The Laws of the Skies

Product Information

Courtois’ new forest noir of children gone missing in the woods evokes myth, fairytale, and nightmare. The Laws of the Skiesbegins when a school trip to explore nature leaves a number of students stranded with a murderer, and only gets stranger from there. Also this one wins oddest comparison blurb -- the publisher describes this book as ‘Winnie-the-Pooh meets the Blair Witch Project.’ In other words, irresistible!” – CrimeReads, "May's Best International Crime Fiction" Additionally, a few readers have mentioned being bored with the narrative, expressing disappointment for the absence of a compelling storyline. Instead, they find it to be more of a descriptive text focused on gruesome details of the characters’ deaths, which may affect the overall enjoyment for some.

you know* from the get-go that everyone in this book dies: twelve six-year-old children and their three adult chaperones bloodying up the french forest on the worst camping trip/darkest fairytale ever. it shifts into second person a few more times with one very special occurrence towards the end which shows some stellar authorial decision-making, and made me love the book so so much. although, i knew it was love as soon as i read the story that gives the novel its name. a book that has creepy children AND horrible birds? this is my kind of horror. However, the unspoken rules governing relations in Fred's little elementary class were hypothetical; did the rules still apply, now that a child had killed an adult? Without an indisputable authority figure, what remained?And now that you are flying, you can follow me to learn the laws of the skies.” “The laws of the skies?” asked the mouse. No landmarks, no plan, no idea, just intuition that turned out to be faulty, the glaring dissipation of which now set Hugo, Jade, Raphael, Mathis, and Lilou on an erratic trajectory paved with apprehension and a growing, gnawing, persistent worry. None of them were older than seven, so how could they make the right decisions? How could they remember important information, stay clam, and respond wisely? We're just kids! Hugo cried, in silence. There is no one left to help us, and we're scared! That is why no story is ever told that fails to have a lesson, because telling a story without a point destroys civilization a little. To say any more would be a disservice, so if this premise causes you to raise an eyebrow and immediately look it up online, this book is for you. If you recoil and say, “Ew,” then move along. What do you mean, you don't know?' the old seagull said, scolding. 'You went to all the trouble of joining us to the air. It took you so long to become the first and only flying mammal. Now you can fly, we won't deny it, but you have to learn the laws.'

On the verge of death, a few seconds from the end, up to his last moment, Nathan hadn't thought of Océane, or his mother, or anything else for that matter. He thought of nothing. He died thinking of nothing. Well, not really traumatizing to me but I'm sure many people will be traumatized after reading about this camping trip gone wrong of a French school class.They were forced to stay there for a moment, so that Mathis could vomit again, and Raphael and Lilou collapsed on the ground, taking advantage of the opportunity, holding their stomachs, silent or groaning, at any rate unable to stand up or get a word out. To say what, anyway? You were right, Hugo? We shouldn't have eaten those berries? The vomit hurled into the vegetation stunk badly enough to say it for them. And the sight of children writhing on the ground foretold the future that now everyone could predict in looking at them: no one would take another step. They had to take time to recover, or at least wait for it to pass, because nothing else was imaginable in this state. Or else what if they were all to die here, vomiting or starving, poisoned or dying of hunger? But this possibility had to be chased from their minds, nipped in the bud, because what then? The little mouse felt the large bird remove his foot from hers. But she was aware of nothing else, because she couldn't see anything, and that horrible, piercing, awful scream kept ringing in her ears, her own scream, which came from the depths of her wounded throat, such a penetrating cry, which held so much sadness that no one could hear, or at least no one but her, because she alone could understand how filled it was with woe."