniel Wallace's Tumblr: http://king-of-roam.tumblr.com/image/...

Overall, I think that The Kings and Queens of Roam was well-crafted, full of small details that left more to the imagination and indeed follows is Daniel Wallace's tradition of grand, magical storytelling. Big Fish

[Kaitlyn · Rating 3 out of 5]

I want to write a review of this book, but I honestly don’t know where to start! I can’t even decide my rating… Three? Four? Three seems too low, but I didn’t love it enough to give a four or five.
Wow! What a whirlwind!
I will be honest and say I didn’t LOVE it, but I also didn’t hate it. It was well-written and very unique/interesting. I’m very glad I read it. But too many “sad things” happened for me to say I genuinely loved it.
For the first quarter of the book, I had no idea what I was reading and definitely didn’t like it. But by the middle I was used to the world and characters and the story intrigued me. I would say the middle was my favorite part.
I had been warned before reading about the possibility of me not liking the ending, so I don’t know if my judgement of the end is true since I had been preparing myself for any possible resolution. But I didn’t mind the ending after all.

There were several things I really liked about the book and several things I definitely DIDN’T like. I laughed several times too. So many surprisingly humorous moments.
I don’t think I expected a single thing that happened. Ha!

[Maria Kramer · Rating 2 out of 5]

Roam is a dying town in the middle of a dense forest, blighted by the crimes of its founder. In this town live two orphaned sisters -- Helen, who is tragically ugly, and Rachel, beautiful but blind. Out of bitterness, Helen begins to lie to Rachel about everything, the town, the forest and even about her own face. Eventually, Rachel makes a decision that Helen doesn't expect and their twisted relationship finally snaps.

This book showcases a lot of the problems I have with magical realism as a genre, in that the plot and characters are completely secondary to the mood and atmosphere that the author is trying to create. Every person in this book seemed less like a character and more like a symbol that the author was moving around the landscape. A good example of the almost complete irrelevance of characters in this book was the Chinese element of the story. Several characters are Chinese-Americans, but this adds absolutely nothing to the story. Seriously, they could have been replaced by characters of any ethnicity and it still would have been exactly the same. I guess Roam's boom as a silk producer would have made even less sense, but that wasn't very important either. Here, I'll do it right now. For "silk," substitute "ivory." Now Roam raises elephants! Everyone is from India! And the story has no significant changes.

The plot of the book weaves past and present together to try to make the connection between Elijah McAllister's past sins and the sad story of Helen and Rachel -- his descendants -- but I honestly don't see any cause and effect relationship. Shouldn't a curse resonate with the crime that cased it? For a book that actually works past events into present plots very well, I'd recommend Holes by Louis Sachar, which is actually very tightly constructed. Here, the past just...hangs around pointlessly like the many, equally pointless ghosts that hang out in Roam. Yes, there are ghosts. No it's not important. The ending, while predictable, felt very rushed to me and unsatisfying, like the author was trying to tie up events and wasn't sure how to do it.

Read these instead:
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Pedro Paramo
House of the Spirits
Life of Pi

Or, listen to some Decemberists albums.

[Cheryl · Rating 5 out of 5]

Helen and Rachel McCallister are sisters. They only have each other now that their parents are gone. For years Helen has been jealous of Rachel and her beauty. Due to Rachel’s blindness, she can not tell any different what Helen is telling her when she tells Rachel that she is ugly. Helen’s lies grow when she creates this world around Roam filled with flesh eating birds and other monsters. However Helen could never know what her story was actually doing to Rachel until Rachel makes an announcement that will change both of their lives.

I was curious about this book. I thought I would give it a chance. Wow, I am so glad that I did. I almost missed out on a great book. I found myself not reading this book fast enough. What with life getting in the way!

I can not imagine depending on someone like Helen. She was so bitter towards Rachel. However I am glad that as the story went on Helen did turn a new leaf and became a better person and one that I actually liked. Due to Helen’s meanness towards Rachel I instantly liked Rachel.

There are two stories happening in this book. There is the one involving Rachel and Helen and then there is the other one involving Elijah and his slave Ming Kai. This story was just as captivating. It was fascinating to get to learn how Roam was discovered and got to be the place it was. The Kings and Queens of Roam is a book not to be missed! It is filled with lots of wonderful characters and a magical place.

[Diane S ☔ · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 In lyrical prose Wallace gives us the story of a magical yet dying town of Roam. I first saw the movie "Big Fish", never actually read the book but the story behind the movie was quirky and delightful. In this book, Wallace once again tackles a story with many moral ambiguities and characters that are hard to like and yet sympathetic in their humanness. How this town came to be and why it is now dying is what kept me reading. The two sisters could have been young sisters anywhere, but not all the characters of Roam are as transparent. When I first started reading this I was''t quite sure what to make of it, but slowly I became enthralled with this unusual story. In the end, this could be any town anywhere, magical or not, when characters act with the wrong intentions toward others. Really enjoyed this quirky novel.

[Lauren · Rating 4 out of 5]

While perusing thru the library, I picked up this book because it said Daniel Wallace is the author of Big Fish . I had only seen the movie of Big Fish and didn't know that it was originally a book. I wasn't particularly fond of the movie, but I felt there was potential in the story so I decided to give Wallace a chance with this book. And I'm glad I did.
Wallace does an excellent job of creating another world for the reader. I found myself captivated by the characters and eager to find out what happened next. Because of that, it took me only a matter of hours to read the entire book. I consider myself an avid reader, and there are a limited number of books that do that to me. The story is well told and I enjoyed it thoroughly. I definitely recommend it for a fun, simple read. I think I will check out Wallace's other novels as well.

[Readersaurus · Rating 4 out of 5]

So, my second book in a row in which the author asks the reader to believe fantastic things as if they are commonplace . . . And in which magical happenings do not necessarily bring any joy.

There are 3 threads in this book: the sisters, Helen and Rachel, the bartender and his ghosts, and the dastardly founder of Roam, Elijah McCallister. The only thread that I found myself eager to read was that of the sisters. There is cruelty and love there, and it's unpredictable. The ghosts are just a little too sad and mopey. I wanted them to go away. With the sisters, there's an edge of feeling that their futures might genuinely be ahead of them, they might work it out, might find a satisfying life. Wallace didn't write any feeling of possible happiness into the other characters.

[Guinevere · Rating 5 out of 5]

Well...I read a lot of good books that are stories that I really enjoy, written with varying levels of artistry. It was really a pleasure to read Daniel Wallace's The Kings and Queens of Roam as he is truly an artist, absolutely a master of beautiful, vivid, meaningful prose. Which means to say, not agonizingly artsy or trying in any way, just very natural and very great. In addition to that, the story was compelling and I found the ending to be beautiful, I won't say any more about that tho!

[Amy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've had the great pleasure of seeing Daniel Wallace at book readings twice this month, and hearing the book in his voice as I read it was quite a treat. I'd call it magic realism light, fantastical and dark but often funny too. It has a lot to say about how we create our own reality, or allow others to do so for us.

[Bridget Healy · Rating 2 out of 5]

I made it about halfway until I gave up on this one. I'm not one for sad, thought-provoking novels about how horrid people can be too one another, and the dark places we all have inside us. My dark places want to read something happier. If that makes me shallow, so be it. It's why I'm not in a traditional book club.

[molly · Rating 5 out of 5]

The best book from Daniel Wallace yet! I highly recommend this disarmingly beautiful and haunting story of two sisters that transcends time and reality. Love!

[Jerrika Rhone · Rating 2 out of 5]

What dreadful, unlikeable, horrible characters. Uck.

DNF @ 20%

[James Biser · Rating 3 out of 5]

Daniel Wallace is a good author. This is an entertaining story about a small group of people from Roam. The story follows sisters Rachel and Helen McCallister. They grow and change after they leave Roam and find home in new lands. They dream of returning to Roam. The new people they have become are vastly different, but their common home still holds them together.

[Caney Demars · Rating 4 out of 5]

A beautifully strange read.

[Daria · Rating 4 out of 5]

Magical realism isn't generally my cup of tea, but I saw this title on an Overdrive list and thought I'd give it a shot. Siblings, friends, partners and the things that come between them...how one incident can completely change the path we're on. Lyrical writing, wonderful imagery. I am not satisfied with the ending but, oh well - it wasn't my story to tell.

I look forward to reading more Daniel Wallace. (I saw Big Fish years ago while in the hospital and loved the movie but then it slipped my mind the way things do when one is unwell). I'll be reading Big Fish and his other works soon.

[Londa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Books like this one are the reason I read! I absolutely love this book. It's the type of book where halfway in, I am already thinking of reading it again.

Helen and Rachel are two sisters living in a dying town called Roam. It was founded by their ancestor and they live all alone in the house he built. Rachel depends on Helen to take care of her because she is blind. Helen also depends on Rachel, but she does not entirely realize it. There lives have gone on in a fairly predictable manner for years until..something forces one of them to seek out an entirely different life.

All of the characters are well developed. In fact many of the chapters are named after them. You come to love them, hate them, and love them again over the course of the book. Even the side characters that usually no one pays attention to are really fleshed out (well, flesh might not be the right word)

It's hard to pinpoint what is so special about this book because there is so much going on in this fairly short story (under 300 pages). There are ghosts, magical water, vicious dogs and plenty of bears...can't forget the bears. People are deceived, trusted, killed, healed, shunned, forgiven, and abused (but not in that particular order).

I HIGHLY recommend this book especially if you like magical realism. I know I can't wait to read it AGAIN!
----------------------------------------------------------------------

I received this book in a goodreads giveaway. My review is unbiased.

[Patty · Rating 5 out of 5]

I must admit that this was not a book within my normal genres but I'm quite happy I chose to read it. I truly love that when I go outside of my norms and find a book that keeps me so engaged. I did not read Mr. Wallace's first novel, Big Fish so I knew nothing of his style when I started this one.

The book is two stories; that of two sisters, Helen and Rachel and that of the town of Roam itself. Helen and Rachel are left alone after their parents die and Rachel is dependent on Helen as she is blind. Rachel is beautiful and as the book tells us, Helen is not. Helen is very jealous of Rachel and starts to tell her a series of lies about herself and her surroundings. The reader also learns about how the town was founded and about its founders.

The writing is just magical and so are the stories; there is a fair bit of fantasy involved in the tales and I'm not usually a fan of such but the book is just so well written you can't help but get drawn into the story and well, believe.

Rachel finds that she doesn't need her sister as much as she thought she did and Helen realizes she needs her sister more than she thought. It doesn't end with unicorns and rainbows and the book does make you think - which I just love in a novel. The two tales come together giving, if not answers, then an end. I'll keep this one to read again and with all that I read, you know those books are few and far between.

[Angie Lisle · Rating 3 out of 5]

I hadn't read Wallace before this book but I remembered Big Fish, which is on my to-read list though I've never gotten around to reading it. When I saw The Kings and Queens of Roam, I thought I'd give it a try and requested a free copy in exchange for review from NetGalley as a way of sampling the author's work.

The story is supposed to be about two sisters and their relationship with each other. There's a couple problems - I didn't like either sister and didn't feel like their relationship was real. I couldn't climb into their heads and I felt like I was crowd-watching them, which may be what the author intended as it makes the ending difficult to predict.

Then, I start reading and discover that this book isn't just about the sisters but also about their great-grandpa and his kidnapping of a china-man to beget the town of Roam, providing the setting for the sisters. He was more interesting than his descendents but I didn't grow to love any of the characters. Some characters, like the lumberjack and his dogs, felt out of place and I'm not sure what they did for the story, aside from providing flights of fancy.

Wallace tells a story beautifully but he didn't have much story to tell. The prose is whimsical and well-written. Wallace gives so much detail in just a few words and spins a beautiful sentence. That was my favorite part of the story - it reads so easily. Wallace's writing style is what encourages me to try some of his other books.

[Diane Barnes · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am not a big fan of magical realism, which is what I consider this book. However, once in a while an author comes along that can make you believe in the impossible. One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Marcia Marquez is such a book, and now Daniel Wallace has done it with this one. The things that happen in the town of Roam stretch the imagination and defy logic, but the REASONS they happen stem from very real human emotions. Love, hate, envy, ambition,and everything in between is here in these pages. I bought this book in April at the NC Literary Festival because I heard the author speak and was impressed by his humor and friendly, outgoing personality. While signing my book and chatting with me, he doodled all over title page, which I think is pretty special. One of his doodles was a dog, which I thought was just random, but after reading the book I know is not. Now I love his writing too. He is the author of Big Fish, which has been made into a movie and now a Broadway show. I'll be looking for this one, because while still not a fan of all magical realism, I am definitely a fan of Daniel Wallace. Recommended for an inspiring and fun read.

[Karen · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was lucky enough to get this as an advance reader copy via Touchstone and Goodreads. I have read Wallace's novel Big Fish and Mr Sebastian and the Negro Magician and am well aware of DW's majestic tall tale style. I enjoyed The Kings and Queens of Roam, but not as much as the others. I have one sister, and the bond and hurts and love that comes out of that relationship are comparable to no other in my life. Wallace tells the tale of one beautiful but blind sister and an older uglier sister. The beauty is more than skin deep, as is the ugliness when they are children, when Rachel is dependent on Helen for everything. Once the positions change so do the personalities and the idea of beauty evolves. Forgiveness, redemption , longing , and acceptance are the key components throughout the story and each of the characters identified. The bits with dogs and lumberjacks was a bit misplaced and never fully developed and somewhat with Marcus and the valley people as well..they are supportive characters, just not enough of a body to follow. In all , this was an enjoyable read.

[Lydia Presley · Rating 5 out of 5]

Although I have not read any of Daniel Wallace's books, I am a big fan of the movie Big Fish so when I got an email asking if I'd like to read The Kings and Queens of Roam I jumped at the chance. There's something about magical realism that just... speaks to me. It makes me feel tingly inside and sends me into this relaxed state of being when I'm reading and I love any chance I can put my hands on a book that will bring that about.
http://thelostentwife.net/2013/08/28/... Lost Entwife.

[David Allen · Rating 5 out of 5]

The book was amazing. Never a dull moment. Fell in love with Rachel and, surprisingly, Helen. Amazing characterization and setting. It's everything I wanted and expected Wallace's latest novel to be.

[Lolly K Dandeneau · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved this book. You hate the characters and you love the characters, the same way you feel about most people in your life at any given moment. Review to follow soon, but this is the type of novel I devour and enjoy most. Novels that are magical, mysterious or maybe just strange.