In H.G. Parry’s imaginative The Unlikely Escape of Uriah Heep we meet Charley Sutherland a grown up child prodigy working as an English professor and his brother Rob whose been looking after Charley his whole life. Charley, besides being mentally gifted enough to be in college by 13, has the unusual ability to bring the characters from the books he reads to literal life. Our story opens with Rob saving Charley from a particularly vicious Uriah Heep. Soon it becomes apparent that someone else shares Charley’s ability and that that someone has a world altering agenda in mind. Charley and Rob must overcome sibling rivalries and old incidents to work together to save the world.
This was an exciting book plot wise that had interesting things to say about how the reader and writer collaborate to create the world we read. I would recommend the book to readers who enjoy a fantastical world and are not literalists.
