I want to see this animated.

In so many ways this made me think of something from Hayao Miyazaki. There’s a certain blend of wonder and fright within a gradually accelerating story that feels so distinctively Miyazaki-esque to me. This story captures that.

It has the meditative pacing. It has the gentleness over slowly growing undertones of threat that I associate with Studio Ghibli’s work. And it has Ogma, a classic Miyazaki-heroine; as the pressure mounts and Ogma’s world slips out from under her feet, her understanding of the world is transformed while her stubborn and hopeful nature remains.

Like I said, Fog & Fireflies feels extremely Miyazaki. I think it would thrive as a Studio Ghibli creation.

This doesn’t surprise me, as I’ve known T.H. Lehnen for years. We’ve been friends since we were in college and have played many hours of roleplaying games together, particularly Call of Cthulhu. I can see some of the horror that I know T.H. Lehnen enjoys creeping around inside this story. It’s that horror which I think completes the Miyazaki comparison.

See, I think Miyazaki’s work is so often pigeonholed as being “for children” that we focus on the films’ childlike delight and beautiful animation, and forget how they blend horror and fright with wonder and awe.

All of those emotions, both positive and negative, are intense experiences. They’re often a large part of childhood. These emotions thrive in unfamiliarity and the unknown. As we age and experience more and expand our horizons, our easy access to fright and wonder fades. Sparking these emotions requires ever more novel and exceptional experiences (or the purposeful cultivation of curiosity and wonder, but that’s a topic for a different day).

I think a lot of media aimed at children (and media trying to recreate the experiences of a child) skirts around the trap of forgetting or willfully ignoring the scary side of childhood. But that scariness can heighten the warmth of love and awe, giving a broader range and depth of emotion. Fog & Fireflies remembers that.

Fog & Fireflies takes its time to establish Ogma’s home. We learn what her everyday life looks and feels like. We even come to understand the shape of an exceptional day. That gives us the context we need to feel upended when she is thrown for a loop, and it means that when the story’s scope and scale expand we can feel how far beyond the familiar and comfortable Ogma has gone. This patient worldbuilding also means that we can feel just how uncertain and strange and terrifying Ogma’s world becomes—we’re given the context we need to feel the story’s horror at multiple levels.

Also, because we’re given all that context, we’re able to feel the warm and fuzzy homelike / heimlich warp into the cold and eerie uncanny / unheimlich. I’ll link you to my old essay about this, but suffice to say that I really like it when I’m able to experience such a clear creation of a home space AND see the homey space and homey feelings altered into horror and fear. And I love it when those elements are woven back in multiple times to layer the familiar and unfamiliar, deepening the horror and making the act of facing that horror even more impactful.

For all those reasons above, Fog & Fireflies is great.

One this this book is not, however, is fast. If you pick this up expecting a rip-roaring adventure from page one (or page ten), you’ll be confused. I did stumble with reading this—not because it is bad, but because I entered it expecting a modern Western middle grade adventure story. I thought it would kick off a high octane plot by the end of chapter one, and not sit down to think until just before the climax (if ever). I was wrong.

No, you should read this because it’s a slow build, because it’s like slipping into a quiet world and living someone else’s weird and wondrous life for a while. Then, when the time comes, you too will be shocked by the way the world has been pulled out from beneath your feet. If waiting is torture, this might not be a good fit. But if all the above sounds good to you, you’ll enjoy this book.

Be patient. Just like a Miyazaki-heroine, you’ll go places.