Rating: 
Summary: Something Old, Something New, Something Weird
Review: My first impression of Bradbury's DUST is that it is an artifact of times past. From the Charles Addams cover to the engravings interspersed throughout the body of the text, I get a feeling of a book produced over half a century ago. A glance at the copyright page (which for some reason is on page 203 -- after the text) shows that large parts of the book were originally written in the 1940s. Somehow, Bradbury linked them to a connecting story of a resurgent "normal" humanity threatening the vampires, werewolves, witches, and what-all residing in a strange Illinois farmhouse. And it all somehow works! It doesn't matter that the book contains elements that are dated across a wide spectrum of 55 years, which adds a poignant feel to the strangeness of the house's family members. The book's subtitle is "A Family Remembrance." Bradbury created another Addams family with real family values and with a real family's centrifugal and centripetal tendencies. In the end, it is one of Timothy's "uncles" who betrays the family, leading to its dispersal to the four winds. Ever since I read FAHRENHEIT 451 and THE MARTIAN CHRONICLES, I've felt that Ray Bradbury is one of our national treasures. There is a kind of sympathetic sadness, a loving kindness that permeates his work. Outer space is for him never far from the human soul, and vice versa. It has the effect of giving his work a universality that transcends genre writing. I expect to return to FROM THE DUST RETURNED, most probably in October, the month that will be forever associated with Bradbury.
Rating:
Summary: Mr. October hits another home run
Review: Never mind Reggie Jackson. I've always thought of Ray Bradbury as Mr. October. Hearing the name Bradbury conjures images for me of street gutters overflowing with piles of slick autumn leaves, the air saturated with the sharp scent of woodsmoke. Bradbury means brief, shadow-strewn, priceless afternoons seamlessly spilling over into long, sweet-smelling nights. It means being a child and falling in love with reading for the first time. It means being in love with life and being amazed by all of the possibilities of the imagination. Bradury also means combating the forces that would strip these feelings of freedom from your soul. Bradbury is a force for good, a medicine for melancholy, and as such, never goes out of style. Ray Bradbury's new book, From the Dust Returned: A Family Remembrance, his first novel of the 21st century, began life over fifty years ago, in the first half of the 20th century, as a short story called "Homecoming." Originally published in the 1946 Halloween issue of The New Yorker, along with an illustration by Charles Addams, creator of The Addams Family, "Homecoming" told the story of a family of strange nocturnal creatures-possibly vampires, possibly not-who lived in a grand old gabled house somewhere in the mythical October Country of Illinois. Drawn largely from his childhood experiences with his own large, eccentric family, Bradbury's Elliotts were overrun with strange aunts and uncles, weird nieces and nephews. Some could travel the world without ever leaving the attic. Some could fly, some were as old as the oldest grain sand in the Egyptian desert. At the time, Bradbury planned on fleshing the story out, and made plans with Charles Addams to collaborate on what would become an illustrated family history of the Elliotts. The plans never came to fruition, however, and although Bradbury would periodically check in with the family over the years in his short stories, the book never came to be. Not until now, anyway. With his 80th birthday approaching, Bradbury's editor insisted that he finally finish the saga of the Elliotts. So Bradbury collected all of the Elliott story he had written over the years and shaped them, along with a lot of new material, into a novel of short stories, similar in structure to his own Dandelion Wine, or its prototype, Sherwood Anderson's Winesberg, Ohio. The resulting two hundred pages of virtual prose poetry, often Shakespearean in its lucid, agile metaphors, tells the complete history of the Elliott family and how they came to be and how they almost ceased to be. The history never elaborates on what exactly the Elliotts are, though. This is just as well. It's not important whether they are vampires, ghosts, werewolves, or witches. What's important is that you believe in them. The Elliotts' greatest enemy over the years has been the modern tendency towards skepticism and disbelief. When science, philosophy, and cynicism "disproved" God, all of God's darker shadows, the vampires, ghouls, ghosts, and witches that make up the Elliott clan had no choice but to crumble right along into non-existence. In From the Dust Returned, Bradbury makes a strong case for believing in things you can't see in the harsh light of the day. Whether they're ghosts, ghouls, God (however you define him/her), magic, wonder, the important thing is that you believe. These are the things that make us well again, that re-inflate us and cure us of the crumpling sicknesses that breed so fertilely in our modern minds.
Rating: 
Summary: Do You Remember How It Felt To Be Ten?
Review: Not since the day, I brought home a tattered copy of The Illustrated Man have I ever forgotten Ray Bradbury's name nor his legendary ability to tell an eerily good tale. His gift for spinning a good tale has produced countless books and screenplays. His book Fahrenheit 451 is one of Science Fictions most fundamental works. Bradbury takes you into the twilight zone; he makes you feel ten again. That feeling of being the only one up in the house, at a quarter past three, with a flashlight under the cover, reading, petrified but loving and relishing every single minute.
So, it was with little trepidation that I bought his latest work, From the Dust Returned. I was excited, looking forward to reading this work that took Bradbury, an extraordinary 55 years to accomplish. Apparently, this plot had been the source and inspiration for the television show, The Addams Family, a show beloved by many including myself. I was expecting a masterpiece molded around a framework here called The Elliot Family. Here's what I got:
Timothy, the narrator of the family, is an orphaned mortal who is adopted into the odd, immortal and fantastical world of the Elliots. We meet his relatives, who sleep during the day in coffins, fly, are telepathic and are reborn from the dead. Most magical is his sister, Cecy, whose out-of-body experiences are the envy of all the others. She often takes her mortal brother along on astral projections and into the mind, body and spirit of other beings. She rarely, physically leaves her bed of sand, up in the attic.
Timothy's most ardent wish is not to have a reflection, to be like the others, to live a thousand years. He, however, at his tender age, is left with the responsibility of recording their stories and carrying on their legacy. He ponders about death, life eternal and his strange illness, which makes him sleep at night, makes his heart beat and his body respire.
The world, created here, by Bradbury, is exuberantly fantastical, full of magic, and it speaks eloquently of the unfilled childhood wish within each of us, that we, all had the power to alter nature, to deviate from reality and change our surroundings as we desired. This is the nexus of the Science Fiction genre, man vs. nature; here we meet a whole clan who is exempt from the laws of nature.
The book, however, does leave one wanting. It reads a little better than what it is, a bunch of previously published short stories and pieces threaded together through Timothy and the guise of the collective family. The singular characters are not very well developed and the stories and time sequences are a bit hard to distinguish or place into a whole. It also drops off into an ending, which leaves the reader disappointed and not quite ready or willing to leave the exquisite characters behind.
Yet, Bradbury's language and use of words is poetic, and brilliant. Enough, to make this tale a pleasant addition to any bookshelf. The book would make an excellent nighttime read for a child aged 7-12, or for older readers who might need an introduction into the strange but wonderful mind of Ray Bradbury and those that need to be reminded.
Rating: 
Summary: [Return to Dust!]
Review: Please don't waste your time with this nonense! It took me two months to finish a book that should hae taken about two hours. Very uninteresting, and the languge is hard to understand.
Don't get me wrong Bradbury is a genius, and this his probable final work should be returned to the dust!!!
Rating:
Summary: Just another book, if you know what I mean.
Review: Quite possibly the first of Bradbury's books to leave me luke-warm. No comparisons with "Dandelion Wine," "Fahrenheit 451" or his other classics are possible. The stories are flimsily integrated, though some segments are quite good ("On The Orient North," etc.). The similarities with the Addams Family are a great hidrance (the movies were better). Not nearly enough space is devoted to the family's supernatural aspect. The characters are inadequately described: instead of being "outre and rococo" they seem rather provincial. They make vague symbols; the allegory doesn't hold. The "collapse from within" subplot results in nothing more than a snicker of disbelief: the traitor has only been introduced a few pages ago and is never again mentioned. The storytelling format would've improved the book greatly if used throughout (instead of just the first eight chapters): perhaps from an adult Timothy's point of view? A Thousand Times Great Grandmere (a vaguely conscious mummy) is easily the most interesting character: the book begins and ends with her, both high notes. Social commentary is meager. The limp, dilute imagery rarely edges into the grotesque (reading about drafty chimneys only makes one more wistful for the derelict jewelbox cities of Mars). Musings on the rules and meaning of life and death are intriguing, but, again, too scant ("Make Haste to Live" is excellent, though). An off-beat, mildly touching, somewhat entertaining anthology/novel. Easily a below-average book for Bradbury.
Rating: 
Summary: Atmospheric miniatures from an October palette
Review: Ray Bradbury has worked the same stand for something like seventy years now, always a moralist, always a preacher, never tiring of the same old sermon in the same old sing-song chant. And it works. And it's a sermon that's still needed, because no one else lays down quite the same moral that he does with such admirable consistency, and certainly no one makes it go down so smooth: live, savor, imagine, soar, remember, tremble; listen to the sounds that death, night, time, and dusk make; trust what your body tells you when its small hairs rise. This book isn't Bradbury's finest work, but it builds on some of his finest work, and it is, thank goodness, more of the same. The best volume he produced in his first decades was the beautifully unnerving short story collection, "The October Country"; and the best thing about that collection was the mini-cycle of three stories about the spooky, smoky Elliot Family. Bradbury always intended to extend that cycle to book length, and he added several stories to it over the years. Here, none too soon now that he's eighty, is the culmination of the project. It isn't really a "novel"; it's a sachet of short stories (most old and some new) with a strong family resemblance to each other, and a veil of lyrical connective tissue. The whole is no greater than the sum of its haunting parts. But why should it be? The Family was always evanescently and loosely bound, and it's proper for their stories to be woven together by spider strands rather than by the sturdy sinew of a plot. Here and there the newer material is badly overwritten in the inimitable Bradbury style. But he never loses control of his mood or his themes. If you haven't read "October Country," bypass this book and go directly to that heart of luminous darkness. But if you have, and you're looking for a fitting minor addition to the core Bradbury canon, "From the Dust Returned" won't disappoint.
Rating:
Summary: none
Review: Ray Bradbury is a National treasure chest when it comes to stories and novels that engage and stretch the reader's imagination. "From Dust Returned" is subtly chilling, wonderfully delightful, captivating, and a sheer reading pleasure... Gary S. Potter Author/Poet
Rating:
Summary: Another Masterpiece From Ray Bradbury
Review: Ray Bradbury is best known for his superb science fiction stories and novels like Faherenheit 451, The Martian Chronicles, and over thirty other books. He has entered a new realm here. "From the Dust Returned" is a quietly powerful little novel that quickly takes control of the reader and forces him to finish the book in one sitting. Mr. Bradbury worked on this novel off and on for over fifty years. The story concerns an extended family of supernatural beings who prove to be all too human in their desires, relationships, and needs. From the winged uncle to the mind traveling cousin to the 4000 year old Great Grandmere the characters are interesting and fully developed. While obviously not human, the Family reminds the reviewer of the members of his own family. The good, the bad and the ugly of all families are represented here. The fate of the Family is revealed through little vignettes and poignant stories. I believe that this novel should be read more than once to fully comprehend the inricacies of the plot. There are stories within stories here. The whole thing is one big story woven from the fabric of many smaller bits and pieces. The novel centers around the "House" that the Family inhabits and the mortal boy who lives in the House. The foundling, Timothy, chronicles the "lives" of the family. Much of the novel involves an homecoming where distant uncles, aunts and cousins return for a gala All Hallows Eve. The ending of the novel is unique and somewhat unexpected. The dust jacket was painted by the late, great Charles Addams and is a masterpiece in itself.
Rating:
Summary: Musings of a magical mind
Review: Ray Bradbury writes books that haunt you. It isn't just that they might (or might not) be ghost stories. They encourage you to see meaning in a drift of leaves, hear voices on the wind, imagine a life less prosaic. From the Dust Returned is all these things and more. If you're looking for a structured horror story, this is not the book for you. If you fancy a book you can dip into for days, evocative and amusing, that reminds you of the Addams Family on its better days, get this one.
Rating:
Summary: Musings of a magical mind
Review: Ray Bradbury writes books that haunt you. It isn't just that they might (or might not) be ghost stories. They encourage you to see meaning in a drift of leaves, hear voices on the wind, imagine a life less prosaic. From the Dust Returned is all these things and more. If you're looking for a structured horror story, this is not the book for you. If you fancy a book you can dip into for days, evocative and amusing, that reminds you of the Addams Family on its better days, get this one.
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