The Charlatan’s Boy by Jonathan Rogers is a novel in the genre of Fiction / Fantasy / Young Adult. It tells the tale of a young boy named Grady who travels from town to town with a man named Floyd playing tricks on the villagers to try and make a buck.
Grady doesn’t know how he was born and assumes he is an orphan, though he sometimes questions if Floyd is his father. Floyd boast that Grady is “The Wild Man of the Feechiefen Swamp!” Feechies are creatures from the swamp, often told about in stories and puppet shows. An Urban Legend of sorts. Floyd preys on the villagers to get their money by putting Grady in a box and having him act like a Feechie.
When the feechie story is no longer popular, Floyd shops Grady to the villagers as “The Ugliest Boy in the World”, betting the villages that they can not find someone who is uglier. They try several other things to make money and end up trying to get the feechie buzz going again by leaving items at different villages and hoping that the villagers will embellish on the stories amongst themselves. At the end of the book, Grady finally finds out some things about himself and where he came from. Grady’s story will continue in the Fall of 2011.
I really enjoyed this book and the world of Corenwald. (At first I was nervous because there was a map in the beginning of the book and often that means the book will be hard to follow, but I had no problem) The writing style made it easy to quickly read the book without missing out on any of what was going on. I really did not want to put it down once I got going with the story and finished it in about 3 hours, which was shocking considering it is just over 300 pages (and I’m not really a speed reader!) I would definitely recommend this for males or females who enjoy Young Adult novels. I am looking forward to continuing the journey with Grady in the next book which is set to be released this fall!