D (A Tale of Two Worlds) was not what I was expecting. The tone is that of an indulgent omniscience narrator who has a personality but wouldn’t let that interfere with a good story that they are telling how they like. It came off as too childish for me, the fable-like telling over-stylised and making it impossible to care about the characters and what was happening to them. This book was not for me unfortunately.

A young girl wakes up to a world where the letter “D” suddenly doesn’t exist! Her journey to find out why begins after attending the funeral of her former history professor and sends her on a quest into another world - a world ruled over by a mysterious dictator called the Gamp.

I was surprised to see Michel Faber putting out another novel seeing as he claimed that his previous one, 2014’s The Book of Strange New Things, would be his last ever. But, in the afterword, he says that he started this story 35 years ago so I guess he felt he couldn’t end his writing career without finally completing it (and publishing it, of course)?

He also mentions his influences for the story: Dickens, Lewis’ Narnia books, James Thurber’s The Wonderful O, and the Wonderland novels. Having read D, I would say the book has more in common with Roald Dahl, Norton Juster’s The Phantom Tollbooth and Walter Moers’ The 13 and a Half Lives of Captain Bluebear - and I would also say that D unfortunately isn’t half as good as any of them!

This is definitely a book for younger readers rather than Faber’s usual adult audience. The writing style, the child protagonist and the whimsical premise of the letter D disappearing put me in mind of Dahl’s The Witches, particularly the magical stuff that happened after the funeral. I liked most of the first act before Dhikilo, our main character, went into Liminus, the other world.

Almost everything in Liminus though was insufferably bad! The one exception was the episode in the Bleak House, a haunted hotel that tries to drive Dhikilo and her travelling companion, Mrs Robinson the shape-shifting sphinx, insane. That was interesting.

All the rest was awful. The story is just them meeting one group of annoying idiots after another with no consequences. Each group is defined by tediously irritating speech patterns. All don’t use the letter “D” but others talk as if they have mouths full of toffee so Dhikilo has to repeat back what they say and none of the dialogue is worthwhile.

What makes it worse is how contrived everything is. Why the letter “D”? Just ‘cos. How does the Gamp in this world affect the “real” world (though Dhikilo’s English home town of Cawber-on-Sands isn’t real either)? No idea. Why are there so many Dickens references (Magwitches, Droods, Bleak House, Nelly/Little Nell) - what’s the relevance? No point - Faber’s just a Dickens fanboy, it seems. Why do so many people go along with this weird arbitrary rule of not using the letter “D” when no-one enforces it and there’s no consequences to using it anyway? No idea. Just because this is essentially a book for kids doesn’t mean you can cut corners with sloppy storytelling.

The first act was decent, the Bleak House part was ok, but most of the novel is a dreary journey through the dullest, least imaginative “fantasy” landscape ever. I wouldn’t recommend D to either fantasy or Faber fans. It’s rare for a book to have its quality accurately stamped on the cover - I give D a D-grade! If you want to read something similar that’s actually good, Lewis Carroll’s Alice books are still the gold standard, closely followed by The Phantom Tollbooth and Walter Moers’ Zamonia novels.

Reads like a very old-fashioned children's book with an avuncular and intrusive narrator. Dhikilo, the protagonist, is 13 but reads younger, and the plot is a linear there-and-back-again, encountering various odd characters along the way. I'm apparently not the only reviewer to be reminded of The Phantom Tollbooth.

I was left with questions, including: If the child from our world, who must do the thing that apparently nobody in the world on the far side of the portal is capable of doing, is African, is it still a white-saviour trope? And if the stupid, violent, primitive, cannibalistic savages with spears are grey in colour and the person they capture and threaten is African, is it still offensive?

I'm inclined to answer "yes" to both of those questions.

What I did like was that the civil servant in one of those odd encounters was as helpful as he could be, and as defiant of the regime as he could be, while still overtly observing the rules. So at least in some ways we are stepping beyond the tropes and stereotypes - though mostly we are not.

There are some important themes here about despotism and how it gains, keeps, and loses its hold on people, which are more relevant than ever today. But the delivery vehicle was a bit lacking for me.

I am a huge fan of Michel Faber’s writing and, even though I understood that ‘D A Tale of Two Worlds’ is advertised as a YA read, I was keen to enjoy his latest novel. As ever, his prose quickly draws the reader into the narrative and his use of figurative language brings to life the strange world in which the letter D is being systematically destroyed. The ‘wooden furniture polished so thoroughly it shone like syrup’ conjures up the opulent setting of the tricksy hotel Bleak House in the fantasy world of Gampalonia. The portrayal of the dictator the Gamp as having ‘…lips …pursed and puffing, like a cross between a baby and a fish’ slyly brings to mind a currently much televised world leader and the many intertextual references to the works of Dickens, C S Lewis and Thurber are likely to be enjoyed by adult readers too.
It’s not easy to predict just how well received the novel will be by its target audience. My guess is that it will be more readily enjoyed by slightly younger readers, not least because teenagers might balk at the scant character development of the central female character, Dhikilo. The heroine of the adventure, along with Nelly or Mrs Robinson, her labrador/sphinx companion, she shows cunning and courage as she battles through several adventures in order to reach her destination. However, Dhikilo does not seem to grow from and reflect much on all of her experiences and the final pages feel rushed, as if the author has had enough and is as keen to finish the adventure as Dhikilo is! Certainly a fantasy world which younger readers may well enjoy but probably not one which will remain with them into adulthood in the way that some creations do.
My thanks to NetGalley and Random House UK for a copy of this novel in exchange for a fair review.

This was immensely weird and hugely enjoyable. I have no idea who we’re going to sell it to because I have no idea if it’s a kids book or an adult book, but that said, half my colleagues want to read it already based on the cover and my enthusiasm alone so perhaps it doesn’t matter all that much.
This is the closest I’ve come, as an adult, to reading a book that feels like a fairytale I somehow missed as a child. Which, I suppose, is exactly what writers like C S Lewis managed to achieve. D is comparable to the Narnia series and, as it states, Dickens, but it’s a sort of mash between the two. It reads as a sort of modern fable - despite a very predictable layout and recognisable elements, it draws on more recent ideas of what fantasy writing can be and uses as current events to shape its villain, and as a result of that and Michel Faber’s wild imagination, feels completely original. He’s one of those writers who will do a better job at a genre he’s never written before than most authors do in the genre they’ve spent half their life writing. The one thing that puts it more seriously in the ‘children’s fiction’ category for me was the ending. It tied up very neatly and with no bloodshed - and as an adult, that was vaguely unsatisfying.

I trie to like this, I really did. The writing was amazing, thats undeniable. But there was nothing keeping me there. I didn't care enough about the characters or whatever happened to the letter D. The sentences missing the letter became hard to read and would often take me a few goes to get my head around and in the end I didn't find the lost of the letter all that life threatening. I see what Faber is trying to do and the idea is a charming one I just don't think I was the intended audience. Maybe if I was younger I'd care a bit more.

C. S. Lewis once said that one day we would be old enough to enjoy fairytales again, and I don't think any book embodies this better than D: A Tale of Two Worlds.

The story follows Dhikilo a young girl living in the village of Cawder on the English South Coast. One morning she wakes up to find the letter 'D' missing from the alphabet! And she is the only one who seems to notice! Together with the help of her old history professor and his dog Mrs. Robinson (who is really a sphinx in disguise), Dhikilo will travel into a different world, ruled by a puppet dictator to save the English language.

Reading the book, it does feel like it is more of a children's book, especially with the writing style and tone. But I think that is supposed to be the point. If you are looking for a book with incredible depth and that makes a statement then this book is not for you. This book is for making a big cup of tea and escaping this world for a while.

Dhikilo is, to put it bluntly, quite a bland character. She is very much there to service the plot. I do like however that Faber gives her a backstory and yet does not explore it. Showing that Dhikilo is not defined by her past, she can have other adventures too. The side characters, however, are bursting with character! And help to add colour to Faber's world.

Before reading the author's note in the end I knew instantly this is book was a love letter to Dickens and Lewis, both in the style, story, and even the feeling this book conveys. As a huge C. S. Lewis fan and someone who has read and re-read Narnia all her life, I feel like I really connected with this book, more so than a reader who didn't have any prior experience with those authors.

One of the aspects of the book that is very C. S. Lewis is that the author is a presence in the book. The author is telling you the story and reaching out to your reaction as a reader. However, this only started to happen after about two or three chapters into the book and didn't happen often after. That did feel inconsistent but I liked what Faber was going for here.

Letter D vanishes in other world, brave girl Dhikilo and sphynx friend try to save our world. They meet interesting beings, their yourney is adventurous, joyful, dangerous and full of entire range of emotions,

Funny fantasy novel, more appropriate for younger readers, but I've enjoyed it too.

A tale that honours many famous authors and their worlds has to be read, and I thoroughly enjoyed the story of Dhikilo and her learning that the letter D has disappeared from the language. Which is a pretty necessary letter, when you consider how much we use it! But Dhikilo’s life is all askew when D goes missing and her parents and friends no longer sound the same. So when she’s asked to visit the home of her former history teach Prof Dodderfield she doesn’t know that this is where the real story begins. Dhikilo is transported to the land of Liminus and faces a battle between the Gamp (ie, the bad guy) and the communities living underfed, overworked and under appreciated. Along the way she makes friends, enemies and learns a lot more about being brave and being a good friend. It’s such a charming read, funny, astute, with parallels to 2020. I loved its cleverness and confidence.

I’m a long term fan of Michel Faber’s work so I was pre-disposed to like this. That said, D was whimsical delight. Dhiliko is a young girl at a boarding school in England who is the only person who notices when one day the letter D disappears from the English language. Naturally Faber capitalisies on this by removing D from the book and some people are going to find this difficult to read as a result (I can’t imagine what an audio book of D might be like). Dhiliko teams up with a recently deceased professor and shape-shifting dog and goes on a quest in the to oppressed land Liminus on a quest to get the letter back. There are strong Tale of Two City vibes but this is very much its own story. Whimsical, observant, eerie and engaging, this is Faber at his best.

I'm SO sad to admit I was a little disappointed with this book.
The Author is one of my all-time favourites. I adored the Crimson Petal and the White, Under the Skin and the Book of Strange New Things. So as soon as I saw this new title was coming out I seized the chance of a review copy eagerly and excitedly and dived straight in.
The cover is very tempting and having read the synopsis I thought I was going to be reading a young adult fantasy, maybe like the sublime and imaginative Ten Thousand Doors of January by Alix Harrow. I was hoping for a quirky and feisty heroine like Lyra Belacqua from His Dark Materials, as, if an author is talented enough to qualify to compete with Philip Pullmann, or create an alternative world as engaging as Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman, Michel Faber undoubtedly fits the bill.
A Tale of two Worlds, however is suitable for far younger readers, with a strong blend of The Lion the Witch and the wardrobe and a hint of the Wizard of Oz.
Strangely although the title is clearly a nod to a Tale of two Cities the Dickensian feel is limited to the names of the places and characters which have all been adapted from names in Dickens works, with Quilps and Magwitches and even a Pumblechook.
The storyline is a quest, undertaken by the young Heroine Dhikala, a likeable but unremarkable teenager and her travel companion a large labrador dog who is also a Sphinx. The letter D has gone missing and the unlikely pair go through a mysterious door which is a portal into another world, we are never fully told why or how this came about. They wander about in the cold a lot, meet some slightly scary creatures and attempt to restore the letter D to our world and remove a bullying dictator, The Gamp, from the alternative world .... and that's about it in a nutshell. It's a pleasant and quite fun read, I think children of around 8 to 13 will enjoy it. But I kept waiting for something deep and profound to happen, something which would make it a book that had a dual meaning apparent to adults. But it didn't.
I would be very interested to hear what a school age child would make of this book and eagerly await further reviews, as I do wonder if I somehow missed something in the pages of this book.

To be honest I didn't finish this book. It was listed as sci-fi but should've been under the YA adult section also as it's more a book for early teens than adults, and if I'd have known that I wouldn't have started it. I was also attracted by the fact it said it was a Dickensian type story, I didn't get any of that despite reading the first 10 chapters, I'd say it's more like a Harry Potter type book. The only reason I haven't marked it lower is that there is probably a market for this book but it certainly isn't me, and I feel tricked into reading it as it had been poorly described/advertised