Something Wicked This Way Comes – Ray Bradbury – a review

Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Read this 5 years ago, and just reread it. Older review is below.

With a low-grade Jabberwocky-like, engaging style, Bradbury spins a fun yarn that addresses wickedness.

When a circus come to town at 3 in the morning, Jim and Will are both excited and disturbed. That’s the response sin evokes in all of us. They are both drawn to it and repulsed by it. Mr. Dark promises free rides and pleasure, but delivers death.

Evil captures souls, and doesn’t let go. Friends see it happen to their loved ones and object. Protest. Call them back. But it isn’t an easy project. It takes a mentor (in this case, Will’s father) to see through it, and explain it to the next generation. It’s no coincidence that he works at the library, finding refuge and wisdom there. When we learn the history of evil, it is in part defanged, unveiled, shown for the tawdry, shallow lies it promises.

But while the book is high on writing style, it is low on substance. The only answer given to defeating the Wicked that comes at you is – laughter. This is in part a good answer. The expulsive power of a better affection, as Thomas Chalmers wrote, is a good answer to the temptations of wickedness. But Bradbury’s laughter is as hollow as Mr Dark’s promises. Secular solutions to wickedness fall flat.

Will’s father is a faint hint of our true Deliverer from evil. Not just a stable, wise, joyful refuge, who evades and tricks the enemy. But a Deliverer who defeats him, head on. Bradbury depicts refreshingly the reality of evil in his secular time. But his worldview has no real answer to it. For that we need the Lord Jesus Christ.


2019 review:
Best known for his Martian Chronicles or Fahrenheit 451, Bradbury is an excellent writer – pretty easy to read, yet stretching vocabulary and compelling prose at times.

“The stuff of nightmare is their plain bread. They butter it with pain. They set their clocks by deathwatch beetles, and thrive the centuries. They were the men with the leather-ribbon whips who sweated up the Pyramids seasoning it with other people's salt and other people's cracked hearts.”

He evokes the looming sense of dread quite well, that something wicked this way is coming. He depicts friendship between the two boys beautifully.


Bradbury’s worldview is sad. Pathetic. The basic message seems to be that we make too much of death and evil, and give it its power by our own fears. If we would just smile, sing and dance, evil would vanish in a puff of smoke, and death would be undone. This is literally what happens at the end. It’s a ridiculous counterfeit savior from death, evil and hell.

1 star for content; 3 for writing skill. 2 stars over all.

Good reading for high school boys who can spot inadequate secular solutions to real spiritual problems.

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