he year is 1899. Abel Dandy, the "normal" son of human oddities at the carnival attraction Faeryland, loves his family but is well into his first major case of teenage alienation. Even though nobody has ever made him feel like an outsider, and he's shown progress in his training as a professional knife thrower, he still feels he has no real place among his large extended community of limbless people, little people and dog-faced people. Adding to his restlessness, he has also come into possession of a magical ring that, when touched, provides erotic visions of a beautiful, exotic girl who beseeches him, "Come to me."
Abel hits the road to seek his fortune, but runs into complications. The first is that Apollo, a furry younger boy from home, has tagged along without permission. Forced to take care of Apollo until he can earn enough money to send him back to his parents, Abel finds his responsibilities multiplying when both boys fall into the hands of evil showman Lazarus Mink, a skeletal freak show entrepreneur who keeps his own performers, including an entire troupe of helpless children, in a state of virtual slavery. Mink is so very nasty that he even has an assassin on staff: the brutal "he-she" Ceecee, a knife-wielding sadist who delights in punishing, or even murdering, performers who complain or try to flee.
Abel, who at first sticks around only to protect Apollo, finds his responsibilities multiplying yet again as he realizes he cannot leave any of these brutalized people in Mink's hands. And there's another issue as well: Mink's attractions also include a withered, dusty old Egyptian mummy, who reacts to Abel's touch by opening her eyes…
Good vs. evil for grownups, too
In her afterword, author Annette Curis Klause freely admits that Freaks takes its title and inspiration from the classic Tod Browning film about the community of freak show performers who enact brutal revenge when one of their own is wronged. Published as a teen novel, in large part because of its conflicted teenage hero, it nevertheless possesses more than its share of adult elements, including kidnapped and enslaved children, a house of prostitution, the brutality of Mink and Ceecee, some bathroom humor involving the fat man, and the passionate love story between Dandy and the less-dead-than-she-seems mummy, Tauseret. In addition, the fight against Mink and Ceecee does involve killing. Not all of the good people live, and not all the bad people die.
It is, however, very much a story of a young man who has hit the road in part to avoid responsibility, and who instead becomes a leader as he fights to protect others. Abel never feels like a hero, himself. He tends to grumble about his bad luck in having so many people come to depend on him. But he does the right thing, even when it hurts.
All of this is told in lucid but magical prose, with sharp dialogue and characterizations that render all the characters more than just the sum total of their respective oddities. These people are fun to read about even between crises, in the scenes when they're just sitting around talking. They're even easier to care about when danger threatens. By the time we get to the action-packed climax, a thrilling showdown against Mink and his hired goons, the narrative's on fire.
