Christmastime
As the title suggests, the story takes place during Christmas. Which means there are plenty of opportunities for imagery that present a winter wonderland. But there are two parts to that idea and wonderland is only one of them. The other is winter and that landscape can vary significantly:
"Snow was falling from a strange sky, which looked as though it was made of painted wood, though it was far, far higher than any ceiling in the Land of the Living. Jack could see a few distant finding holes in the wooden sky, but not nearly as many as there’d been in the ceiling of Mislaid. The land all around them was bleak and empty: a stony wasteland, which stretched away into the distance, with only clumps of thistles growing there. Between the barren ground and the swirling snow, it was the most unwelcoming place Jack had ever seen.”
The Real World
The story begins firmly ensconced in the real world. Things will change significantly as the story plays out, but throughout the first section of the novel, the setting is very familiar. Indeed, for some readers it may seem a little too real and uncomfortably familiar as part of the first section deals with the breakup of the marriage of Jack’s mother and father:
“One night, soon after he’d started school, a noise woke Jack up. He felt for DP and drew him close in the dark. Somebody was shouting. The voice was a bit like Dad’s. Then there was a crash and a lady screamed: it sounded like Mum, but not as Jack had ever heard her. Jack was scared. He listened for a few more moments, pressing DP against his mouth and nose, and he knew DP was scared too.”
You Can’t Replace a Best Friend
When Jack’s new stepsister viciously grabs his beloved toy pig and tosses it out a moving car, the very idea of trying to find it verges on the ludicrous. So the next best thing is attempted: a replacement. But while the adults (and Holly) assume they are merely replacing a toy, what they fail to understand fully is that they are placing Jack’s oldest and closest friend. And how often does that turn out well?
“Holly had pulled out a brand-new pig. It was the same size as DP, and made of the same towelling material, but it was plump and smug looking, with sleek salmon-pink skin and shiny black eyes that looked like tiny beetles… Jack got slowly off the bed and held out a hand for the Christmas Pig. He felt, as Jack had expected, horrible: slippery smooth instead of rough and worn. Jack hated his shiny black eyes and perky pink ears, which ought to be lopsided and grey.”
The Lair
Although one might fairly argue that the villain of the story is Holly, it is a figure far away from the real world that situated as the true antagonist. He is known simply—and a little sadly, really—as the Loser. And like all great villains, he calls his home a lair:
“The Loser’s Lair was a gigantic underground cavern, in the middle of which burned the huge fire. Cages hung all over the walls, all of them crammed with the Things the Loser hadn’t yet eaten, and it was the cries of some of these imprisoned Things he could hear, although not all of them were screaming. Many were simply huddled at the bottom of their cages, silent and sad, knowing that their end had almost come. They were cheap, ugly Things, most of them: made and lost in their millions, unwanted, unloved, existing only to fill space for a while until they were sucked down below into the Land of the Lost.”
