Rating: 3 out of 5 After a decade since I last read this book and twice the age, my experience with this story has changed. Originally when I read it as a boy, the story felt more magical and eerie. I was more focused on the carnival and its mysteries than the characters and their personal growth. I hadn’t given thought about how Bradbury’s perspective of the world, which hasn’t aged well over the decades, is insensitive to people dissimilar to him. I hadn’t even realized Will’s dad was ultimately the hero of the story, which was a significant plot point. While Bradbury touches upon universal themes like mortality, he fumbles with the story at times trying to convey his thoughts about them as explicitly as possible. However, Something Wicked This Way Comes does contain great prose and has an interesting premise. It captures the spirit of Halloween and boyhood sufficiently enough that it felt alright to start off my October reading, stirring my own memories of the past when I first picked it up.