Book Review: Stranger Back Home – E.L. Haines

Stranger Back Home was a wild, often bizarre, blend of humorous quips, magic, and whimsy.

Sparrow has been called back home to discuss a matter in his late fathers will. After receiving a mysterious text message from his half-brother, he decides to cross worlds and see what the fuss is all about. When he arrives home it becomes apparent that his brother did not, in fact call him home but he also received the same message and blamed Sparrow for the interruption to his life.

Now that he is home, Sparrow is determined to uncover the mysterious texter, patch up some old friendships and try not to get murdered along the way. This master of disguise and quiet entrepreneur will have to battle teenage vampires who will probably not kill him, but its safer to sleep during the day when home, old flames who definitely will try to kill him, and an almost daily haircut which makes not one lick of difference to his hair but is great for meeting important social clientele. Like I said, this book was bizarre, but it was a lot of fun.

There were a few things worth mentioning as selling points for this type of story. The first being the structure, every chapter has something new, that sort of fit together but made you want to continue turning the pages regardless of if it made sense or not. Next up was out main character Sparrow, this little gnome was a bundle of loveable chaos, and finally some of the quiet messages of friendship, family and acceptance which were sporadically thrown throughout the tale. 

E.L. Haines is a traveller of fictional worlds and Stranger Back Home invites the reader to do just the same. This book does not take itself seriously, it wants the reader to have fun and get lost in an immersive, topsy turvey world. I for one got completely sucked in. Each chapter of Stranger Back Home had the reader doing a 180 and pivoting to Sparrow’s latest and greatest scheme, whether it was opening a spa for the Kobold’s who HATE gnomes, signing up the latest and greatest girl band to an entertainment association or swindling underground workers into moving the dead to another location all in the space of a day. You never really knew what you were going to get with Sparrow or this city, but that’s what made it so fun.

Talking about Sparrow, this self-assured and definitely not racist little gnome caused chaos wherever he went, but somehow things seemed to work out. His name was well known, his reach in the city wider than anyone would believe but for him, it was all in a day’s work. It was hard not to be enamoured with our main protagonist of this book as the world around him seemingly burst into activity wherever he went. His quiet scheming and more devious plots all came from a good place, and it made him a joy to follow.

Finally, we have some of the more wholesome messages that came from this wild ride of a book. Throughout the pages there were moments of family, friendship and acceptance which warmed the soul. Sparrow sought out the good in each and every one of his many side characters even though he told himself time and time again, he had no friends, only acquaintances. It was obvious that Sparrow cared very deeply about those around him but wanted to protect himself from the potential pain of letting someone in. Through many a bacon sandwich and crazy adventure Sparrow discovered that maybe, having friends isn’t so bad after all.

I had a lot of fun with this one, even if the plot lost me a couple of times in the nonsense. If you are a fan of a bizarre fantasy that will have you laughing unexpectedly this is going to be a book for you.