I want everyone to know that I'm writing this review through a curtain of tears, okay.

Lanmo, our polite little grim reaper, has never known love or happiness or peace; he's never known sorrow or guilt or heartache. All he's ever known is he's the most powerful being there is and as such he has a duty to travel the world and snuff out - very politely, if deserving; very menacingly, if deserving - the lives of those whose time has come. It's all he's known and so he carries out his tasks very clinically and methodically.

Then he meets Mary, a young girl whose heart bursts with hope and optimism and love and joy, she whom embraces her emotions and feelings and finds loveliness in even the saddest of moments, is able to so seamlessly embrace the bittersweet nature of life and in doing so is able to depart wisdom onto Lanmo, the wisest, most powerful snake of all.

Through their journey together, Lanmo sees the world change: he sees cities rise and fall, desolation creep across once thriving fields of verdant grass and splendid flowers, sees humans grow thin and hollow and weak. He finds his occupation needs his attentions less and less - as cities crumble, so too does the morality of man, and humans continue finding new and inventive ways to carry out his reaper business themselves.

Where once Lanmo might stare at these changes with a disinterested air - after all, it's not his business - he finds himself paying more attention. He sees beauty in the bright eyes of children, love in the dances of couples standing together 'neath a blanket of stars, hope and perseverance in the stolid flight of red kites against the backdrop of the clear, blue sky. He feels guilt and finds that he doesn't quite like it, but that he feels it so intensely because it is the result of an abundance of love.

We journey with Lanmo as he realizes all of these wonderfully divine, beautiful things - as he ponders why the humans attack each other when they could instead dance and make merry and fly kites and bake bread.

We journey with Lanmo as he realizes that love, more than anything, is the strongest force there is - a glue that binds souls together, that does not possess, that mends and nourishes and grows stronger and stronger than the most powerful reaper there ever was.

This was... a beautiful, heart-wrenching fable. I feel fuller having read it, and upon its publication I am going to order several copies for my store and keep them on my recommended shelf. The descriptive language offers an incandescent fairy-tale feeling and provokes strong visuals in the reader, making it a quick but fulfilling read. I might also recommend that several of my teacher friends' look into teaching it in their classrooms: it's an important commentary on society and culture, and one that's very relevant in today's climate, but more than that it's a timeless tale on the importance and richness of love.

The Little Snake conjures a character that undergoes a remarkable transformation. The snake, in all of his metaphorical glory, meets humans at the end of their journey. One day, a young girl, not scheduled for a meeting with this reptilian grim reaper, notices and befriends him. The snake, Lanmo, vows to protect the girl, Mary, and in the spirit of friendship, both of them look out for each other. Over Mary's life, we see how Mary's fortunes fall and Lanmo find himself with fewer readings to perform as humans take each others' lives more and more often. This bittersweet fable had me weeping by the end.