Michael Ende (1929–1995)

This is a special book. Momo is an orphan living in an ancient, abandoned amphitheatre. She has one special power. It's nothing you'd expect of a superhero, but in this story it makes all the difference. There is a strong dividing line between stories with events tossed in just to propel it forward, and stories built like carefully constructed edifices or arguments with nothing extraneous and an important meaning behind everything that occurs. This has the feeling of the latter. Even as Momo show more and her friends are engaged in the imaginative voyage of the Ajax, an entire chapter of make-believe, I did not doubt that Michael Ende included even that scene with a distinct purpose in mind. Comparisons with 'The Neverending Story' are inevitable. This is not as complex as the other but maybe just as challenging, and lessons abound.

Michael Ende is fearlessly subtle. He can say the deepest things in the simplest words, and not worry overmuch whether you're grasping their meaning. With lines like, "There are treasures capable of destroying those who have no one to share them with" scattered within a straightforward story for children, an adult also has something to chew on. It is a story at least partially about the importance of taking the time - stealing time, we sometimes say - to appreciate one another in a world that is always madly rushing forward. The grey men may not be real to us in a literal sense, but in the form of time-consuming, time-wasting things we do that make us wonder why there aren't enough hours in a day. The trick is not to confuse time-wasting with enjoyable time well spent. Like when someone my age sets aside studying the French Revolution to spend a few minutes with this. show less

I first read this book when I was 10 or 11. Over twenty years later, it's still one of my favorites. This story has so much depth that each time it's read, it may as well be a different story altogether. Like Mr. Correander points out to Bastian, "The Neverending Story is different for each person", this holds true. This has to be the sixth or seventh time in my life that I've read this and still it was like a brand-new adventure. I smiled as I read chapters that remembered, and was in awe show more of ones I didn't. To this day, a piece of my heart belongs to Atreyu who has to be the bravest boy I've ever "met".

This story carries a lot of emotion in it, and more than one cloaked lesson between its pages. It's definite must read by parents to their children. Not only will it teach children valuable life lessons, it will help parents to better see the world through their children's eyes and hearts. Perhaps it will remind parents of their own adventures in Fantastica, after all, we adults tend to forget the many times we've been there and have given the Childlike Empress her name >~.^ show less

As the tale goes, only the movie is only about the first half of this book. What happened to the other half? What happens in it? What lore and mythology am I missing out on? (Because I certainly won't get it from the sequels.)

The first half plays pretty close to the movie. Even includes the frame of Bastian stealing the book and reading it (so you're reading about a boy reading?). It's just a nice fantasy novel with doctor centaurs and ten-year-old purple buffalo hunters (the buffalo are show more purple, not the hunters). Atreyu travels through Fantasia (called Fantastica here) looking for a solution to the Nothing, loses Artax, questions Morla, meets gnomes, oracles, losing the auryn, and so on. But at 45% it starts to deviate.

It's not the Nothing that gets them. Atreyu drops out and the Childlike Empress takes over the narrative. She goes off looking for an old man who's rumored to have a way out, but it might be a nuclear option. It turns out that old man is writing The Neverending Story--the same book that Bastian is reading and you are too, sort of. He's writing down everything she says as it happens. And when the Childlike Empress asks him to read her the book, he does. And when it comes to the end, he has to start over because he's come to the part where he was reading about himself reading the book. Then he gets to the end again and has to read about him reading the book about him reading the book about him reading the book. And so on for infinity. That's when Bastian gives the empress a name and gets sucked in.

Now he just exists in the book world. And there's not really a plot after that. There are a few elements of the second movie. Atreyu and Falcor do come back. And there is a Queen Xayide and her hollow soldiers (but no Nimbly). She does do some light manipulation of Bastian but not to any real goal. And using Auryn does deplete his memories. But that's about it.

It's just a series of bits, like The Phantom Tollbooth or Alice in Wonderland. But toxically masculine. For example, he wishes for a forest and that forest contains a big-ass tiger-lion, but he befriends it. And he goes to different stations, like the land of the old people and the house of the kindly grandmother and so on. And he has a character throughline of becoming like a jerk because now he's got all this power. But he doesn't really have a quest or a purpose. Now I see why nothing's ever been done with the second half--it's quite boring and Bastian goes from sympathetic to unlikable. show less

Beautiful. Underneath the fantasy is a serious question: what happens to a people who lose the capacity for imagination, memory, and self-judgment? Germany in the 1930s and 40s, where Ende grew up, offers one answer. The book is clearly shaped by his experience of Nazism and its aftermath. This is not a hero’s journey. It is a warning about power gained at the cost of memory, and about how easily myths can be used to manipulate people. It feels disturbingly timely. One of the rare fantasy show more novels that feels wiser the older you are, filled with images that will remain with me forever. show less